Are the Green Party for real??? Carbon Tax.

View

Heroditas wrote: »

Have we become sheep that we simply accept this and say it's for "the greater good"?

Presumably the Greens - rightly or wrongly - would argue that they aren't sheep dumbly accepting the current "climate change" situation and that are trying to act for "the greater good" by doing something about it.

I'd suspect that if you can provide them with the evidence that the "climate change" scenario is wrong, that they'd change their policies accordingly. They do appear to be at least mildly logical unlike many of our other politicians...

Dannyboy83

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Also, it's not even a "rural" issue. To go from Limerick to Galway by train, you have to travel at least 120 miles extra, going via Ballybrophy or Dublin. That's between two CITIES!!!

Cork-Limerick motorway has been shelved recently aswell, a bit embarrassing in 2009 tbh.:o

Heroditas

View wrote: »

I'd suspect that if you can provide them with the evidence that the "climate change" scenario is wrong, that they'd change their policies accordingly. They do appear to be at least mildly logical unlike many of our other politicians...

Jacking up the price of public transport by increasing the price of fuel is not exactly logical, particularly when they want us to travel less by car.

Diarmuid

Heroditas wrote: »

Jacking up the price of public transport by increasing the price of fuel is not exactly logical, particularly when they want us to travel less by car.

Surely you can see the problem with that logic? In Public transport the fuel increase is spread between all the customers travelling which should be a far larger number than in a car. Look at Ryanair.

Heroditas

Diarmuid wrote: »

Surely you can see the problem with that logic? In Public transport the fuel increase is spread between all the customers travelling which should be a far larger number than in a car. Look at Ryanair.

Great, let's pay more for everything!

It'll add to the cost of most goods we use - such as food. So bear that in mind when you buy your organic vegetables and see they cost more because transportation costs have increased.

Diarmuid

Heroditas wrote: »

Great, let's pay more for everything!

Welcome to your future....

Heroditas

Diarmuid wrote: »

Welcome to your future....

Correction - YOUR future too


EDIT: I think the two of us will remain at loggerheads over this!
However, what would you do with the money raised from this tax? Whatever about the merits of it and whether we're for or against it, it olooks like it'll be introduced. How would you spend it? I've read quite a few consultancy papers submitted to DCENR, I've even contributed to one of them and there are quite a few ideas floating around.

View

Heroditas wrote: »

Jacking up the price of public transport by increasing the price of fuel is not exactly logical, particularly when they want us to travel less by car.

I'd agree. Ideally in good times, we'd have been very logical about this and raised taxes on cars and used the proceeds to subsidise public transport. Then again, ideally, we'd also have planned and implemented proper public transport over the last 30 years.

Unfortunately though, we didn't do any of this and the current budgetary arithmetic precludes doing almost all of it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start somewhere.

PS When making the mildly logical comment I was contrasting them with the TD who advanced the argument that people needed a few drinks to steady their nerves before facing the difficult task of driving home from the pub.

Diarmuid

Heroditas wrote: »

Correction - YOUR future too

Of course. I don't doubt it. I am making adjustments to my life accordingly though.

Heroditas wrote: »

However, what would you do with the money raised from this tax?

Well I would think the sensible thing would be to put it into either funding education or some sort of startup enterprise. I don't like the idea of ear-marking it for "green economy". Who's going to decide what is the best "green" businesses to support? Some FF minister? Even some Green minister. No thanks.. Best to try and encourage Irish people to setup whatever businesses they can and foster that....

Diarmuid

View wrote: »

I'd agree. Ideally in good times, we'd have been very logical about this and raised taxes on cars and used the proceeds to subsidise public transport. .

We have been subsidising public transport for years. But making a balls of it. Again

Heroditas

Diarmuid wrote: »

I don't like the idea of ear-marking it for "green economy". Who's going to decide what is the best "green" businesses to support? Some FF minister? Even some Green minister. No thanks.. Best to try and encourage Irish people to setup whatever businesses they can and foster that....

Google NEERP - and you'll see what some want to do with the money!

Diarmuid

Heroditas wrote: »

Google NEERP - and you'll see what some want to do with the money!

Deviant Art?

Heroditas

Diarmuid wrote: »

Deviant Art?

Ummm no!

Click the "pages from Ireland" tab. It'll be the first search result - IIEA Media Briefing

crocro

The Monkey Pump wrote: »

Funnily enough, it was Richard Tol on Wednesday's morning Ireland who agreed that electricity would be caught under the remit of a carbon tax.

I can't hear him saying this and I've just listened again. Are you sure?
http://www.rte.ie/news/morningireland/player.html?20091028,2637522,2637536,real,209

Have you any info to back up this, I would be interested in getting a breakdown of the costs pre serve of rural versus urban areas.

ESB's published policy on its website is to charge customers 50% of cost for connection charge. The more isolated the location being connected, the larger the shortfall that the company must make up as more poles and more wire will be needed and the engineers will have to travel a longer distance.

The CER determines pricing for the ESB but has to have regard to section 9 of
the Electricity Regulation Act, 1999 that requires the ESB to ' to take account of the needs of rural customers'. Presumably this need is the need to pay less than market price for supply.

Everything associated with electricity supply costs more for dispersed dwellings: connection, transmission, distribution, meter reading...

I would doubt very much that Mayo regional doesn't have the numbers to justify specialists, I would also think that the comment re; unattractiveness is a generalisation, many people move to rural locations for quality of life reasons. Agian I would be interest in seeing information on surgical outcomes and mortality rates for urban hospitals versus rural, I would be interested in seeing average waiting times for surgical procedures also.

My point was that dispersed populations can only support relatively small local hospitals and small local hospitals have less specialist medical care. Any recruitment consultant will tell you that it's harder to source top staff for remote locations. If the salary is the same for a popular location compare to the salary for an isolated location, then you will have a lower quality of applicant on average applying to the isolated location.

Mayo general hospital may be a great or a terrible hospital. I don't know. It's just one hospital and maybe it's the exception that proves the rule. The HSE rate it as the worst hospital in the country for the metrics tracked by their HealthStat program.

Scholls are funded by way of a capitation grant.

Schools are also funded with capital grants and by paying teachers' salaries. Teachers with small pupil-teacher ratios are paid the same as those who teach full classes. In this way, parents of students at regular schools subsidise the parents of children at very small schools.

The grant for travel to school is means tested. I do not recieve any subsidy

means tested or not, the grant is a subsidy for people who live far from school paid for by people who live close to school.

Minutes? I doubt it very much, there are more Gardai per capita in urban areas, this being so, does the rural dweller not subsidise the urban?

You might be right here. The garda crime stats are utterly unbelievable with various categories of crimes swinging by huge %s from one year to the next in each direction. Their regional boundaries don't follow local authority boundaries. So it's hard to draw any conclusion from them. I think you're right though that there are fewer police per capita in rural areas.

One massive area I neglected to mention is social welfare. CSO stats show every year that rural dwellers draw more welfare than urban dwellers. There are fewer jobs and the age distribution is more weighted towards the retired.

Now we have the rural broadband scheme. A system whereby the state takes the tax revenues from the cities and uses it to provide porno to the sticks.

The funniest aspect is that the average rural dweller genuinely believes he gets nothing from the state for his taxes.

The move to the countryside over the past 40 years in Ireland has been one long process of private individuals externalising the costs of their choice of lifestyle on those left in the villages, towns and cities. by moving to the countryside you can live in a bigger house than you could afford if you lived near to other human beings. Somebody else can they pay the increased cost to the state of delivering services to you and your family.

ei.sdraob

crocro wrote: »

Somebody else can they pay the increased cost to the state of delivering services to you and your family.

if you cant beat them join them? ehhh??

View

Diarmuid wrote: »

We have been subsidising public transport for years. But making a balls of it. Again

I should have said subsidise it more.

Yes, public transport is a mess here but that is largely because of political (lack of) decisions. Firstly, the total failure to reform the existing public transport systems that we have (It is easier not to clash with the entrenched interests in CIE). Secondly, the total failure to plan for and implement a proper public transport system (again because someone somewhere will be upset when the new rail line/ bus route goes down their road - think of all the complaining that went on with the LUAS and which forced the cancellation of the 2 lines being linked together in Dublin City centre). Thirdly, we tend to build first, then think of putting in public transport (and other facilities) long afterwards.

The result of this is that the default transport option for most people is the car hence adding to the existing problem. The only way that will be changed is when the politicans see people want a solution to this mess and are prepared to vote for parties and politicans that back such solutions. The default option in politics is to "Do nothing" as that way you don't alienate any voters...

Diarmuid

View wrote: »

I should have said subsidise it more.

Yes, public transport is a mess here but that is largely because of political (lack of) decisions. Firstly, the total failure to reform the existing public transport systems that we have (It is easier not to clash with the entrenched interests in CIE). Secondly, the total failure to plan for and implement a proper public transport system (again because someone somewhere will be upset when the new rail line/ bus route goes down their road - think of all the complaining that went on with the LUAS and which forced the cancellation of the 2 lines being linked together in Dublin City centre). Thirdly, we tend to build first, then think of putting in public transport (and other facilities) long afterwards.

But then you would agree that you need to reform what you currently have before you subsidise more?Otherwise you are just throwing good money after bad.

Dublin Bus is a poster boy of why subsidising a monopoly is a bad idea.

View

Diarmuid wrote: »

But then you would agree that you need to reform what you currently have before you subsidise more?Otherwise you are just throwing good money after bad.

Dublin Bus is a poster boy of why subsidising a monopoly is a bad idea.

I'd agree that public transport needs to be subsidised. I also believe in reform of the system.

Ideally, a regulator needs to licence transport operators provided they adhere to specified standards as to the quality of the public transport. Possibly that should included standards on the quantity of the services, altough I'd ideally like to see some local governmental control on the matter (i.e. the relevant local government proposes a service of frequency X on route Y or something like that).

I don't care which companies (or company) provides the public transport nor how they are owned provided they meet the relevant standards. I don't mind which order the reform/subsidies happen just so long as they BOTH happen (i.e. no half-assed efforts).

crocro

ei.sdraob wrote: »

if you cant beat them join them? ehhh??

I would but I don't like living in the countryside. Too lonely for me.

I like this new septic tank tax. NCT for toilets.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/440000-must-buy-septic-tank-licence--gormley-1929083.html

ei.sdraob

crocro wrote: »

I would but I don't like living in the countryside. Too lonely for me.

I like this new septic tank tax. NCT for toilets.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/440000-must-buy-septic-tank-licence--gormley-1929083.html

interesting

the greens really do hate rural dwellers

NewDubliner

View wrote: »

I'd agree that public transport needs to be subsidised.

But only if it encourages economically and environmentally sustainable lifestyle choices.

Long-distance car commuters and inhabitants of oe-off houses in the countryside should simply be penalised with congestion charging and parking costs.

Carbon taxes are a scam, heres why

Currently CO2 levels are approx 375ppm
During the Ordovician period the CO2 levels were 4200ppm yet the earths temp is estimated to be only 2c above "norm". I really want this answered! Why have we been told that 450ppm - ten times less will lead to runaway warming and that a 5c increase will be "lights out" by Al Gore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician

Recent studies have purported to show a closer correspondence between reconstructed Phanerozoic records of cosmic ray flux and temperature than between CO2 and temperature. The role of the greenhouse gas CO2 in controlling global temperatures has therefore been questioned. Here we review the geologic records of CO2 and glaciations and find that CO2 was low (<500 ppm) during periods of long-lived and widespread continental glaciations and high (>1000 ppm) during other, warmer periods. The CO2 record is likely robust because independent proxy records are highly correlated with CO2 predictions from geochemical models. The Phanerozoic sea surface temperature record as inferred from shallow marine carbonate δ18O values has been used to quantitatively test the importance of potential climate forcings, but it fails several first-order tests relative to more well-established paleoclimatic indicators: both the early Paleozoic and Mesozoic are calculated to have been too cold for too long. We explore the possible influence of seawater pH on the δ18O record and find that a pH-corrected record matches the glacial record much better. Periodic fluctuations in the cosmic ray flux may be of some climatic significance, but are likely of second-order importance on a multimillion-year timescale.

CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate
http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=1052-5173&volume=014&issue=03&page=0004&ct=1

http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=display-figures&name=i1052-5173-14-3-4-f01
http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=display-figures&name=i1052-5173-14-3-4-f02

More info on the Ordovician era
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1995/94JD02521.shtml
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

View

NewDubliner wrote: »

But only if it encourages economically and environmentally sustainable lifestyle choices.

Long-distance car commuters and inhabitants of oe-off houses in the countryside should simply be penalised with congestion charging and parking costs.

Well, the idea is ultimately to encourage people to make those better lifestyle choices.

I don't agree that we should start off with the deliberate intention of penalising anyone - there is no faster way to create massive opposition to a proposal than the idea it has been thought up to "get" someone. After all, if you are the someone that is being deliberately "got at", you'll be on the streets protesting about it.

For instance, there is a current tax break for commuters. I'd like to see that extended to encourage everyone to use public transport at some stage during the year. For instance, every year you get a tax credit to use against the cost of public transport. A commuter can use it to offset the cost of their commuter tickets. A remote rural resident with a poor public transport system could use it to offset the cost of a couple of trips by rail or inter-city bus (in effect making the trips "free"). The only people who wouldn't get the tax credit benefit are people who refuse to travel by public transport (and there are people who refuse almost on principle). And, before the idea generates a torrent of abuse, remember it is no worse than most of the property based tax breaks that we had for years...

Diarmuid

Deleted User wrote: »

Carbon taxes are a scam, heres why

Currently CO2 levels are approx 375ppm
During the Ordovician period the CO2 levels were 4200ppm yet the earths temp is estimated to be only 2c above "norm". I really want this answered! Why have we been told that 450ppm - ten times less will lead to runaway warming and that a 5c increase will be "lights out" by Al Gore

Well don't just sit there, forward your post to these guys and let them know where they have been going wrong

NewDubliner

View wrote: »

A remote rural resident with a poor public transport system could use it to offset the cost of a couple of trips by rail or inter-city bus (in effect making the trips "free").

This just reinforces an uneconomic and unsustainable lifestyle. Rural dwellers don't need better (subsidised) public transport. They need to realise that they're living in the wrong place relative to their needs.

With the government in effective control of the property market, we can incentivise people to abandon their one-off dwellings and move to urban areas that are cheaper to service.

Only people who work in the countryside should live there.

ei.sdraob

NewDubliner wrote: »

This just reinforces an uneconomic and unsustainable lifestyle. Rural dwellers don't need better (subsidised) public transport. They need to realise that they're living in the wrong place relative to their needs.

With the government in effective control of the property market, we can incentivise people to abandon their one-off dwellings and move to urban areas that are cheaper to service.

Only people who work in the countryside should live there.

:rolleyes: Stalin is that thou?

View

NewDubliner wrote: »

This just reinforces an uneconomic and unsustainable lifestyle. Rural dwellers don't need better (subsidised) public transport. They need to realise that they're living in the wrong place relative to their needs.

With the government in effective control of the property market, we can incentivise people to abandon their one-off dwellings and move to urban areas that are cheaper to service.

Only people who work in the countryside should live there.

As I mentioned previously, there is no surer way to create massive opposition to a proposal than to convince people that they are being deliberately "got at".

You would, I hope, accept that our current system is less than ideal. Of course, it would be great if we could implement a "big bang" solution where we go from our less than ideal situation to the perfect solution in one go. That is not going to happen though - there is too much potential opposition for that to be realistic. Hence, the only way to change the system is to do it on a step-by-step basis.

The choice - in practice - boils down to doing it in small steps or no steps (as the opposition kills the idea dead).

I personally believe that the more people who want improvements to our public transport, the more likely this is to happen. Hence, the idea behind my suggestion is to get more people onto public transport in the first place. I want to see a pressure group, such as "Barristers for better buses"!

PS By improving public transport in rural areas, you make rural towns and villages more attractive places for people in the countryside to live in. Hence, you encourage people to choose to live in towns and villages rather than in remoter areas. That in turn makes these towns and villages more sustainable and encourages more investment in these towns and villages.

Diarmuid

Diarmuid wrote: »

Well don't just sit there, forward your post to these guys and let them know where they have been going wrong

Do you believe them unquestioningly? Recently here in Ireland people failed to question the property bubble and many other things through history.

Try and find some research papers written by those very scientists that explain prehistoric CO2 levels and the corresponding temperatures. There arent many and none are conclusive.

NewDubliner

View wrote: »

APS By improving public transport in rural areas, you make rural towns and villages more attractive places for people in the countryside to live in. Hence, you encourage people to choose to live in towns and villages rather than in remoter areas. That in turn makes these towns and villages more sustainable and encourages more investment in these towns and villages.

The fuding for this should come from the towns and villages themselves or the state will be sucked into maintaining unviable locales.

Liam Byrne

NewDubliner wrote: »

This just reinforces an uneconomic and unsustainable lifestyle. Rural dwellers don't need better (subsidised) public transport. They need to realise that they're living in the wrong place relative to their needs.

With the government in effective control of the property market, we can incentivise people to abandon their one-off dwellings and move to urban areas that are cheaper to service.

Only people who work in the countryside should live there.

So you want to make the M50 what, 20 lanes wide ?

Rural living is fine by most people, thanks; not everyone wants to live in a rat-race, high-rise apartment.

Plus, of course, you're ignoring the many, many people who raise their own chickens and eggs, or grow their own veg; this type of self-sufficiency means that there are less transport costs and carbon footprints for transport of these from rural to these utopian cities that you're proposing.