Couldn’t we just shoot some cows? Then some landowners could stop pretending to be farmers.

bjg

It was with bewilderment that I listened to the RTE news on Friday the 12th of March 2010 about what science boffins working for the EU had to say about Ireland’s Carbon Dioxide emissions.
‘They’ stated that Ireland was not going to meet its targets and would have to purchased additional Carbon Credits to pay for not reaching these targets, WHAT?, did I hear them right?, a country that is shedding jobs at the highest rate in the nations history, a country that has little if no industry to speak off, and a country that has one of the lowest population densities in Europe is not going to meet is targets.
This in my humble opinion is absolute nonsense, that would mean in order to meets these targets Ireland would have to shed even more jobs which would curtail the spending power of the newly unemployed and their Carbon Footprint as ‘they say, that the remaining industry in the country has to cease its activites and that even the population would have to reduce reproduction dramatically in order to reduce their direct Carbon Dioxide contribution via breathing, and yes ‘they’ have in the past mentioned that the large population of the world was effecting climate because of the its Carbon Dioxide output.
When is this nonsense going to stop, Climategate, Amazongate, Himalayagate and all the other gates the are being opened are highlighting the fact that Man - Made Global Warming is based on flawed, manipulated and some might say fraud science, science that has led the people of Ireland to be saddled with a Carbon Tax which will grind the people of this nation further in poverty and hardship.
Our government and the people in this country have to start challenging the EU on this Global Warming, Carbon Footprint, Carbon Credits nonsense now and not in a few years time when its too late.
People need to realise that the whole Carbon Credit trading scheme was divised by banks, the very same banks that caused the whole credit swap derivitives bubble that collapsed plunging the world in economic meldown

Article by Declan Cullen
Dublin

The past commissioners may all have been men, but Josephine Feehily is not.

bjg

At a time when costs need to be reducing to make ireland compeditive and attractive to do business in the governmant look at ways of raising taxes and bleeding an already overtaxed populace dry..

this carbon tax is a ruse to increase revenue and nothing else. A few TD’d on bicycles in dail eireann are happy and will now vote NAMA in.

Instead of raising taxes through sham reports & recommendations the governmant should have been looking at their expenses and where they could cut expenditure.

The elephant in the room is the public sector pay bill. Examine those public jobs that are essential and keep them on their normal working hours. Put everyone else on a 3 day week saving up to 40% on pay, those under a certain pay level can sign on for 2 days a week.the rest are earning a sufficient level to be ok. Meanwhile benchmark public sector pay against similar economies.(i.e downwards)

The unions wont like it, but the alternative of job losses they will not like either. This is taking place in the private sector already.

Plus to bring my post back on topic it will reduce the carbon footprint of the civil service clogging up the streets and possibly provide more free flowing traffic during the week.

There is little energy-intensive industry in Ireland. It’s in Ireland’s interest to have high-value-added industry, regardless of energy-intensity.

Carbon trading and carbon taxation are an entire scam.

There is no climate change “model” worth the name.

Just ask “What is the optimum percentage range for CO2 in the atmosphere?”

We need more taxes. Just to pay for the interest on the NaMa bailout of the land grabbers and banks.

I don’t want to see the start I want to see the end product. I don’t even want an explanation or history. Is there a web site with every line of code used to produce the final result. Is there a version that individuals can run and modify? Open Source?

The recent failure of the Boeing 787 wing, which used the same finite element modeling used in climate modeling might also indicate limits to computer modeling.

I am totally in favour of reducing the effects of global warming. I am not however too enamoured by the idea of selling allowances.

When looked at right at this moment, it should not impact Ireland too much going forward.

What I see, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, is that the carbon credit market has all the makings of a new speculators bubble.

Treated virtually the same as a commodity. To me, logic dictates that as the CAP is gradually lowered, carbon credits will become scarcer with each passing year.

A recipe for a commodity which is guaranteed to rise in price over time.

Again, please feel free to enlighten me if I am wrong. However, I do not see any mechanisms in the EU legislation that will prevent speculation.

That makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I do not believe something as vitally important as the need to reduce greenhouse gases should be open to abuse by speculators.

Not only will we be paying to help reduce emissions, but we will end up subsidising specultors who cannot lose.

Revenue Neutral my @r$e !!!!

You have a valid point. In this second phase of the EU ETS electricity generators have been allocated free emission allowances (EUAs). And these are usually in excess of the amount they require if they manage their plant portfolio and bulk puchases to minimise CO2 emissions. They will no longer receive free allowances in the next phase from 2012. Until then, though, they can sell their surplus allowances and generate a ‘windfall’.

Last year, the ESB proposed donating its windfall of Euro 300 million to reduce. This was seized on by the CER which, alone, has the power to set prices. The ESB has deigned not to persist with this ‘benevolence’ and it will revert to pocketting the windfall. It would be far better to tax this windfall away.

But this windfall will disappear. The other explicit and implicit taxes are embedded in energy prices and will continue unless they are challenged and reformed or stripped out.

I stand corrected. I’m pleased, however, that you accept that other components of the energy price need to be looked at carefully. I’ve been looking at them carefully for six years to see how they might be reduced efficiently, but, unfortunately, most of the other people I’ve encountered who look at them seem to spend their time seeking to justify these components and their excessive size.

I understand your preference for a carbon tax. I still retain a preference for trading with a carbon tax as a supplementary measure. It probably boils down to whom do you trust less: inept politicians or dodgy traders.

Other than that I agree. Ireland is not only among the most energy-efficient economies in the world, but energy efficiency has improved faster here than elsewhere. While a carbon tax is the right policy in principle, other components of the energy price need to be looked at carefully. New taxes cannot wait, however.

SEI uses 0.196 kgCO2/kWh for gas consumption and 0.776 kgCO2/kWh for electricity consumption. Using Richard’s CO2 price of Euro 15.24/tonne, typical Irish households will pay an additional Euro 62 carbon tax on gas and an additional Euro 39 on electricity.

I realise that all the usual arguments will be trotted out - higher costs of getting gas to Ireland, higher costs in Ireland due to low population densities and a dispersed population, fossil fuel dependency, prices too low in Britain to incentivise investment in generation, etc., but, insofar as these have any relevance, there are still significant explicit and implicit taxes in irish gas and electricity prices. Irish consumers are being taxed enough already - both explicitly and implicitly. They have all the price incentive in the world to be energy efficient (and reduce CO2 emissions) - and this may be seen in Ireland’s international ranking on energy intensity.

Before applying an additional tax it would make far more sense to review the level and incidence of explicit taxation and to strip out the implicit taxes. We could then have a sensibly based carbon tax, lower final prices, and a lower general price level which would enhance competitiveness.

Why not just tax energy? If you insist on the carbon tax, tax energy imports as Ireland does not produce much fossil fuel domestically.

The trading back and forth of carbon is a kind of scam that will create a huge class of wealthy traders that are really trading nothing imo. Not only are the huge salaries of the traders repugnant, but they represent a transfer of wealth from people living a low carbon lifestyle to those living a high carbon lifestyle.

Politicians want the price of stuff to be at a given level, but for that level to contain as much tax as possible. Ergo, if the retail price is going down, that introduces scope to tax it more

Not a whole lot can be done in Ireland, as 2020 is pretty close — anything that involves large infrastructure (Metro north, Moneypoint replacement) or new technologies (electric cars) is off the table

That leaves behavioural change. Behaviour changes only slowly when it is driven by preferences, but behaviour can change very rapidly in response to changes in regulation.

It would help to abolish the current privileges of peat-based electricity, to have competition in the Dublin bus market, to enforce traffic rules that protect cyclists, and to shift the tax burden from owning and buying a car to using it (as also proposed by the CoT).