Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Plantagenet wrote:Please take a second to double check your posts for errors--you're getting basic facts wrong. For instance, (1) Apple is building a manufacturing center right now in Mesa, Az. And (2) yes, it will be run on 100% renewable power. And (3) no, it doesn't manufacture glass.

Apple manufacturing center under construction in Arizona

One application of synthetic sapphire is sapphire glass. Here glass is a layman term which refers not to the amorphous state, but to the transparency.

pstarr wrote:

I'll admit to having very few ethics, but even I draw the line at giving a big thumbs up to mindless consumerism and slave labour by purchasing apple crap.

Apples are not crap. They're organic. Or green or something?

Strummer wrote:Apple….a 700-employee facility

Strummer wrote:synthetic sapphire is also commonly known as "sapphire glass"...Here glass is a layman term which refers not to the amorphous state, but to the transparency.

Peak_Yeast wrote:We need something better than CO2 tax.

Since people are the primary target of all co2 consumption, pollution, and ressource usage - the tax/cost should be placed on those who wants to produce new humans……...
Dont worry - im ready to be torn to pieces for writing this

Plantagenet wrote:

pstarr wrote:

I'll admit to having very few ethics, but even I draw the line at giving a big thumbs up to mindless consumerism and slave labour by purchasing apple crap.

Apples are not crap. They're organic. Or green or something?

Some apples are even organic.

And bringing this back to the thread topic….apples are carbon sinks.

kiwichick wrote:natural gas is almost as bad

TemplarMyst wrote:Been a bit since I dropped in. Plant, do you know what the overall efficiency is of the various renewable plants Apple has put into place? I ask not because I'm inherently opposed to renewables, it's just that I keep running up against what seems to me several downsides to a strictly renewables approach.

California should create a carbon tax on transportation fuels that would rise to about 40¢/USG within 15 years, the state Senate's top Democrat said today.

California Senate president pro tempore Darrell Steinberg (D) outlined his proposal for removing gasoline and diesel from the state's greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program and putting them under a carbon tax. Steinberg also called for “aggressive” post-2020 GHG-reduction targets.

Steinberg's proposed carbon tax on transport fuels would start at 15¢/USG next year, rising to 24¢ by 2020 and 40¢ by 2029. The proposal would leave in place the rest of the cap-and-trade program, which covers emissions from the state's electric, industrial and natural gas sectors.

Steinberg raised the specter of the state's energy crisis in supporting his proposal during a speech at the Sacramento Press Club, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. Leaving fuels under the cap-and-trade program would make consumers “vulnerable to anti-competitive behavior and Wall Street traders,” which Steinberg said has led to past price spikes and fuel shortages.

“A carbon tax is stable. A carbon tax is significantly less vulnerable to gaming,” he said.

About $2.5bn of the revenue from the carbon tax would be returned to California residents through a state earned income tax credit for those making less than $75,000/yr. The remainder would be used for mass transportation projects in California.

Graeme wrote:California senate leader wants carbon tax on fuel
About $2.5bn of the revenue from the carbon tax would be returned to California residents through a state earned income tax credit for those making less than $75,000/yr. The remainder would be used for mass transportation projects in California.

Plantagenet wrote:If you want to cut carbon emissions, you've got to tax carbon emissions and people have to start driving less and doing other things to reduce their carbon emissions. No rebates. No special deals. Everybody has to emit less. Period.

According to a new study out of California, taxing carbon emissions at a whopping $200 per ton would create more jobs in the state than business-as-usual.

The report was commissioned by Citizens Climate Lobby and carried out by Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI). The latter used a model of the California economy they’ve developed and combined it with the Carbon Tax Analysis Model — an open-source, Microsoft Excel-based model of carbon emissions and tax revenues at the state level, built off data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The resulting simulation looked at three different tax levels: $50 per ton of carbon emissions, $100 per ton, and $200 per ton. All three started at $10 per ton in 2015, then rose $10 annually until they hit their maximum level: $50 in 2019, $100 in 2024, and $200 in 2034.

Lots of previous analyses have tried to model the economic cost of the damage climate change will impose, and $200 per ton of emissions is consistent with several of them. But it’s also way higher than anything lawmakers here or elsewhere have considered. The Canadian province of British Columbia, for example, has a carbon tax of $27.88 per ton. When the Obama Administration estimated the price of carbon, the mid-range of their numbers was around $40 per ton.

Yet not only did the $200 per ton tax create more jobs than the “do nothing” baseline in REMI’s simulation, it created more jobs than the lower taxes did. Anywhere from 236,775 to 286,475 more jobs by 2035, to be specific.