People will have to pay more in any event because of peak oil. The IEA gives more details in its Outlook report for 2010.
Then do it and see what happens. Then, like the health care bill, you can console yourselves that Democrats are losing through no fault of their own.
I see that you like to carry water for the ones that would in the end ignore the point of King Canute.
When your side has a plan to reduce carbon emissions SIGNIFICANTLY, we can talk about how much people are willing to pay for it. I doubt anyone is willing to see their electric bill double for a 1% decrease. How much will that second 1% cost?
If the home is lost under the sea I think the point is moot.
Point being that you are only having an ignorant idea about the risks and costs involved of leaving things like this for later.
And also the point stands, it may be so that this will not be very effective this election cycle, but the record will show who was the party that delayed and denied.
Cost/benefit analysis matters, even when disaster is near. If we pay more and have the disaster anyway, history will record that it was your party who wanted to put more energy efficient smokestacks on the Titanic instead of lifeboats.
No, we know already that a titanic can happen, we are discussing if now if the ports the ship came and was going to will sink too.
Sorry but on this you are grossly wrong.
Problem is, you have to actually do something effective. Paying billions for a single digit percentage reduction is useless.
You are not offering anything, and that is what the Republicans offer indeed.
Mind you, what I pointed out was a very conservative estimate of the costs of doing nothing, the latest reports on the acceleration of the ice loss means that the costs are rising as we speak, and show that virtually all republicans in congress will hit not only a gender barrier with less women voting for them; not only an immigration barrier with less minorities voting also for them, but also a wall of millions on the coastal cities that will realize that Republicans do not give a damn.
The costs of doing nothing = X
The cost of doing something and achieving nothing = X + the cost of the ineffectual changes.
When you guys come up with ideas that actually work, we’ll be listening.
Ignorance too, there are many plans and ideas already investigated, proposed and implemented; some even posted in this thread already, some even approved by conservatives. You are only repeating denialist tripe.
There’s only one plan that has merit: a revenue neutral carbon tax, because that has economic benefits even if climate change wasn’t an issue.
Nothing else proposed even comes close to dealing with the scope of the problem. This is not an “every little bit helps” issue. It’s a case of you either fix it or you don’t.
Well, that is something, but we are talking about the do nothings in congress, that are the Republicans. By contrast many outside the congress are more active and eventually it will dawn on them how silly is to vote for the current blind ones in power.
When you say revenue neutral, you mean at the targeted reduction level, revenue would be what it is now, right? 'Cause otherwise, it’s just another way to hand corporations a tax break for doing shit they should already be doing.
I mean revenue would not rise. We could reduce the payroll tax to make it revenue neutral.
So a company can continue to pollute at current levels and their costs won’t rise. Or they can spend a little extra, reduce emissions, and their costs go down (depending on ROI), and the government takes the hit. Is that about it?
THE GODDAMN ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM IS NOT A FUCKING TAX CUT!
IT’s not a tax cut, it’s just changing the way taxes are paid. The idea isn’t to raise the cost of doing business, it’s to reward clean business and penalize dirty business.
The goal is to reduce emissions and to begin to capture the cost of excess CO2 emissions (a cost that has been socialized up until now, while profit remains privatized - a subsidy of sorts).
That’s why I’m saying that the proper incentive is to set the revenue neutral point at the targeted emissions goal. Then if businesses want a tax cut, they can attempt to exceed the target which should, theoretically anyway, similarly reduce government expenses and thus justify the reduced revenue.
You live in Florida, I understand? Then one thing that happens is that there continues to *be *a Florida.
You really haven’t been keeping up, have you?
Business isn’t the primary problem. It’s consumers, namely, drivers. Although I suppose you could take that same concept and apply it to individuals.