The Political Thread

[TordelBack]

...all the while regretting that San Fansisco cocktail imbibed too late, far too late last night[/i]

Away with your pretence of urbanity, you're still just a rock nerd.

[The Legendary Shark]

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910084259.htm

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Another view on oil and natural gas formation.

[Theblazeuk]

I think ultimately all anyone is trying to say is that the counter-argument to the established theory is in this case, very badly constructed and misrepresents what it should be directly engaged with.

And that conspiracies exist is undeniable. However they are very limited in scope in my opinion. The ultimate conspiracy is self-interest and it requires no shadowy cabal for its hegemony to be perpetuated.

However the conspiracy at work in climate change is surely the people opposing the idea that human activity can drive climate change. Follow the money. Which approach will make more money for the existing system...

[The Legendary Shark]

Which approach will make more money for the system?

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Carbon taxes, which throw a thin veil of "doing something" over the problems. These taxes (which, needs must, mainly go towards paying off un-payoffable government debts in richer countries and push the poorer ones deeper still into debt) are meant to convince us that something is being done about CO2 whilst oil continues to be pumped, deforestation rampages ahead, industrial and military pollution increases daily and improper water management and overfarming encourages desertification and droughts.

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So, balance the cost of cleaning up our act properly (which would eat significantly into the profits of the. "Elites") against inventing a carbon tax (from which the "Elites" can and do make billions) and I think that answers, or at least part answers, your question from my perspective.

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Strategies like carbon taxes generally arise from completely illegal gatherings like Bilderberg - which was, of course, dismissed for decades as a "conspiracy theory". A conspiracy isn't necessarily a bunch of evil tycoons in a dimly lit bunker somewhere - often it's just a mindset or general strategy amongst the "Elites", who push that mindset down through their businesses, organisations or governments so that it fetches up in our lives from several directions at once, giving the impression of a consensus or tightly controlled conspiracy.

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Follow the money indeed - have a look at how much Al Gore has made out of climate change, for example.

[GordonR]

Estimated worth of Al Gore - about $200 million. Which will include his diverse business interests, salaries raked in from a career at the top end of US politics (congressman, senator, vice-president) and the fact that he comes from a wealthy family to start with.

Confirmed third quarter profits reported by Exxon, October 2013 - $7.87 billion.

That's one oil's company's profits, in one quarter.

If you're following the money, then whose front door does it lead you to - the people saying climate change is man-made, real and happening (99.9999% of them nowhere near as wealthy as Al Gore), or the people with a vast and vested financial interest in denying all of this?

[Theblazeuk]

Carbon taxes, which throw a thin veil of "doing something" over the problems

Indeed and are widely criticised for those reasons. However I'm not seeing where carbon taxes are intrinsically linked to the concept of human pollution causing/exacerbating climate change.

Carbon taxes are intended to be a stimulus for alternative technology and decreasing pollution, not a solution in and of themselves. That the vast private interests of existing technology/resource exploitation groups are fighting both carbon taxes and the concept of climate change itself should be telling - that they however continue to pay them rather than alter their strategy even more so.

[The Legendary Shark]

Even though he has less money than Exxon, in 2012 Al gore was worth 50 times more than when he was vice president.  m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1961299

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In theory, a Carbon Tax is fine - you take a small fee for every tree felled and use that money to plant more trees and fund forestry research and whatnot. That would work fine if the world was using real money like gold, silver or properly backed currency - but we ain't.

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I know everyone gets ticked off at me for going on about it but our current global monetary system is at the heart of so many of our problems, including this one.

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Because we don't use money but fiat currency, this has a toxic effect on all kinds of things. So, your governments are getting deeper and deeper into debt to the banks (who create that debt out of nothing and list it as an asset against which they can issue even more debt to you and me) and need to cut more services, raise taxes and borrow a little bit more every more every week. Government debts can never truly be paid off (even if HMG paid off all it's debts tomorrow, it would still have to borrow money in the future), especially with compound interest.

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At this point, it doesn't matter what's driving climate change - a Carbon Tax presents a great opportunity to raise revenues locally with green taxes and charges (which the energy companies kindly pass on to us) to try and get the debt down a bit - and who could blame them for trying?

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So under the current system, you charge a small fee for every tree felled and use that fee for two things: First, it goes into paying the Impossible Debt and second, the fees raised from the tree-felling serve as *collateral* against which to borrow *more* privately created bank debt *at interest* to pay for the Green Projects they promised us in return. That debt is turned into credits and coins by the BoE and then filtered down through government departments, corporations, managers, secretaries, under-managers, under-secretaries, advisors, experts, workers, buildings, equipment and utilities and at the end of it, if there's enough left, you might end up with a few windmills and some solar-powered LCD streetlights and maybe a bit of research into alternative energy sources (except geomagnetic energy transfer or alternate oil formation theories, it seems - I'd have thought they might be worth a couple of million, just on the off-chance).

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The Carbon Tax, then, fails spectacularly in two ways. First, governments won't be able to borrow money for green projects without green taxes - and because the money they intend to borrow for their Green Projects will bear interest, they'll need *more* trees to be cut down every year. If climate change is man-made, the Carbon Tax here exacerbates the problem. Secondly, as every penny in circulation has to be paid back (ten times over by now, I shouldn't wonder), tax rises, charges and cuts are inevitable. Everything becomes more expensive to compensate (inflation) meaning that more money is needed in the economy (growth). With prices so high, vehicle and factory maintenance standards fall and pollution (and man-made climate change, if you believe in that sort of thing) increases. Double-whammy for the Carbon Tax - it does precisely the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

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Now, if we could convince our governments to grow a pair and take back control of the money supply I'd be all for a Carbon Tax - anything that'll get us to clean up our act.

[Theblazeuk]

I'm still not seeing where carbon taxes are intrinsically linked to the concept of human pollution causing/exacerbating climate change.

[The Legendary Shark]

Hmm, not sure how much more clearly I can put it. Maybe I've confused things with the tree-felling example.

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Let me try to explain the principal by presenting a vastly simplified model. Let's imagine that there is only one forest in the world and that it contains 100,000 trees. The only source of wood, the forest has been losing trees to humans for a long time but the tree population has remained fairly constant at 100,000 for a long time.

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As human numbers and activity increase, more and more wood is needed until tree numbers begin to decline.

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It is then discovered that 1,000 trees have been lost from the forest and that the temperature of the world has increased by 0.05 degrees. Correlations are made and research done and it is discovered that for every tree lost the temperature of the world increases by 0.00005 degrees (*I know this isn't how it works in practice, it's just a simplified example*).

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To tackle this problem it is decided that a Chopping Tax will be raised to discourage excess tree felling and to pay for repairing past damage etc. So far so good.

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In this simple world with only one forest let us now imagine that there is only one government and only one bank and that the bank long ago convinced the government that, as a bank, only it was qualified to create and control the money supply.

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Having identified the problem, the government approaches the bank for further loans in order to rectify it. The bank points out that the government is already in debt for all those hospitals and roads it borrowed money to build and wants to know how this new loan will be paid for. The government securitizes the loan on future taxes from tree felling - turning the forest into a monetized asset. The bank agrees the loan and the Chopping Tax is levied on the lumberjack.

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Now, for every tree felled the government charges a fee allowing two saplings to be planted. Simple, right?

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Well, not quite. The lumberjack cuts down the first taxable tree and pays his fee to the government through the new Chopping Tax. That first payment goes in to paying the government's *existing* debt but, on the strength of it, the bank agrees to create enough money for two saplings to be planted and lends it to the government, which plants two saplings. Great - it's working!

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But the government is now faced with a dilemma. In order for the initial loan to be repaid, the government needs to keep gathering the Chopping Tax and, because of interest, raise the tax. The lumberjack grumbles at the rising prices but cuts down another tree and pays the higher tax, which the government uses as before - to pay towards previous debts and as "proof of income" to secure new ones. As this process continues it becomes more and more expensive to fell trees and this cost is passed on to the rest of society - which is already struggling to keep up the government's existing loan repayments.

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A vicious circle emerges whereby the *need to repay the government's debt* overtakes the imperative of replenishing the forest. Compound interest pushes the debt ever deeper, requires even more trees to be felled (with all the concomitant energy and resource usage) at higher and higher rates of tax until the price of wood is at an all-time high whilst never having been more abundant.

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At some point, it will become too expensive for the lumberjack to continue his business legally and so he'll either quit or go black market. By this time, there will also be a lot of unregulated tree felling by black marketeers and the poor who can't afford 'proper' wood.

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It's the *interest* the bank charges that's the killer, for even though saplings have been planted the interest must come from somewhere - which means a little extra work done, a little more energy expended and a little more wood used up every time. This Chopping Tax system is doomed to either collapse long before the original 1,000 trees have been replaced or to consume the entire forest and be forced to start feeding on the saplings.

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Let us now imagine a very slight change in our fictional world. The initial problem has just been discovered and, again, it is decided that the Chopping Tax is the best solution. The lumberjack chops down his first taxable tree and the government collects the money.

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Crucially, though, in this world the government creates its own money out of nothing and spends or lends it into society at zero interest using the banks as distributors. The government then takes the lumberjack's tax payment and plants two saplings with it. Job done - there's nobody to pay back, no interest to find and no pressing need to cut down another tree until it's needed - at which time the Chopping Tax (which, having nothing driving the cost up) will again pay for planting two new saplings and so on until the job is done without becoming mired in artificial debt.

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The Chopping Tax, like the Carbon and Green Taxes, would work very well in the second world but in the first can only make things worse. This is what these taxes are doing to our world - but on a massive scale. They are not only counterproductive but dangerous.

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In theory Carbon Taxes may be about saving the planet, and so are they enthusiastically touted by cash-strapped governments all over the world, but in practice they are all about making a profit. This is why I'm totally opposed to all taxes in their current form - because they make everyone work harder and consume more resources to pay back that interest. That's wasted work, wasted resources, wasted time - all to pay private banks for the privilege of using money they created out of nothing. It's monstrous.

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And that's how carbon taxes exacerbate the problem.

[Professor Bear]

I imagine this petition to limit MP pay rises will be ignored, so there's no point signing it.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-stop-the-11-pay-rise-for-mps-salaries

[Old Tankie]

How can six and a half billion people not affect the climate?  Whether the effects will be as bad as some predict, I'm not so sure and, to be totally honest, I couldn't give a toss what happens to the planet, in 500, or 5,000, or 5 million years time!  Yeah, go on, call me selfish!!!

[COMMANDO FORCES]

See how far ahead the Tories where when they helped to close those polluting mines. All hail Maggie and her Green policies

[TordelBack]

Whether the effects will be as bad as some predict, I'm not so sure and, to be totally honest, I couldn't give a toss what happens to the planet, in 500, or 5,000, or 5 million years time!  Yeah, go on, call me selfish!!!

I'm just thrilled you have a vote.   


More seriously we're also talking about serious effects in whatever is left of our lifetimes, not 500 years down the line.  And population's 7.1 billion right now, and it'll be 11 billion before we top out in 80 years or so.

[Professor Bear]

I'm actively hoping for disastrous environmental collapse - the future has already disappointed me in not delivering jetpacks, domed cities on the moon and laser handguns, but if we all pull together we might just get to live in Mad Max times.  Plus our government is now advocating concentration camps for unemployed families and you know what?  I am all for it - that is our government so we clearly deserve everything we get and if it ever goes to a vote, I am voting in favor.  We've had our chance and the sooner the slate gets wiped clean the sooner the cockroaches can make a start.

[Richmond Clements]

I liked how Thatcher helped the prosthetics industry by sending all those soldiers to get injured in the Falklands too.


Oh, almost forgot: