Posted on 05/28/2008 6:47:55 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
A scheme recently proposed by British MP Tim Yeo shows what would happen to individual freedom if the environmentalist agenda on CO2 ever got enacted into law. This bill establishes a state-run British Carbon Cartel via the mechanism described below.
Every adult in the UK would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance in kgs and a special carbon card. The scheme would cover road fuel, flights and energy bills. Every time someone paid for road fuel, flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked.
A litre of petrol would use up 2.3kg in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another 1kg. When paying for petrol, the card would need to swiped at the till. It would be a legal offence to buy petrol without using a card.
When paying online, or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly. Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits. Trading would be done through specialist companies. - The Daily Mail (10/28/2008)
On the surface, the scheme appears to have certain merits. People choose how they use their carbon credits, and could even have the option of collecting them and trading them with their friends. It would even offer people the chance to manage their accounts online.
However, if we are resourceful, we can already do a lot of these things now. The extent to which there is any real choice involved only depends upon the forbearance of the government. The range of consumer choices under the carbon cap is controlled by the size of the available accounts and the cost meters associated with CO2 usage. The tighter the limits that get enforced on accounts and the higher the per unit consumption costs go; the more rapidly any viable set of options goes away.
This action would establish an energy cartel so powerful that OPEC would look like a basket full of sleepy kittens by comparison. It does so by making petrol sales illicit without a special government currency, amenable to electronic tracking. The government establishes a system by which they have ultimate control over who can legally enter or leave the market.
This gives politicians and ward-healers a power to wreck mischief with minimal consequences, at best. The profits of petrol operators, friendly with public officials, can then be set obliquely by the very office holders these petrol companies bankroll into the House of Commons. By slightly altering the cost ratios available under the plan, the disingenuous MP can force significant business in the direction of some of their buddies. This process is what Ayn Rand described as an Aristocracy of Pull.
aristocracy of pull - a new group of powerful men who have reached their status not by means of talent or initiative, but by means of political connections.
This problem gets even more pronounced with the de facto monopoly that gets granted to the aforementioned specialist companies who would receive The Crown’s mandate to make markets in these credits. These companies would derive their profits from their ability to charge customers for every transaction conducted against their account in the same manner stock brokerages or savings banks do in the United States. This would take money the consumers would want or need to use for fuels and transport, and transfer the wealth to an unproductive market maker.
These specialist market-makers differ from securities dealers, real-estate brokers and other analogous sales personnel in the sense that an honorable broker will find you buying opportunities that you may not have known existed. They help you move assets from a less profitable use to a better one. An honorable and competent loan officer or realtor makes you money and thereby justifies a reasonable rake-off on the transaction.
These specialist companies would charge British subjects money for a service that the British Parliament was sanctioning them to use against their will and best interest. Former British Colonist Samuel Adams would have seen through this scheme in a heart beat. MP Yeo should google “taxation without representation” on the internet and ask himself how that worked out for Parliament the last time they tried it.
More importantly, politicians in the United States, and those of us who live under them, need to heed this as a wake-up call. This grab for power, not the preservation of the Earth’s environment, is what the environmentalist political lobbies in Great Britain, and in The United States, are truly after.
Giving the government control over the most vital commodities in the modern economy will empower despotic Totalism regardless of how many elections are held, and regardless of which party wins office. MP Tim Yeo votes with the Tories and probably considers himself a card-carrying Conservative Parliamentarian.
The government that can dominate the entire economy, quite simply put, will choose to do so. Our job as American voters is to pressure both John McCain and Barack Obama into foregoing schemes to amass central power in the false name environmental activism.
Add in a government agency of thousands to keep track of all this...
What idiots. They actually think that the people of the UK will stand for this? I guess politicians and MP wills get extra credits since they have to travel a lot. And what about the poor smuck who sells all his credits on day one to pay for drugs?..got to give them more.
No doubt there will be some citizens who are “more equal.”
Start the Revolution! No more kowtowing to environmental cultists who want to run every aspect of our lives and wreck the world economy in order to preserve a mythical ecological status quo (the environment, flora, and fauna of the earth have never been static).
The UK is actually doing us a favor by jumping into this full force so we can see the results. I’m glad to hear that the citizens are up in arms over their loss of freedoms and are beginning to show signs of revolt.
What a crock. Of course, all government bureacrats, agencies, and other socialist organizations would be exempt. The rich would benefit because they could buy limitless carbon credits or pay the penalities charged for overuse. The middle class on the other hand, would suffer.
As a civil servant cost estimator I should *LIKE* this scheme. Oh, that’s right, I’m supposed to serve the taxpayer; not service him!
Agreed! We can watch this fail the way Canadian health care has.
All of whom would be exempt, of course, as they protect the common good.
I'm absolutely amazed at the gross acceptance of this so called environmental gloom and doom scenario perpetrated on a gullible and ignorant public. Can't anybody think for themselves anymore?
Revelation 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [or his carbon credit card]
Since then I have treated the Greens for what they are....my enemy.
i read somewhere that there are thousands of britains leaving the british isles weekly. the muslilm take over is one reason, but the taxation is another.
“What idiots. They actually think that the people of the UK will stand for this?”
They might not have a choice. Just look at us; no matter who we vote for in the upcoming election, environmental fascism is essentially what we’re going to get because all three candidates believe in global warming.
“Can’t anybody think for themselves anymore?”
Some people think that just because a person is an expert on a subject (or claims to be) that they are always right and, as ordinary people, they have no right to challenge the experts.
Me, I don’t give a flip whether the person’s an “expert” or not. No one is always right and everyone is susceptible to political bias and good old-fashioned intimidation.
“Can’t anybody think for themselves anymore?”
A) Not unless they are rigorously trained to. It requires logical conjecture.
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