×
See Comments down arrow

Nyet to carbon pricing

23 Oct 2019 | News Roundup

While Extinction Rebellion is infuriating commuters by shutting down central London transit, a harrowing foretaste of the fuel-free world they envision for us all, the Russian government just dumped its proposed carbon trading system and stiff penalties for polluters to appease their industrial oligarchs. Which raises the spectre that soon the only major countries with enough energy to function in the modern world will be India and villains like Russia and China. So what’s the plan for stopping those hostile powers from taking over the global economy after we’ve virtue-signalled our way into giving up our modern energy sources?

The Russia story is an odd one in that it describes heavy pressure on the Kremlin from the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which given the unwholesome intertwining of big business and big government under Vladimir Putin amounts to the state lobbying itself. But however weird things look in the Kremlin’s funhouse mirror, the upshot is that like China, for which Russia has unkindly but not unfairly been called a “gas station”, Russia will have a functioning transportation infrastructure, fuel for its armed forces, and food, shelter and clothing for its people.

In the West, on the other hand, Britain will have wish-powered tanks and no fracking and the German auto industry is in danger of collapsing along with a great deal else. (Including Canadian national unity, if something isn’t done about the smug political devastation of Alberta’s energy industry.) The best-case scenario is European nations will have gas when, but only when, Russia wants to let them have it through its natural gas pipelines. And what kind of world will we then be living in?

We recognize that to alarmists, everybody must stop using fossil fuels or the end comes in 11 years or so. And we grant that if you think so, you should not keep using them yourself. (Not even to fly on fancy vacations just because you founded Extinction Rebellion, or because the system made you do it.) But if you wail that continuing to use gas and oil because Russia won’t stop is no solution, we respond that ceasing to use them while Russia won’t stop is no solution either because you need a plan to stop them from destroying the planet they’re busy taking over, and if we’re going to die we’d at least like a hot last meal first.

So tell us how to solve the global problem you insist presses down on all of us. Otherwise, if you brush aside emissions from hostile states as mere wisps while calling those from your own country “evil”, we might start suspecting you’re in the grip of a malevolent dislike of your own civilization masquerading as love of all mankind.

2 comments on “Nyet to carbon pricing”

  1. First off about Extinction Rebellion. No one under 20 years old has experienced a trend of warming temperatures. Yet they are in the streets instead of classrooms demanding action (anything) to stop something they have never known. So, don't expect an intelligent conversation.
    Secondly, I have no doubt that the Western Society is on his way to a well deserved destruction and complete collapse, and will be overtaken by the East. I say well deserved, because of governments that are completely out of touch with the population and only self serving. Because of Universities and Institutions that are self- and government serving and lie, distort the truth, manipulate data and overwhelm the masses with fake and pseudoscience. And because of elites that want no power to the population, only use them for their self interest.
    The West will crash and burn. The East will rise to power. This is what happend to every empire in the history of this world. This time will be no different.

  2. It is well-known that if less of an activity is wanted, tax it. That is the simple solution, but humans are ingenious (some of them, anyway) and will work overtime to defeat a tax that is corrosively impressed on the population. So it is with a Carbon Tax, and I only speak of legal avoidance, not evasion.

    There is another way to move vehicles around, and that is though the use of electric vehicles, which is legal avoidance of the Carbon Tax. But for various reasons - cost, distance, cold weather - batteries are not the best way to provide the electricity. Hydrogen fuel cells are a better bet in a cold weather climate such as in Canada. But driving around with a huge tank of highly compressed hydrogen gas is expensive and has its dangers - remember the Hindenburg disaster? The ultimate fuel for hydrogen fuel cells is liquid anhydrous ammonia, which is safer than gasoline. It can be made for $0.25/L and take a vehicle about the same distance as a vehicle of the same weight with an internal combustion engine using one litre of gasoline. No government incentives needed!

    If you wish to know more about this write to .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

searchtwitterfacebookyoutube-play