Ivan
Eats Squid
Sounds like you could benefit form an NBN
.Spot on article above. The greens have their time in the spotlight now, and the next few years will make or break them as a party.
I am happy with the election result so far.
The election thread - Two middle-late aged white men trying to be blokey and convincing..., same old shit, FFS.
- Thread starter johnny
- Start date
.Spot on article above. The greens have their time in the spotlight now, and the next few years will make or break them as a party.
I am happy with the election result so far.
FR Drew
Not a custom title.
Gee the Australian hides it's political bias well doesn't it?
As far as I'm aware the Democrats imploded not because they positioned themselves to the left of Labor, but because the sold the country out with the GST and the electorate crucified them for it.
There's no right, left and centre in Australia any more. There's scary Christian ultra conservative, people who care about big business above all else, people who care about big business and are held by the short and curlies by the union structure, and people who give a rats about the environment (and social justice). That's the spectrum in play and it's not a linear spectrum, it's groups with differing values, not some political dogma to push.
After a decade of rule by a climate change denier, Rudd had a mandate from the Australian people to actually do something about the problem. Despite claiming to be a believer and having ministries for environment, climate change and water, in 3 years he did little to remedy any of the problems. The electorate told the ALP (well, both major's really) what they thought of their inaction.
As far as I'm aware the Democrats imploded not because they positioned themselves to the left of Labor, but because the sold the country out with the GST and the electorate crucified them for it.
There's no right, left and centre in Australia any more. There's scary Christian ultra conservative, people who care about big business above all else, people who care about big business and are held by the short and curlies by the union structure, and people who give a rats about the environment (and social justice). That's the spectrum in play and it's not a linear spectrum, it's groups with differing values, not some political dogma to push.
After a decade of rule by a climate change denier, Rudd had a mandate from the Australian people to actually do something about the problem. Despite claiming to be a believer and having ministries for environment, climate change and water, in 3 years he did little to remedy any of the problems. The electorate told the ALP (well, both major's really) what they thought of their inaction.
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seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
the GST was one of the best economic policies ever enacted.
as far as climate change goes... lol that's a joke.
A; australia doesn't pollute SFA on the world scale
B; if you tax carbon, good luck getting investment. companies will just set up shop somewhere else. or go out of business. import tariffs you say? blocking australian people from buying products that are of benefit to them you say? that would only hurt the economy more. no more consumer surplus = no more capital structure from that point onwards.
C; irrespective of whether the world pollutes or not, australias best option is still to pollute our brains out and take the economic growth. otherwise known as a nash equilibrium, when our dominant (best) strategy doesn't change.
there are 4 outcomes to this:
everyone cuts down on carbon, and everyone loses wealth/economic riches/etc, but have cleaner air to breathe.
we cut down on carbon, and nobody else does, resulting in us both being poor as f**k and having dirty air to breathe (or whatever).
we don't cut down on carbon, and nobody else does, resulting in the same dirty air as above but the country isn't broke
or the final option, everyone else cut down on carbon but we don't, resulting in us having nice clean air and being filthy rich.
as you can see, irrespective of what everyone else does our best option is to just keep "destroying"
the environment. additionally, you might realise, it doesn't matter whether australia cuts down on carbon or not. the other countries are not going to because their dominant strategy is also not to, irrespective of whether we do or not.
if, remarkably, all the countries in the world could agree to cut down on carbon, this agreement in itself would be unstable due to the tempation to screw everyone else over in order to take the riches.
the only time that there should be intervention is when the benefits of operating are lesser than the costs of doing so. i.e if a well pissed oil everywhere and the costs of cleaning it up were greater than the drop in the oil/fuel price that this new wells supply of oil created.
of course, that's all dependent on whether people actually want it cleaned up/care about the "externalities" of operating.
in my opinion, anyone that votes green truly has no clue about economics and game theory whatsoever. hell one of the first lessons in econ 101 from the head of the school was this exact lesson. it was our introduction to game theory. basically, "the greens are fucking clueless, and this is why".
what would be a better policy option for them would be to enable a tax writeoff of reducing carbon. i.e, a business can operate polluting or not, but if it takes the non-polluting option, and it CURRENTLY isn't the more cost effective way of operating (it often is) then they can write off 101% of the additional costs.
this would do two things. firstly it would create much more demand for "green" technology, and supply-demand would dictate the markets responses to it. engineering firms or whatever might start developing, investing in, engineering new things. scientific think-tanks or uni's might start looking more in this direction, etc etc.
additionally, this would result in better economies of scale for the producers of current green technologies.
the best current example of all this i can think of is the introduction of E85 fuel. that's got all the hallmarks.
it's cheaper per litre
it's new stuff that has been engineered/researched/etc
it's infinitely cleaner burning
it's made from waste products (sugar canes etc)
it can be retrofitted to virtually every fuel station and car in the country, at relatively low cost.
howards LPG converstion writeoff was a great policy. would be fantastic to see a similiar one for E85 - including the costs of installing the tanks/pumps for the servo's as well as us consumers with cars that need bigger/more durable fuel pumps and bigger injectors/a tune.
Bodin
GMBC
Pros and Cons - there's something I hate about your post and there's something I like.
Hate - "dirty air" simplification.
I know you're intentionally simplifying it for the sake of your post, but it's not that simple and readers who don't have a sophisticated view of the issue at hand here might read you literally and think there's not really much to worry about.
However, the issue is CLIMATE CHANGE (not just "dirty air") and it is a massive problem - a problem that governments are required to act upon. The Rudd government promised it would and then turned its back on the issue when it all got too hard. Big mistake.
Like - providing options
Where so many fail, you've succeeded in offering up some ideas around a constructive way to tackle Climate Change. They will get debated by the passionate true believers in all of the areas of politics that FR Drew was accurately describing, but at the end of the day, at least they are options and a positive way forward.
The important thing, though, is that the denial stops. I don't buy the whole "we don't have to because nobody else will" attitude.
FR Drew
Not a custom title.
Seventy seven, you somewhat missed my point, but that's cool. My basic gist was that the Dems got rolled for siding with Howard, not because they went all lefty on the electorate (as the article was implying).
Despite the fact that there are folks like you on the conservative side (I'm making an assumption there) who actually have some viable ideas on cutting emissions and making our planet more liveable, we all just suffered through a bullshit election campaign from both sides about what to do with boat people and scary music over words about faceless men or work choices. No one with any useful policies on the issue at all
As you have clearly outlined, crash diving our economy is in no-ones best interests, finding genuine and effective ways to gradually reduce our emissions while remaining competitive on the world stage is.
Despite the fact that there are folks like you on the conservative side (I'm making an assumption there) who actually have some viable ideas on cutting emissions and making our planet more liveable, we all just suffered through a bullshit election campaign from both sides about what to do with boat people and scary music over words about faceless men or work choices. No one with any useful policies on the issue at all
As you have clearly outlined, crash diving our economy is in no-ones best interests, finding genuine and effective ways to gradually reduce our emissions while remaining competitive on the world stage is.
Just a couple of points to make re. the first part of your post.
A VAT or GST is a great tax due to it's broad based nature. The implementation of it here in Australia was terrible. I deal with it every week. I personally would prefer just a flat transaction tax with no refund for GST "paid" by business. Much simpler.
Australia on a world scale pollutes very little for sure. On a per capita basis we are the worst. So we are using far more than our fair share. We DO NOT have the moral high ground in this argument.
Besides if everybody used the argument that they're not going to do something until the next guys does then nothing would happen.
How about we some show some real leadership and just get on with it. Even if climate change is not real, pollution is. There is very little downside in trying to be more sustainable. Hell, we could get a serious headstart on others and sell them any technologies we create - new export industry for us.
The crux of the issue. Neither major party has ANY policy at all.
The problem is due to positive feedback mechanisms and thresholds, gradual reduction is ineffective. Aggressive reduction in the next few decades is likely to be required in order to make any real difference. The further into positive feedback we push the atmosphere , the less return on any action to reduce emissions we see. There is no point in investing in carbon reduction gradually - we may as well not do anything. With Politicians like Bush, Howard, Brown and Rudd doing nothing in developed nations, developing nations like China and India exponentially increasing emissions, there's likely to be very little that can actually be done to prevent major long term climactic changes.
As a species - we've sat there during a time period that has been critical for action doing nothing, because of a global fear that doing something will cost money.
One of the the things that annoys me about fiscal conservative economists is the assumption that environmental services will always be there and always be free. We rely on vegetation for transpiration and therefore rain, environmental phenomena like the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo, Kakadu, the Daintree, Bondi etc and so on for literally billions in tourism dollars, functioning marine ecosystems for all our sewerage treatment and seafood, etc and so on. Yet when asked to invest in maintaining the environment, there seems to be zero acknowledgment that not doing so might be exceedingly expensive. It's clear that the potential - and even beginning to be realised costs of a business as usual approach to climate change will far exceed the costs of action.
That's aside from any moralistic arguments that a single generation of a single species doesn't really have the right to irreversibly make the place more hostile to life. Thanks for the legacy baby boomers, enjoy your caravan trip around Australia eh?
Personally I think that's it's a much deeper argument than simply "should we reduce emissions?". It goes down to an acceptance that our current use of resources and lifestyle is unsustainable and a shift from a paradigm of development to one of conservation. I see that for older Australians - and older people in general who were raised on "development is good" it's a very hard mindset to accept that maybe it's not all good.
+1000. I'd also argue they were getting squashed by the convergence of Labor and Liberal and an explicit policy of staying between them. But it was the sellout on the GST that made them impossible to vote for. Their entire raison d'etre was about being above that sort of thing.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
as you noted, i intentionally simplified. however, the principles are the same. pollution/burning fuels/etc leads to climate change yeah? which occurs due to various current ways of doing things (driving cars, whatever?).
i don't exactly have a meteorology PhD but the principles i *think* remain the same. taking a step to fix things isn't going to do anyone any good.
oh i totally agree. both sides basically twiddled their thumbs the entire time, but i'll explain why that's not necessarily bad below my quote of arete.
fair enough about the GST. can't say i've done anything other than first year accounting and don't want to.
now, on the point of no policies really being trumpeted by either side...The crux of the issue. Neither major party has ANY policy at all.
The problem is due to positive feedback mechanisms and thresholds, gradual reduction is ineffective. Aggressive reduction in the next few decades is likely to be required in order to make any real difference. The further into positive feedback we push the atmosphere , the less return on any action to reduce emissions we see. There is no point in investing in carbon reduction gradually - we may as well not do anything. With Politicians like Bush, Howard, Brown and Rudd doing nothing in developed nations, developing nations like China and India exponentially increasing emissions, there's likely to be very little that can actually be done to prevent major long term climactic changes. this i think is the PhD's proper explanation of "why it would be pointless". thanks arete
As a species - we've sat there during a time period that has been critical for action doing nothing, because of a global fear that doing something will cost money. not really. i thought i explained this above but, i'll try and reword it if i'm not being clear
One of the the things that annoys me about fiscal conservative economists is the assumption that environmental services will always be there and always be free. We rely on vegetation for transpiration and therefore rain, environmental phenomena like the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo, Kakadu, the Daintree, Bondi etc and so on for literally billions in tourism dollars, functioning marine ecosystems for all our sewerage treatment and seafood, etc and so on. Yet when asked to invest in maintaining the environment, there seems to be zero acknowledgment that not doing so might be exceedingly expensive. It's clear that the potential - and even beginning to be realised costs of a business as usual approach to climate change will far exceed the costs of action. fair enough argument. it's hard to quantify implicit or secondary effects like this. a 10% killing off of the great barrier reef might not result in a 10% drop in tourism dollars into the area - however due to the infnite number of variables that determine tourism money pouring in i don't think you could ever conclusively determine the costs. if you could, i imagine they would follow an exponential destruction-cost relationship.
That's aside from any moralistic arguments that a single generation of a single species doesn't really have the right to irreversibly make the place more hostile to life. Thanks for the legacy baby boomers, enjoy your caravan trip around Australia eh? this can be combatted in other ways. hell modern cars even legally have to have catalytic converters installed in the exhaust (i'm sure wikipedia can explain that to you), diodiesel/ethanol is being introduced, etc
Personally I think that's it's a much deeper argument than simply "should we reduce emissions?". It goes down to an acceptance that our current use of resources and lifestyle is unsustainable and a shift from a paradigm of development to one of conservation. I see that for older Australians - and older people in general who were raised on "development is good" it's a very hard mindset to accept that maybe it's not all good.it is when they've worked quite hard and saved their pennies their entire life just so they can do many things like this. my dad just retired, and he now has lots of time to go 4WD'ing. have fun trying to tell him "i'm sorry sir, i know you've worked and paid taxes your entire life so you can do this, but we've decided that you can't anymore.
irrespective of climate change, when was the last time you ever heard of a government solution to a problem actually making things better?
even something as good as the GST it seems they manage to f**k up, and perhaps people are starting to realise the incompetencies. perhaps the electorates have had enough, and don't want things fucked with or even see a need for government (after all its principle purpose seems to be to fuck with things). this is clearly evident by the massive increase in "informal" (donkey, for the most part) votes.
now if a politician was to get up and say "you know what. things have finally gotten to the point where we haven't got so much to do anymore. i'm going to shrink the size of government/the public sector, appropriately cut taxes to match, and throw the ball back to you guys" then i imagine they'd get a lot of votes.
good luck getting someone to admit that their job (any person with any job) has become redundant however. especially someone that "earns" their money as easily as a politician.
To use a couple of analogies:
- Action on climate change is a little like a village that's about to be hit by a flood. The best strategy would be for everyone in the village to stop farming and make a sandbag wall. Instead of doing that some people deny the flood is coming and keep farming. Others say well if they aren't going to help, it's not fair that I stop feeding my family and make the wall, so I won't. If the people willing to build the wall left start, it's unlikely to be anywhere near big enough to stop the flood.
So what do you do?
- The baby boomers may have worked and paid taxes, but they also simultaneously used resources at an unprecedented rate per capita and exponentially increased the human population. Say you bake a cake and invite 10 builders come build you a fence in exchanged for a slice of cake. 30 buliders show up, and eat half the cake while they're working. At the end of the day you have 30 workers who've all put in a day's work and all feel entitled to a slice, but you have 5 slices of cake. Do you give it to the first 5 who push their way to the front saying "nah fuck you all I earned my bit of cake now hand it over?"
- Action on climate change is a little like a village that's about to be hit by a flood. The best strategy would be for everyone in the village to stop farming and make a sandbag wall. Instead of doing that some people deny the flood is coming and keep farming. Others say well if they aren't going to help, it's not fair that I stop feeding my family and make the wall, so I won't. If the people willing to build the wall left start, it's unlikely to be anywhere near big enough to stop the flood.
So what do you do?
- The baby boomers may have worked and paid taxes, but they also simultaneously used resources at an unprecedented rate per capita and exponentially increased the human population. Say you bake a cake and invite 10 builders come build you a fence in exchanged for a slice of cake. 30 buliders show up, and eat half the cake while they're working. At the end of the day you have 30 workers who've all put in a day's work and all feel entitled to a slice, but you have 5 slices of cake. Do you give it to the first 5 who push their way to the front saying "nah fuck you all I earned my bit of cake now hand it over?"
Seventyseven - I'm not missing the point you made I just disagree with it. You state the best option for us is to continue polluting cause we can't trust that enybody else won't stop so that we can at least get economic growth.
Sorry but that is just morally repugnant. I don't care if we lose "wealth", we already have more than we need so I'm happy to share it around.
We have the ability to do something and despite what you say reducing pollution would give us a very localised benefit. Clearer air in the cities, cleaner waterways etc etc therefore I can't see a logical moral argument for not attempting to do something about the issue.
Blindly chasing economic growth at all costs is so amazingly shortsighted I'm stunned that anybody still believes it's the best course of action.
Sorry but that is just morally repugnant. I don't care if we lose "wealth", we already have more than we need so I'm happy to share it around.
We have the ability to do something and despite what you say reducing pollution would give us a very localised benefit. Clearer air in the cities, cleaner waterways etc etc therefore I can't see a logical moral argument for not attempting to do something about the issue.
Blindly chasing economic growth at all costs is so amazingly shortsighted I'm stunned that anybody still believes it's the best course of action.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
it's not a matter of fairness, but a matter of point. in your first analogy, packing the sandbags is pointless because they won't stop the flood unless the other guys help.
in the second one... your analogy doesn't work because the baby boomers didn't do their work for the cake or whatever at the same time as everyone else.
a better analogy would be teams of people baking cakes to eat and each time the use the oven they fuck it a bit more until it blows up and whoever is the last to put the work into mixing the cake batter etc gets pwned.
share it around?
dude the wealth won't go to the starving people in africa (or whatever). it'll go to all the countries that produce the things that we do - we've just cut supply and given them more marketshare. the result it that we're broke, and the rest of them are continuing to cause climate change. in fact the african countries that can barely keep themselves afloat will trumpet to all the corps "hurr durr set up here we won't tax you as much" so they can earn the money they need for things like say, food.
it isn't a matter of morality but reality.
if you want to start getting into morality well... that's a whole 'nother issue.
as far as "blindly" chasing growth goes, i don't think i said i was a proponent of that at all. rather, only do it when its benefits outweigh its costs. i.e we now drive cars even though it put the horse & cart drivers out of business.
That's kind of the point. There's little you can do to stop your village being screwed by yourself so what do you do? Pretend like it's not going to happen and do nothing? Try and do what you can knowing it's unlikely to be effective, but might inspire others to give you a hand? It's not a simple question to answer - but I for one am in favour of doing something rather than acting like there isn't a problem.
My point in the previous post is not that there's nothing worth doing, more that if we are going to take action, it needs to be effective action and not bit measures.
My point in this analogy you've also missed, to a degree - but due to oversimplification on my part. The major point is that resource usage is far above replacement levels due to exponential population increase and usage per capita - there simply is not enough land, water and food to go around. It's as if the first team to use the oven left it fine, but each generation afterwards ruined more than the previous becuase they used it more often and for longer.
My point about the sense of entitlement of retirees is that it is irrelevant to sustainable resource usage. The rate of population growth in the latter half of this century, and the use of land, water, fossil fuel, etc and so on has been exponential. It's always been the baby boomers "time". It's not like their tax dollars were coffered up for dispensal at their retirements and we kept the garden of eden in pristine condition for them to relax in once they decided to stop working.
seventyseven
percent of Australians blame the bike for their cr
i see what you're saying about the baby boomers but, if population is unsustainable then people are going to die out. simple bit of nature going on there.That's kind of the point. There's little you can do to stop your village being screwed by yourself so what do you do? Pretend like it's not going to happen and do nothing? Try and do what you can knowing it's unlikely to be effective, but might inspire others to give you a hand? It's not a simple question to answer - but I for one am in favour of doing something rather than acting like there isn't a problem.
i think it's more a matter of "well if we're going to go out we might as well enjoy ourselves in the meantime" in that sense.
but nonetheless, even if people were bagging sand there would be those that will either slack off and play footy or whatever, and why not when you can have everyone else do the work and reap the benefits even though you did nothing, and those that will keep harvesting their crops or whatever due to you know, them being necessary to live. in this analogy, that very harvesting would be what actually caused the flood.
the solution then, would be to find a different way of harvesting or growing their food
irrelevant of whether people help or not, people will gain the most or lose the least if they just fuck everyone else over, and some don't have any option other than to do that - they simply can't make the agreement, they are struggling as itis.
My point in the previous post is not that there's nothing worth doing, more that if we are going to take action, it needs to be effective action and not bit measures.
agreed, i hope i've demonstrated why a carbon tax is colossally stupid, and presented an alternative solution.
My point in this analogy you've also missed, to a degree - but due to oversimplification on my part. The major point is that resource usage is far above replacement levels due to exponential population increase and usage per capita - there simply is not enough land, water and food to go around. It's as if the first team to use the oven left it fine, but each generation afterwards ruined more than the previous becuase they used it more often and for longer.
My point about the sense of entitlement of retirees is that it is irrelevant to sustainable resource usage. The rate of population growth in the latter half of this century, and the use of land, water, fossil fuel, etc and so on has been exponential. It's always been the baby boomers "time". It's not like their tax dollars were coffered up for dispensal at their retirements and we kept the garden of eden in pristine condition for them to relax in once they decided to stop working.
always makes me wonder why people that barely have enough food for 1 kid have five or six - apparently the logic is that the aggregate survival rate of the 6 is greater than that of the 1, or words to that effect.
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ben_rides_a_bike
Likes Bikes and Dirt
Who cares?
Touche, I do appreciate the irony.Sounds like you could benefit form an NBN
Spot on article above. The greens have their time in the spotlight now, and the next few years will make or break them as a party.
I am happy with the election result so far.
Actually its a corporate special by Telstra that we've managed to overlaod with far too many server based programs. They've just finished running a fibre optic cable to site to increase the bandwidth but it isn't finished, hence when GSAP and a few others update over night shift the whole system grinds to a halt.
scuba05
Likes Dirt
Me, and everyone else writing in this.
Actually everyone in the entire world should care about climate change and world economics
3viltoast3r
Likes Bikes and Dirt
Please cast an invalid vote when your old enough to..
About as well as the ABC, once is on the Public teat, the other the Private teat. Both therefore employ a different type of journalist and editor and thus have a different bent. Neither are a badly twisted, not like Crikey or some of the other websites often quoted here. Search some of Bermshot's links if you want to see crackpot right wing websites, tin foil hats for all.
Bullshit, Beazley went to the next election with his "Rollback" policy and Howard picked up a swing towards him. Labor got crucified for opposing the GST. My father was a Democrats voter and a GST supporter, he wanted them to "keep the bastards honest" not vote as a bloc with Labor.
Kernot crossed over to Labor, Lees carried on with no directon or agenda, then Stott-Despoja eroded any credibility they had left. The same things will happen to the Greens if they don't moderate like people expect from a major party. Imagine the public reaction if Sarah Hanson-Young takes over the Greens? That air head only wears high heels because she'd never figure out how to tie laces.
As for the lack of left and right in politics, what? There's lefts and rights within party rooms, it's even worse across the political spectrum. Rudd had a mandate to not be John Howard, but otherwise be the same. The fact that he did nothing and still ran the country into debt is why the bottom fell out of the Labor vote. Howard had the courage of his convictions, once the swinging voters realised he wasn't Howard-lite but a souless shape shifter, his poll numbers fell over the 'numbers men' struck.
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