Global Warming

Cardew

LizEstelle wrote:

Does one not get the impression that many of the people in denial about GW are the ones who might have a teensy bit to lose from possible actions to be taken against it... 4x4 owners club, costavillaowners'r'us etc etc..?

I doubt that many people are “in denial about Global Warming”. However there is scepticism about some of the reasons put forward for GW, the likely effects, and the effectiveness of the measures proposed to combat this phenomenon.

caroline1973lefty

On the issue of green taxation versus helping people to be green i have a lot of sympathy with the OP. Part of the problem is that we spend a lot of time in our deregulated country arguing about carrots and sticks, rather than just getting in there and MAKING things happen in a greener way.

In Germany, on the other hand, the government has recently committed to spending a billion pounds a year, every year for the next 20 years, to bring ALL pre-1978 houses up to super energy efficient standards. The fact that many poor people live in terribly insulated houses is the main reason why any kind of 'carbon tax' or 'carbon rationing' would currently be unfair. If we gave this kind of proper support to everybody to insulate our homes (and also improved public transport in some areas) we could raise the price of all forms of energy via tax or other mechanisms, so that it truly reflected the cost to the environment, and the cost would impact MUCH more on rich people than on poor people, so fair enough, in my view!

There are easy and equitable ways to do this , but they are not currently happening. For example we have 16m homes in the UK with cavity walls but only 6m have cavity wall insulation, even though the payback time is as little as 2-5 years - often because people just don't have the capital. We could easily regulate to MAKE developers fit insulation when they do any other work to the house - but the government has so far rejected this approach as unneccessary red tape.

Much of this I have taken from George Monbiot's book 'Heat' which is a really good read - a bit polemical in places but should convince even the die-hard climate change sceptics if they bothered to read it! (see https://www.turnuptheheat.org)

Cardew

caroline1973lefty wrote:

Much of this I have taken from George Monbiot's book 'Heat' which is a really good read - a bit polemical in places but should convince even the die-hard climate change sceptics if they bothered to read it! (see https://www.turnuptheheat.org)

Particulary scathing about B & Q and their outrageous claims about their Windsave Turbine and Solar

http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=29