- Joined
- Mar 21, 2004
- Messages
- 18,923
- Solutions
- 1
- Location
- in my head
- Website
- strikeaction.bandcamp.com
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
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