European and Local elections 2019 (3 Viewers)

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Nothing will get us 100% of the way there. There are already grants available to retrofit your house Home Energy Grants and for buying an electric vehicle Electric Vehicle Grants (plus for EVs there's VRT relief and v low motor tax)

The reason we might spend a decade fighting about carbon tax is SF and PBP have managed to use public discontent over other stuff (like the banking crisis) to rabble-rousing on these kinds of issues in the past. All the other parties support it

Unfortunately those home energy grants are only available to homes above a certain BER Energy rating which seems a bit dim to me.
‘You can only get a grant if you can afford to have your house warmer already’

And the grants for EV are for new (ie: expensive) ones. Which is completely unaffordable to the average income household. So another example of the poor not being afforded opportunities to reduce their carbon footprint.
second half of this talks a bit about that and the green stuff in general, it's a good listen

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They propose retrofitting rural houses first and greatly improving the transport infrastructure countrywide in order to improve the living conditions countrywide and get the rural folk on the green "side"; it makes a lot of sense to me. In a basic sense building huge numbers of off-shore windfarms will give a lot of local jobs, this shouldn't be ignored just because it reads as a bit politically basic. They also point out that we can't spend a decade fighting about a carbon tax that'd only get us 5% of the way towards where we need to be.

I'm dubious about the complicated means-tested carbon card tax and refund systems being suggested in this thread, it reads like the kind of thing that will hurt the poorest the most as they traditionally (for a myriad of reasons) are the least likely to complete long form-filling exercises in order to get a bit of tax back. Does anyone have figures on whether it would make sense to only charge businesses for carbon usage and leave individual people alone. Presumably that problem will sort itself if we retrofit houses/cars and the electorate are behind it because they don't see it as a personal attack on their lives?

While I sympathize/agree with Johnnystress's cynicism, and that'd be my first instinct as well, we need to move past it as this is literally too important to let the usual folk get their way and fill their pockets. They have to be fought tooth and nail every step of the way.

I think it's also telling that they're using the buzzphrase "green new deal" for this, which doesn't actually make any sense in Ireland since the New Deal was a US thing, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than telling everyone you're going to scold them and introduce a new (carbon) tax. I know it's just marketing but if we have to look to the US for our inspiration who cares as long as it works.


Sounds sensible, looking forward to listening to that
 
Jesus Christ man, are you really parroting that cynical right wing line?
You're calling me cynical? After just saying "I assume the grant scheme isn't working and is probably treated like an optional life choice to show off how green you are to your neighbours"???

Yes, I honestly think that people do care about green issues, but come up with all sorts of excuses for not putting their money where their mouth is.

God, there's a million different ways of getting the money when it's needed, doesn't have to be through raising the taxes on your average poor person.
Taxes are literally the only way the government has of getting money. A carbon tax is a regressive tax, yes, but the people it'll most affect are not "your average poor person"
 
You're calling me cynical? After just saying "I assume the grant scheme isn't working and is probably treated like an optional life choice to show off how green you are to your neighbours"???
I brought up the idea of retrofitting and your response was to point towards a grant scheme. I guess I misread that as you bringing up some kind of counterpoint that I couldn't be bothered to research. If we are in agreement that it's a good thing then lets fucking leave the argument about nothing to the side?
Taxes are literally the only way the government has of getting money. A carbon tax is a regressive tax, yes, but the people it'll most affect are not "your average poor person"
What are we even arguing about here? If your solution for climate change is to tell everyone they will have to suffer more and pay more taxes and never have fun then we've already lost the debate. Is that your solution? I'm not trying to catch you out here, i'm trying to find an actual way of getting this done.
 
And the grants for EV are for new (ie: expensive) ones. Which is completely unaffordable to the average income household. So another example of the poor not being afforded opportunities to reduce their carbon footprint.
Grants for second-hand EVs are pointless from a carbon budget perspective. What counts is new EVs that displace petrol/diesel burning cars
 
If your solution for climate change is to tell everyone they will have to suffer more and pay more taxes and never have fun then we've already lost the debate. Is that your solution? I'm not trying to catch you out here, i'm trying to find an actual way of getting this done.
heh

ok

What's causing me frustration on this thread is everyone is proposing solutions that have almost certainly already been discussed at length in the political system. Apart from retro-fitting petrol/diesel cars (which I'd bet you any money has been discussed, priced and dismissed) and completely banning cars, every proposal in this thread has either already been tried or is currently in flight in some form.

Here's how to get this done - get behind the existing climate action plan. Stop trying to promote whatever idea just popped into your own head. Someone has already thought of it, and the reason it's not in the plan is it's either not good or not politically possible.

Also stop conjuring up visions of people who might be wronged by it somehow. All that's going to do is leave us with no plan at all, same as it did for our water infrastructure. The reality is we are going to have to pay to repair the damage we've done. If we pay more now we'll have to pay less later, but one way or the other we cannot continue like we are. Obvs a politician is going to pretend that there's some magic solution that'll mean we can continue to do whatever the fuck we want and everything will be fine, but that's just not true
 
heh

ok

What's causing me frustration on this thread is everyone is proposing solutions that have almost certainly already been discussed at length in the political system. Apart from retro-fitting petrol/diesel cars (which I'd bet you any money has been discussed, priced and dismissed) and completely banning cars, every proposal in this thread has either already been tried or is currently in flight in some form.

Here's how to get this done - get behind the existing climate action plan. Stop trying to promote whatever idea just popped into your own head. Someone has already thought of it, and the reason it's not in the plan is it's either not good or not politically possible.

Also stop conjuring up visions of people who might be wronged by it somehow. All that's going to do is leave us with no plan at all, same as it did for our water infrastructure. The reality is we are going to have to pay to repair the damage we've done. If we pay more now we'll have to pay less later, but one way or the other we cannot continue like we are. Obvs a politician is going to pretend that there's some magic solution that'll mean we can continue to do whatever the fuck we want and everything will be fine, but that's just not true
Can you point me to a) the existing climate action plan and b) the implementation of it? Because what needs to be done has been known since at least the 1990's and hasn't happened.

As far as I can see implementing the known solutions is a political problem and requires political actions to solve it, and that means getting people on your side, and yes, these people feel aggrieved. Spend five minutes looking at 30 years of ever widening wealth gaps and I don't see how you could possibly say they haven't got good reasons for it either.
 
heh
ok
What's causing me frustration on this thread is everyone is proposing solutions that have almost certainly already been discussed at length in the political system.

Maybe in the climate peoples assembly. I tried on several occasions to interview a member of the pre-cursor seanad group and they eh, weren't to clear on why they were there.

Worth noting Varadkar voted against a climate bill in 2012.

My take on the 'politically possible' side of things is that it is not politically possible at present to do what we need to do, and the likelyhood would be that everything will be drawn into slow motion, probably trigger an election which will return an even more colourful coalition than we have. meanwhile someone is buying a car today that they expect to sell in three years time to someone who expects to sell that car in three years time and that car runs on petrol. If voting against a climate bill secures that 10/20/30 grand then the likelihood is that they will vote with their pockets rather than principles.

So this kind of scenario has swung my attitude to being more like LE19 is the stage to be asking door to doors why it is still legal to even sell a petrol car all considered.

TLDR i don't think you can fit this one through 'politically possible'
 
Here's the report of the committee on climate action

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oirea...nge-a-cross-party-consensus-for-action_en.pdf

Prioritised recommendations at the end. No implementation details, it only came out last month

As far as I can see implementing the known solutions is a political problem and requires political actions to solve it, and that means getting people on your side, and yes, these people feel aggrieved. Spend five minutes looking at 30 years of ever widening wealth gaps and I don't see how you could possibly say they haven't got good reasons for it either
Good reasons or not, people are, as you say, going to have to be convinced to play along or we all lose. I don't know how to do that, but I really hope that our home-grown populists don't mess things up by convincing The Common Man that the EU/Dublin 4/Google can pay for everything so we don't have to
 
Here's the report of the committee on climate action

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oirea...nge-a-cross-party-consensus-for-action_en.pdf

Prioritised recommendations at the end. No implementation details, it only came out last month


Good reasons or not, people are, as you say, going to have to be convinced to play along or we all lose. I don't know how to do that, but I really hope that our home-grown populists don't mess things up by convincing The Common Man that the EU/Dublin 4/Google can pay for everything so we don't have to

I guess my issue is that right now there is nothing stopping politicians, and in fact plenty encouraging them, into throwing that report out and ignoring it completely or, at best, hiring another group to think about what should be implemented for another year or two before doing nothing again (so many of the "Priority" recommendations fall into "we recommend that people take the issue seriously and do something") . Like I said, we've known the solutions forever but without the political will it doesn't matter.

but, having said all that, at least it's the main parties actually talking about doing something and not just the Greens.

This idea that Ireland has no money and can't afford anything ever except except a tiny corporation tax is a total red herring, we were even poorer in the 1930's and we set up the ESB and electrified the country. Retrofitting the entire country without having a big fight over a new tax is possible. Also, frankly Google could pay for these things, easily. I recognize that they won't but lets not pretend that they can't.


Anway, all I can do really is as @ann post says and make it my number 1 talking point any time i'm within shouting distance of a politician. This and Direct Provision ( which is related to climate change when you think about it)
 
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This idea that Ireland has no money and can't afford anything ever except except a tiny corporation tax is a total red herring, we were even poorer in the 1930's and we set up the ESB and electrified the country.
This is why I hate all the aggrievement. If we tried to electrify rural areas from scratch now thejournal.ie would be full of "Why should my taxes be going to lay 10 miles of cable to power some culshie's sacred heart lamp?"

all I can do really is as @ann post says and make it my number 1 talking point any time i'm within shouting distance of a politician
Indeed. I'll be doing the same
 
This is why I hate all the aggrievement. If we tried to electrify rural areas from scratch now thejournal.ie would be full of "Why should my taxes be going to lay 10 miles of cable to power some culshie's sacred heart lamp?"

LOL
 
Work colleague is not pleased about referendum reducing the time on divorces.

"You might as well allow murder or bank robberies as the same amount of people are affected"

This was about how we are just "rolling over ourselves to appease minorities" like people getting divorced.
 

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