Comments on: Turn down the heat!

By: CutFoldGlue

CutFoldGlue — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:10:47 +0000

Heh, awesome. Good looking and good humoured. How can the Green’s lose (lacking a bit of the ‘mongrel’, as they say?).

Annnnyway, the problem with ‘constituency’ is that TAX is a bad word. If we had a ‘low carbon user rebate’ then Middle Class White People would be a lot more receptive. Using TAX seems like a way for the government to be seen to be doing the right thing while looking good No Matter What: “Yes, we will do something about climate change, here’s a TAX. You don’t want that? Ok we’ll scrap it! w00t!”, bang! They’ve won both ways.

By: Sam Buchanan

Sam Buchanan — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 01:33:15 +0000

I got a lot out of the science side of the conference, but there was an astonishing lack of political nous at it. I found myself feeling a weird bond with Simon Upton at one point – the guy is an unashamed capitalist, but an intelligent one who knows how the political system operates. He at least understood the necessity of repeating ‘carbon tax�? over and over again.

One speaker noted that 75% of US residents want action on climate change, but that nothing will happen until regime change occurs there. Yet following speakers kept talking about the need to educate the public to “create a constituency�?, as if that was all that needs to be done – there was no thought of how to translate that constituency into political pressure.

The democracy deficit that allowed industry to wreck the carbon tax needs to be addressed, as does the demoralisation of civil society over the past 20 years. Unless something is done here, public opinion will be ignored again, as it was over GE (looking cool won’t help).

And no offence to the Young Greens, but I liked the “pro-coal�? demo better, see: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0603/S00221.htm

By: alistair

alistair — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 13:02:34 +0000

But does Cullen know what “Peak Oil” means yet?

By: Russel

Russel — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:24:56 +0000

Hodgson’s praise of the paper was effusive at the conference and we ran out of copies of the paper which was great. The conference is an excellent initiative of the Instiutute of Policy Studies and will really help change the mainstream discourse on climate change.

By: triffid

triffid — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:49:51 +0000

And respect to Jeanette for persistance. How she can keep explaining the same things and answering the same questions from people who haven’t even read the policies (but are sure they’re loony), it’s beyond me. Let’s keep dismissing everything the Greens say as fringe lunacy, and just be like frogs in a pot, slowly cooking without even noticing it.
Sorry, frog, for that image - I can’t think of a better one.

By: waymad

waymad — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:49:02 +0000

Grabbed and read the pdf: generally good, sensible stuff. hat tip should have gone to Amory Lovins in the appendix, too: a good chunk of policy is straight out of OilEndGame.com.

Couple of suggestions:

1 - another immediate fix for transport is the Clunker rebate - which is squarely aimed at removing from the fleet the worst 20% of vehicles that (Pareto lives on) produce 80% of visible emissions. Sorry that is not there.

2 - Greater emphasis on microgeneration: taking off via Whispertech.com and also referred to here http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=032706B in an Indian/Grameen context. The TCS article also notes a double win: the Stirling engine removes methane (20x worse greenhouse gas than CO2) from the feedstock.

But well done overall.

By: stuey

stuey — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 02:33:29 +0000

There is a whole special issue of Time Magazine on global warming this week at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176980,00.html

Oh, and respect to the protestors for looking cool/having good graphic design.