Green Fascism
By Repair Man Jack Posted in Energy — Comments (14) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
A scheme recently proposed by British MP Tim Yeo shows what would happen to individual freedom if the environmentalist agenda on CO2 ever got enacted into law. This bill establishes a state-run British Carbon Cartel via the mechanism described below.
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card. The scheme would cover road fuel, flights and energy bills. Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked.
A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another 1kg. When paying for petrol, the card would need to swiped at the till. It would be a legal offence to buy petrol without using a card.
When paying online, or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly.
Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits. Trading would be done through specialist companies. - The Daily Mail (10/28/2008)
On the surface, the scheme appears to have certain merits. People choose how they use their carbon credits, and could even have the option of collecting them and trading them with their friends. It would even offer people the chance to manage their accounts online.
However, if we are resourceful, we can already do a lot of these things now. The extent to which there is any real choice involved only depends upon the forbearance of the government. The range of consumer choices under the carbon cap is controlled by the size of the available accounts and the cost meters associated with CO2 usage. The tighter the limits that get enforced on accounts and the higher the per unit consumption costs go; the more rapidly any viable set of options goes away.
This action would establish an energy cartel so powerful that OPEC would look like a basket full of sleepy kittens by comparison. It does so by making petrol sales illicit without a special government currency, amenable to electronic tracking. The government establishes a system by which they have ultimate control over who can legally enter or leave the market.
This gives politicians and ward-healers a power to wreck mischief with minimal consequences, at best. The profits of petrol operators, friendly with public officials, can then be set obliquely by the very office holders these petrol companies bankroll into the House of Commons. By slightly altering the cost ratios available under the plan, the disingenuous MP can force significant business in the direction of some of their buddies. This process is what Ayn Rand described as an Aristocracy of Pull.
aristocracy of pull - a new group of powerful men who have reached their status not by means of talent or initiative, but by means of political connections.
This problem grows even more pronounced with the de facto monopoly that gets granted to the aforementioned specialist companies who would receive The Crown’s mandate to make markets in these credits. These companies would derive their profits from their ability to charge customers for every transaction conducted against their account in the same manner stock brokerages or savings banks do in the United States. Thus would take money the consumers would want or need to use for fuels and transport, and transfer the wealth to an unproductive market maker.
These specialist market-makers differ from securities dealers, real-estate brokers and other analogous sales personnel in the sense that an honorable broker will find you buying opportunities that you may not have known existed. They help you move assets from a less profitable use to a better one. A hard-working, competent loan officer or realtor makes you money by telling you things that you didn't know about before, and thereby justifies a reasonable rake-off on the transaction.
These specialist companies would charge British subjects money for a service that the British Parliament was sanctioning them to use against their will and best interest. Former British Colonist Samuel Adams would have seen through this scheme in a heart beat. MP Yeo should google “taxation without representation” on the internet and ask himself how that worked out for Parliament the last time they tried it.
More importantly, politicians in the United States, and those of us who live under them, need to heed this as a wake-up call. This grab for power, not the preservation of the Earth’s environment, is what the environmentalist political lobbies in Great Britain, and in The United States, are truly after.
Giving the government control over the most vital commodities in the modern economy will empower despotic Totalism regardless of how many elections are held, and regardless of which party wins office. MP Tim Yeo votes with the Tories and probably considers himself a card-carrying Conservative Parliamentarian.
The government that can dominate the entire economy, quite simply put, will choose to do so. Our job as American voters is to pressure both John McCain and Barack Obama into foregoing schemes to amass central power in the false name environmental activism.
There is a book on this subject that is just coming out. I definitely intend to read it. Blue Planet in Green Shackles
Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business … frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise.Ronald Reagan
Here's a thought that our party's presumptive nominee has regretably not come up with yet. If a politician could sever the incestuous relationship between environmental activism and central control, that politician could genuinely make our nation a cleaner and better place without making it less free.
At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.
I will take part to show my opposition.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/compliance/showArticle.jh...
This is funny as well. Find out when you should DIE!!! to save the planet.
At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card.
Wow - what a horrible idea. There is only one realistic way to address climate change, and that is to invest directly in the development of new technologies. Be it new taxes or contrived CO2 accounting schemes, these indirect methods are flawed in more ways then one. Compared to subsidized R&D, these left-wing schemes are less cost-effective and efficient mechanisms that will eventually backfire by causing a consumer backlash.
"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921
A concerted effort to shut down the NIMBY movements aimed at nuclear, hydroelectric and wind power would accomplish a lot of this w/o government intervention or the confiscation of private resources.
If gas really does hit $6 or $7 a gallon, people will start looking elsewhere. Prevent restaraint in trade tactics against these new technologies, and they will become increasingly profitable as the rest of the world demands more and more fossil fuels.
At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.
God's getting a good laugh watching all this baloney.
Tim Schieferecke
...just so we could see all the lear-jet limosine liberals resist and bend and break the rules and their "do as I say not as I do" attitude would be on full display.
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”
Admittedly, I has a soft spot for Moussalini (sp?) in my early teen years. At least the Italians knew what they were voting for when they elected him.
Propaganda, it seems, knows no century. Nowadays its peer-propoganda, vis-a-vis the MSM and our elementary and schools of "higher" education turning the masses' minds into mush.
The Dems have their "loyalty" cards that some have to recite an oath to, in order to vote in their precious Democrat primaries... now this b.s. from the UK?!?
Thank goodness for silver linings such as the newly elected Conservative London Mayor, eh?
Cross-posted 'cus it needs to be:
www.redstate.com/blogs/hammer2008/2008/may/28/freedom_or_neo_marxism_cli...
Volunteer
"The thing that is so jaw-dropping to me about the Cap'n Trade/Carbon Credit scam is that it is just that - an easliy recognizable scam. It is a wholey contrived method to separate a person from their liberty and treasue based on trading for something that has absolutley NO intrinsic value and contributes no value to the end product."
Seems we are all in agreement on this. Problem, in my opine, is that the Legislation, here and in Britain, continues apace. The tide is running hard and strong to affect these type of controls on the populace. We are diverted by the primary mess, fed daily pap from the Drive By Media, yet the behind the scenes money folks have the accelerator at full throttle. What scares me, is the agenda list the Left has, is being implemented as we watch the TV.
We all know, Mr. O. is a tool of the Left. He is being handled well and ably to the Oval Office. The Media has come out strong for the Left Agenda. The Left now has no need for street demos, as they are sitting on the conference tables of the elite. Thier organization has come to maturity. It infuriates me to think the populace has just sat there, including me, and let this get this far.
If we, the populace that makes this USA actaully run, let these Left Activists and agenda implementers into the Oval Office and sit on the sofa, we deserve the results.
end
Here in the UK the Governemnt is incabable of getting an IT project delivered so all they'd achieve is to waste a few bn before gving up. And this plan is so daft it won't even get that far.
There's an amusing write up in The Register today
The UK has seriously gone over the edge regarding Green Rule. I kept thinking about Victory Gin as I was reading this.
As you clearly point out, environmental issues (real and imagined) are being used as the justification for Green Oppression. [As an aside, since the Gaians worship the planet, can this not be likened to a jihad or crusade? If this was Biblical position used to get control of people and force obiesence to a religious doctrine, you can bet the 'Separation' issue would be raised. Why not here?]
The thing that is so jaw-dropping to me about the Cap'n Trade/Carbon Credit scam is that it is just that - an easliy recognizable scam. It is a wholey contrived method to separate a person from their liberty and treasue based on trading for something that has absolutley NO intrinsic value and contributes no value to the end product.
Furthermore, why should I (forced under penalty of law) pay some beaureacrat to burn a log (which I cut and owned) in my woodstove? Why should I pay some corrupt UN diploweasel to be able to fly to Texas to see my family? Why should my company be forced to raise the price of goods sold to our customers to purchase an unused carbon credit from a company too uncompetetive to use thier full energy alotment? [Another aside - talk about empowering the weak! I thought these eviros worshiped at the alter of darwin. Why should a company that does not use resources fully be artificailly compensated for thier lack of competitivness? Oh yeah, welfare...]. All of these payments were rewards for adding value to the economy - the 'fees' are a pure drain on the economy.
The West is dying in a long painful suicide. We have lost our ability to reason and sense of proportion all the while we revel in denial.
At some point the naked monarchy and the clear seeing peasant will come to blows.