All goods and services consumed have a carbon footprint, including those we consume socially.
This is an attempt to estimate our individual Social Carbon Footprints (SCF).
Social Carbon Footprint = Emissions per Capita multiplied by (GDP - trade surplus)/GDP multiplied by Government Share.
posted by unaha-closp @ 9:52 PM
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NZ has been committed to Net Zero approach requiring immediate action and disruption. This is a suggestion of how climate change might be used to attack government waste.
Propose adopting carbon consumption footprint metric to tackle both private and social consumption.
1. A carbon consumption sales tax to tackle private consumption.
2. A universal carbon stipend set to 70% of current average consumption, less our equity share of social consumption.
Carbon footprint is the net pollution inherent in every product and service consumed. Current work is focused almost entirely towards private consumption and how to limit it. However we pay taxes and acquire debt together allowing us to consume socially, thus each person has an equity share of a social carbon footprint in the form of government services. The same methodology that is used in private carbon footprints is applicable in social consumption.
For most people an equity stake in our social carbon footprint is their major contribution to climate pollution, which is where the stipend comes in. If our social carbon consumption is 50% of the average the remaining 20% is paid as the stipend. A 1% reduction of social carbon waste will increase the paid stipend by 5%, thus encouraging voter engagement in the state cutting social waste.
Environmentally this approach is better than emissions capping. For instance international travel emissions occur between places uncapped, but the trip is consumed at the point of arrival. An electric car will create more pollution to manufacture than with internal combustion, but our emissions cap policy is to subsidise the increased pollution.
Using the carbon footprint approach may allow climate change policy to used as a weapon against socialism and allow for a balanced political debate. The right can save the planet by slashing government spending to the bone.
posted by unaha-closp @ 12:57 PM
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Once upon a time blankets carrying a disease were used to clear land for settlement. Isolated villages were infected and the maximum number of deaths occurred. Today a virus has been introduced into our modern well populated world, but there are few isolated villages where these events may be easily repeated. Our population centres are too large and our systems too robust. As people recover they gain natural immunity that slows the spread of the virus. In a small village the disease can spread fast enough that it infects all before the natural immunity grows, in a large city it cannot.
Unfortunately many of us are governed poorly. Cities have been placed in lock-down, breaking our community apart. Lock down recreates the dynamics of the small village, by isolating us into small groups. In lock down those who gain natural immunity are forever confined away from the vulnerable.
This lock down mechanism is why Victoria kills more people with Covid-19 than neighbouring New South Wales. The extended brutal lock downs Victorians use are responsible for higher infection rates.
Lock downs are counter productive at every stage after the very initial period. It is possible to estimate when the effectiveness of lock down policy finishes and it become hazardous, by asking how much greater natural immunity is compared to the vaccines - a recent Israelli study suggests this ratio is 13. When the weekly uptake of vaccines for vulnerable age groups is less than 13x greater than the the weekly total number of infections lock down should end.
By this ratio Victoria should have ended lock downs in early September.
Auckland, NZ is currently in lock down and should have ended it by last week.
Does this logic make sense?
posted by unaha-closp @ 12:38 PM
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Climate change politics have converged on presenting supply side caps as the solution, but there is another. A sales tax approach allows independent states to tackle climate change better than any globalist. Woke multinationals and institutions can be targeted to save the planet.
Supply capping requires total global coordination - the globalist left ideal. It also advantages multinationals that can shift production globally for maximum profit and minimal local competition - a globalist right priority. This globalist bipartisan political consensus has made supply capping their solution to climate change. However now these same globalists have gone woke.
Carbon Added Tax (CAT) is taking account of all of
the climate change pollution inherent in making a product or service, then charging consumer sales tax set to the local market - user pays for carbon. The CAT covers all of
the climate change pollution of a product, more comprehensive than supply
caps. The CAT subject only to enforcement within the local state and not subject to
global cooperation or negligence, more reliable than supply caps. The
CAT is priced to local conditions in wealthy nations, allowing for local
carbon charging more aggressive than globally set supply caps. CAT is a more effective approach to tackling climate change than supply capping.
Carbon Added Taxation tackles climate change as a problem of consumption waste, a strong metric against inefficiency.
The largest service provider in any country is the state. CAT sets a metric against which all services are measured, allowing carbon waste to be found and quantified. Some services are diffuse and some are consumer specific. The woke bastion of education is the most consumer specific and young people get concerned by climate change. Applying CAT gives students a way of making climate defining choice in their education and provides a driver for increasing school choice. Carrying administrative overburden to create social justice the more woke schools are not highly carbon efficient and disadvantaged by a CAT.
CAT can hurt multinationals by making it harder to avoid taxation. Under a CAT the profit or loss of the sales will be irrelevant to the level of taxation. The act of migrating profit to places with lower corporate tax rate will itself be open to CAT charging as enlarging the climate footprint. Every additional layer of corporate structure may add carbon cost.
Taken to its full extent a CAT could eliminate the need for any global climate change response. A global climate change response that is less effective, by the logic of carbon consumption monitoring, should be stopped as it is wasteful.
posted by unaha-closp @ 10:44 PM
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“We can't save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change - and it has to start today.” - Greta Thunberg, TEDx Stockholm, December 2018
There is a scientific consensus that climate change is accelerating
and poses an imminent threat to life on earth. The climate change emergency must be tackled by radically altering our economies.
The current global climate responses will not correct our imbalance and
mostly increase the rate of climate change through ineptness. The UN is
trying to impose a global climate cost and enact carbon cap production
controls. Carbon credits derived from arbitrary point spot reductions
are being traded as an investment vehicle, even when the point reduction
creates an overall global increase. All of the current supposed solutions require increased government debt.
New thought needs to engage, because the only workable climate change solution is in truth small localised government. States stop socialising costs across the globe and instead expose capital to climate risk on a timescale that works. Economies to be made responsive to climate change factors, by energising consumer responsibility at every expenditure. Free individuals taking personal responsibility for the climate footprint of all their consumption will produce quick climate change action. The climate change emergency requires total reform to free people, reducing government and letting people choose a better future.
The solution to climate change is to have individuals responsible for each carbon footprint through a carbon consumption tax. A carbon consumption tax allows individual consumers to make purchases where saving the planet and saving money align. Carbon consumption tax differs from a supposed global carbon cost, by being progressively priced on the basis of individual markets or individual consumers. A carbon consumption tax can align the cost with each consumer markets.
If we want to solve climate change we need to engage all consumers and especially the wealthy. In a wealthy state the tax rate for carbon consumption to be set higher than the global carbon price, but in a poor state it might be only half the price.
Under a carbon consumption tax manufacturers shall be free to make anything, but if it is by a polluting process then the product will be highly taxed at point of consumption and unprofitable. Imports get taxed on the basis of their production process and how they are imported. Exports shall not be carbon taxed. Inward flights get taxed, outward flights do not.
One indirect benefit of carbon consumption tax is the imposition of higher taxation on multinational corporations. Currently a critical multinational aspect is selling a product unprofitably in areas with high tax and profiting mostly in a low tax part of the corporation. Under the carbon consumption tax the profit or loss of the sales will be irrelevant to the level of taxation and the existence of the tax mitigation structure will increase the carbon footprint of the production. Multinational products will be taxed higher the more they offshore their profits.
Carbon consumption tax is an information based tax, something that can be achieved only in our modern age. We can now advance solutions where the consumer is informed completely, without the need for elaborate regulation by the state. This is a good thing, because in this climate change crisis we need to have a smaller state.
A carbon consumption tax is not the same as the currently proposed UN run global carbon cost to be imposed on emissions. Global emission pricing is too exploitable in ways that increase pollution. A global carbon price is an inequitable flat tax that impacts most on the poorest and is ineffective on the richest.
The emission trading by carbon credits is exploitable in ways that can make increasing pollution profitable for some. Carbon credits increase in value subject to their demand and as the degree of pollution increases they become more valuable. The idea is that this will lead to people being innovative and creating new carbon credits. However the holders of existing credits will profit if they can prevent other people from finding innovative solutions. Large holders of existing carbon credits include mostly our too-big-to-fail financial institutions, which have proven very capable of putting profit first no matter the consequences.
A global carbon price is regressive and will hurt the poorest more than the wealthy. This is grossly unfair and moreover ineffective as it is only the rich who are over consuming, The global cost of carbon will by definition be set too high on the poor and too low on the rich.
Government deficit spending is antithetic to the climate. The climate
maintains stability by inputs and outputs balancing across the
planet. A living climate acts in a system where life fails or prospers
in response to the conditions. When government debt is created by
borrowing vast
amounts of capital from the far future and spending it now, the climate
is stressed beyond the balance. Our forever deferred government debt
creates perverse incentives to both over consume and prolong failing
institutions.
Earth needs to end the socialism that supports failed institutions, as this socialism is killing the planet.
Instead of the state accruing debt and forever deferring the
payment, we need to incorporate a Darwin-like approach into our economy. We must place
economics at the service of the planet, by keeping our debts in balance
and allowing failing institutions to fail.
To save the planet we need to realign our prevailing debt structures to shorter individualistic time frames, because living individuals reside within
the time-frame of climate change. Societies evolve much too slowly, with societal debts seemingly never to be paid off. Individuals,
not societies, need to be the central pillar of climate change
response. We need to make our financial systems mimic the living world and be naturally selective.
Income tax, company tax, value added tax to be reduced - when the carbon consumption tax is introduced. This will allow more of the economy to be in the hands of consumers, with less interference from state institutions. Long lived state institutions are unresponsive to climate change pressures, consumers are much more responsive to price fluctuations. In this time of crisis we need to enable individuals to make quick decision.
For example the Department of Education should create school vouchers for all students and lease out or sell schools so they all compete. This will allow schools with a lower carbon footprint to out compete those with a higher carbon burden. Parents and children will be able to actively seek out places best for their education and the planet.
Taken a step further the voucher system could be applied universally, using a Universal Basic Carbon Credit set at 70% of current average carbon usage. This would afford people the finances to be more carbon aware, reward low carbon usage and punish the high consumption choices.
This is a climate crisis. Old rules and old institutions must be allowed to fail. To solve the climate problem we need everyone to have the individual power and responsibility to make change.
To save the planet we must reduce government spending by at least 30% and free up consumer power to choose.
posted by unaha-closp @ 9:40 PM
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posted by unaha-closp @ 7:19 PM
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posted by unaha-closp @ 12:13 PM
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Liberty, equality, fraternity - principles of France and this blog. France's interpretation may vary from mine and I can't read French.
I seek pragmatic value in politics. My irl name is Angus and I blog as unaha-closp. I do so because there are several people calling themselves Angus, but very few naming themselves after a character in a Iain M. Banks novel (go figure).
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