Bush rules out support for climate deal!!!

Nuttzz

SkepticOne wrote:

Just because the US is not doing its bit doesn't mean we should not do ours.

I have no problem with reduced emiisions, but again I'll say it, why should the irish taxpayer fork out €€€€€€ for carbon emission trading when the US wont. I would love to see more RE used (Ive signed up for airtricty for example) but why should we make traders etc richer while the US ignores the kyoto treaty?

Boggle

But what's the best way to get both public and private industry to put significant research into these solutions? I would imagine international treaties and hefty fines for exceeding limits on carbon emissions are a very effective way to stimulate this research.

Hefty fines will not effect the way companies carry out their business as they are already looking to streamline their energy consumption in order toi reduce the factory cost. How is an added fine going to help? They'll just heave anchor and pull back to a non-Kyoto country.

It lies in both.

There are new engines in the latest (or coming) generation of some American cars which can run on less cylinders when power isn't needed. So the car will still have its big engine, with all those horses ready to push at need....btu when they're not nedeed the car will run on fewer. So a V8 can run as a V6, or even a V4.

Here is an interesting point. There are people here critisising Bush on his energy policy and yet they are ignoring how our own govt is blatantly ignoring the treaty that they signed so readily. How else would you explain the fact that there is a more economic car available (the Prius in this case), yet there is no incentive for the people to buy one?
Does this not indicate that OUR govt doesn't care??

bonkey

Nuttzz wrote:

why should the irish taxpayer fork out €€€€€€ for carbon emission trading when the US wont.

Why shouldn't we?

Our recycling, car efficiency, and I daresay a myriad other factors regarding our ecological friendliness are better than the US's at present.

Should we just stop with all of this, on the grounds that refusing to stay in with the "let our kids sort it out, cause we want the money dammit" crowd in these regards also places us at an economic disadvantage?

Funny...I always thought the argument behind environmentalism wasn't financial.

jc

bonkey

Boggle wrote:

There are people here critisising Bush on his energy policy and yet they are ignoring how our own govt is blatantly ignoring the treaty that they signed so readily.

Are they? There's large moves to meet our growing energy demands with renewable and clean energy sources, for a start.

How else would you explain the fact that there is a more economic car available (the Prius in this case), yet there is no incentive for the people to buy one? Does this not indicate that OUR govt doesn't care??

There is an incentive to buy one. Its called a lower fuel bill over a car of comparative price. Its the same type of incentive there's been for decades to buy lagging jackets for your hot water tank, or energy-saving lightbulbs.

Now, it could be argued that the government could invest in additional incentives, but to do that, you'd have to work out how much its worth.

Its easy to say that our government should do more to make these vehicles attractive, but the simple truth is that it simply may not be cost-effective to do so. If it will cost more money to fund the upkeep of Prius-type vehicles than it will to pay the carbon-tax if we don't....is it still a good idea? If not...then do we know our government are being irresponsible, or do we just assume it? Has anyone worked out what our government should be funding into this as a cost-effective return on investment?

And lets not forget that until Russia signed on board, Kyoto wasn't binding. So we had a choice of implementing it early, and risking the cost of that implementation for no economic benefit were Kyoto to die with the Russians. or we could do as we did, and wait until we knew (or were more sure) that it would come into force, and then see what we could do.

Would ppl have been praising our govt. if it had spent billions on cutting emissions etc. only to have Kyoto never come into force, thus removing the reason for those billions being spent? Given that its the economic aspect of environmental change that ppl seem to be focussing on, I would suggest the answer can only be no for many.

The most important lesson, IMHO, that Kyoto has made clear to the signed-up nations is that change takes time. (well, I'm not sure its been learned, and positive its so obvious it shouldn't have needed to be made clear) Momentum especially takes time to build. The only nations remotely close (that I'm aware of) to meeting their agreements are the ones who didn't wait for Kyoto to gain enough signatures, but who decided they were going to do it anyway, regardless of whether it survived or fell as an agreement.

Funnily, as we sit here today, with people arguing to the effect of "why should we do this when the US won't sign up", I would posit that in a handful (or two) of years, we'll be sitting looking at the early-adopters and asking why our government let us down so badly by waiting so long to actually start doing anything.

jc

SkepticOne

Nuttzz wrote:

I have no problem with reduced emiisions, but again I'll say it, why should the irish taxpayer fork out €€€€€€ for carbon emission trading when the US wont. I would love to see more RE used (Ive signed up for airtricty for example) but why should we make traders etc richer while the US ignores the kyoto treaty?

We should not be paying other countries. We should be cutting our emissions. My point is that just because the US does not feel the need to cut theirs does not make any difference to our responsibility. At the end of the day, the environment doesn't care where the cuts come from.

mr_angry

Boggle wrote:

Hefty fines will not effect the way companies carry out their business as they are already looking to streamline their energy consumption in order toi reduce the factory cost. How is an added fine going to help? They'll just heave anchor and pull back to a non-Kyoto country.

I disagree entirely. The added fine is an incentive for the Irish government to promote research into clean energy sources among companies resident in Ireland. Rather than do that through law, the way to achieve it is through research grants etc. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if it is necessary for the Irish government to find new forms of energy production, it will be done. Hitting the Irish government in the pocket is the only way to get them to do this, and it would seem that a lot of the comments on this thread back that up. The companies will not pull back to non-Kyoto countries if the Irish government is throwing money at them to do research.

I'm also interested to know where the fine money goes to. Having looked at the Kyoto documents, I still can't determine where that is. If I was making the treaty, I would have thought it was a good idea to pump the fine money back into the R&D sector of the Kyoto-compliant countries, hence providing even more of an incentive to be Kyoto-compliant and do research. Since all research on the subject is shared between the countries, this would be entirely fair. However, this is pure speculation on my part.

Boggle

Are they? There's large moves to meet our growing energy demands with renewable and clean energy sources, for a start.

Like what? I don't hear of any windfarms being built at the minute...

There is an incentive to buy one. Its called a lower fuel bill over a car of comparative price.

And at a rough cost of E28.500 (motornet). If they wanted to promote these hybrid cars they would have reduced VRT on them. Then they would become an attractive option.

Would ppl have been praising our govt. if it had spent billions on cutting emissions etc. only to have Kyoto never come into force, thus removing the reason for those billions being spent? Given that its the economic aspect of environmental change that ppl seem to be focussing on, I would suggest the answer can only be no for many.

Actually what I am getting at is that the govt HAS signed up to a treaty which, binding or not, comitted Ireland to work towards a greener future. Why then have we apparently done nothing??

Funnily, as we sit here today, with people arguing to the effect of "why should we do this when the US won't sign up", I would posit that in a handful (or two) of years, we'll be sitting looking at the early-adopters and asking why our government let us down so badly by waiting so long to actually start doing anything.

Only if we get fined. Otherwise I won't be too bothered - like I said, its a stopgap measure. Developing countries will continue to need more energy and as such the only solution liess in developing new clean energy sources.
Why didn't they just set up an energy counsel charged with developing new energy sources? At least then all countries would pay a fixed amount for a few years and ALL would reap the rewards when the time came...

Hitting the Irish government in the pocket is the only way to get them to do this, and it would seem that a lot of the comments on this thread back that up.

But as usual, the govt will do nothing. They will simply pass the cost on to businesses. May I point out that this is already a relatively uncompetetive location costwise. (We have advantages in a common language with the states and relatively high skill levels but this will only buy so much lee-way)

mr_angry

Boggle wrote:

Like what? I don't hear of any windfarms being built at the minute...

But as usual, the govt will do nothing. They will simply pass the cost on to businesses. May I point out that this is already a relatively uncompetetive location costwise. (We have advantages in a common language with the states and relatively high skill levels but this will only buy so much lee-way)

IIRC, Bertie opened the largest off-shore windfarm in the world off the south east coast last month. Similarly, the largest campus-based wind turbine in the world is currently under construction at DKIT, and correspondingly, we have a centre for renewable energy located just across the hall from me.

http://www.credit.ie/

The government are providing grants to them to carry out research into renewable energy which will provide power to the entire DKIT campus within a few years. Now, you are well within your rights to argue that the government are not doing enough to help meet the requirements of the Kyoto protocol, but you cannot say that they are not doing anything.

As I said previously, I don't believe Kyoto is a stopgap measure - it is specifically designed to encourage research into clean and renewable energy technologies, not just to limit emissions. Half of the treaty is dedicated to the nature and sharing of the research - to say it is just a stopgap measure is inaccurate.

The Saint

IIRC, Bertie opened the largest off-shore windfarm in the world off the south east coast last month.

If I'm not mistaken that new wind farm was built by Airtricity, a private company, like pretty much all wind farms in the country. Why does the state owned ESB not invest in renewables?