You say I’m not worth responding to and then you keep responding. You can’t even last 24 hours. Nobody who takes themself seriously can believe a word you say.
Fran – drop the pretense. I dont know what local political party you belong to but there is just too much “pat nonsense” in what you say, for me to ever think you actually considered the argument yourself.
Rightist cliches.
Hello all, hope you had a nice Xmas. Recalling a pre-break discussion about Peak Oil and Peak Everything, I would just like to note that Krugman agrees with me:
The driving force behind rising prices isn’t demand from the US. It’s demand from China and emerging economies. As more and more people are entering the global middle class, they’re beginning to drive cars and eat meat, placing pressure on world oil and food supplies.
And those supplies aren’t keeping pace. Conventional oil production has been flat for four years. Alternative sources, like oil from Canada’s tar sands, have continued to grow. But these come at high cost.
Also, extreme weather has played an important role in driving up food prices. And there’s every reason to believe climate change is making such weather more common.
So what are the implications of the recent rise in commodity prices? It is, as I said, a sign that we’re living in a finite world, one in which resource constraints are becoming increasingly binding. This won’t bring an end to economic growth, let alone a descent into Mad Max-style collapse. It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.
peak oil can interrupt these nominally non-oil based energy sources, which was the point I made.
Chris writes:
That’s only if you assume that peak oil is going increase the cost of transporting coal etc. so much that it makes the cost of the electricity produced rise to a moderately similar degree. That’s just not true because the cost of transport fuel for transporting power-station coal is a fairly small fraction of the total cost of electricity.
Transport isn’t the only aspect affected by peak oil. There is the mining, the infrastructure that dependents on fuel taxes. But there is also the integrated economy that provides a living wage for families and which in turn provides labour and skills that can be used to transition to a new economy.
If the shock to the current economy is too great, we risk getting less transition and more collapse. How great does the shock have to be before people in the suburbs start going hungry? That is uncertain, but we do know that millions of Australians, and 100’s of millions around the world have invested their life earnings in property that requires oil produced food continually conveyed to their shopping district. And our system of organisation requires each family travelling some 100km per week to get to a job and may or many not be relevant in a world with $x00/barrel oil.
Even if the shock is not great enough for collapse do we get a situation where coal survives longer where most lower carbon alternatives are further suppressed? Why might that happen: because cost are sky rocketing (impeding externaliztion of coals costs) and lower carbon alternatives tend to produce electricity rather than oil substitute and hence compete with coal. Thanks to the Germans in WWII we also have established industrial scale process for turning coal into oil (at high energy cost)
We certainly get a situation where tar sand gets extracted, boiled and great energy costs, and then burnt.
And is the US doing anything about this situation? Begrudginly adding some ethanol to their fuel. The Chinese are limiting the registration of new vehicles. How well would that one go down here or in the US?
It’s clear Alice that you set very little store by the claims you make. You say that I’m not worth responding to, and then when I challenge you to stick by that you repeatedly respond. You can’t manage it for even a single whole day. You call me a rightist but as it turns out your fellow traveller on uncharged fees, who had the temerity to invite me to absent myself from this progressive blog turns out to be an actual rightist who thinks the wealthy pay enough tax and should get something back from the poor and a climate change mitigation opponent as well. It is clear that you are far friednlier to rightists than I am. QED!
As usual, you do a lot of handwaving on “user pays” and how perncious this is on the poor. I’m not that interested in your posturing, so let’s just get down to your central claim:
You impose user charges on roads, then you are excluding the poor, and possibly the lower middle now (increasingly poorer) but worse you are excluding the entrepreneurial poor, for the middle class conservatives who can afford to pay tolls for a comfort drive to work – where the real action happens.
This is wrong all over the place. It is a basic piece of equity that the burdens and the benefits of every community asset be shared about more or less evenly. If a small section of the community benefits privately while “socialising” costs, equity is subverted. This can be called a collective action problem. Every insured individual has an interest in defrauding the insurance company, but if even a significant number of individuals did that the entire remaining pool would stand to lose. So we have a paradox. What is in the interest of every individual is not in the global interest of every individual. Every individual in the insurance pool has an interest in restraining every other individual from doing what he or she personally would like to do. This is because the renegade imposes an externalises to others the cost of his or her actions while privatising the benefit.
Road usage is like that. It is in the interest of every individual to get into his/her car and try to get to work with greater convenience than is possible with public transport. This is especially so because the infrastructure that makes this possible is substantially paid for out of a common pool of funds which maintains the roads regardless of how often any individual uses them or the damage they cause. This is an incentive scheme for individual to use roads. It’s a kind of road usage loyalty scheme. Of course, if every individual, or even a signficant number) take up the cheap access to the roads, then the marginal utility falls for all of them. There’s only so much road space to go around. Since the marginal cost of using cars is so amll, and the most visible parts of the cost are modest people use them wastefully, from the point of view of the commons. Vehicles sitting in tailbacks use enormous amounts of fuel, polluting the air and burning a scarce resource. They suffer elevated engine wear and tear, consuming another resource. Having cars and roads facilitates urban sprawl and saps people’s discretionary time, commuting rathern than having recreation. Because we are so dependent on oil, vast expensive armies occupy the middle east and the subcontinent in order to ensure price stability. And of course, the resort to private vehicle transpoirt massively ramps up road trauma. As I write these lines, the Christmas toll in road morbidity stands at 10 with no details on those seriously injured.
This is a policy mess. I don’t so much want to get the poor off the road as to get as many people as is rational, regardless of wealth) into safe, clean, efficient public transport, abating pollution, resource depletion, urban sprawl and road trauma.
As I’ve said a number of times, I’d gladly abolish CTP, all but nominal registration fees, fuel excises, stamp duties on motor products and the like in exchange for a rigorous, ubiquitous set of externality-driven road usage charges. And if non-road users (e.g. agricultural and mining for example) were using petroleum products, let them pay the externalities specific to them.
Then let the money raised be applied to:
a) maintaining the quality of the existing roads,
b) improving the quality and extent of existing public housing stock focusing on urban consolidation and abating urban sprawl
c) improving the efficiency and quality of public transport
d) taking care of people injured on roads
That is an appalling comment in a progressive blog. Your prefatory “I don’t want to believe this but …” is not unlike “Some of my best friends are …” in terms of it disingenuity.
Are our women just not confident enough within themselves, does power really change people, are there lobbyists of immense persuasion, or is there really a conspiracy? The real question is can I afford to risk voting for another female politician?
Breathtaking in its misogynist condescension. You overlooked the possibility that a woman might just possibly make up her own mind rather than being the victims of sex-based psychological suggestibility/weakness, malice or stupidity. Dare a woman disagree with you? Not in your view. If she does, she is simply showing her female side.
Perhaps women should leave politics to the men, rather than enter and put good public policy at risk?
I should add that while the term ad hominem is often abused, your post is an excellent example of an ad hominem argument, as you assert that propensity to error is an attribute of women, and thus that the claims of women ought to be deprecated.
It was very sneaky. I applied online, paid the fees, began attending meetings and helping out with party projects. This included staffing polling booths and putting leaflets in boxes. It was a stunning piece of infiltration.
peak oil can interrupt these nominally non-oil based energy sources, which was the point I made.
Chris writes:
That’s only if you assume that peak oil is going increase the cost of transporting coal etc. so much that it makes the cost of the electricity produced rise to a moderately similar degree. That’s just not true because the cost of transport fuel for transporting power-station coal is a fairly small fraction of the total cost of electricity.
Transport isn’t the only aspect affected by peak oil. There is the mining,
By transport I meant transport/mining. Coal mining/transport for a power station can be done without using fueled vehicles.
the infrastructure that dependents on fuel taxes. But there is also the integrated economy that provides a living wage for families and which in turn provides labour and skills that can be used to transition to a new economy.
If the shock to the current economy is too great, we risk getting less transition and more collapse. How great does the shock have to be before people in the suburbs start going hungry?
These things are affected much more directly by peak oil than the indirect effect that comes through in the form of higher electricity prices. So your argument is turning into a strawman. None of the problems you mention are any more soluble with PVs than without, and if you’re implying that EVs will solve the problem with PVs then there is no reason why EVs can’t be used in exactly the same way without PVs but with coal etc as an energy source.
These things are affected much more directly by peak oil than the indirect effect that comes through in the form of higher electricity prices. So your argument is turning into a strawman.
Chris, I’m not sure what you are arguing. I was arguing that waiting for peak oil to provide a carbon price was bad policy as it increases the risk of collapse and reduce the capacity we have to build transition.
Where as, bringing forward clean energy price parity via subsidy (in this case the specific was the learning curve given in the Nemet PV study) increase our capacity for transition and reduces the risk of collapse.
How you claim this is a strawman is beyond me. I’ve not be clear on how your argument intersects with mine. Perhaps we are talking past each other, or perhaps you could make what ever case you are wanting to make in a different way?
Bilb:
Nemet’s. He recognises reality as I said then continues to expand a fallacy
Thanks for your unsupported opinion. Not really interested.
Chris, I’m not sure what you are arguing. I was arguing that waiting for peak oil to provide a carbon price was bad policy as it increases the risk of collapse and reduce the capacity we have to build transition.
I suspect that Chris was questioning the magnitude of the ripples from surging oil prices. While oil is used in recovering coal and uranium for example, it is peripheral, and potentially replaceable.
Like me, he is wondering, even if you are right, how PV could stop this or even slow it down appreciably.
Ditto Chris Oneill
I was arguing that waiting for peak oil to provide a carbon price was bad policy as it increases the risk of collapse and reduce the capacity we have to build transition.
A carbon price would make very little difference to peak oil because a carbon price would affect other, much bigger sources of carbon than oil long before it affected the demand for oil.
Where as, bringing forward clean energy price parity via subsidy (in this case the specific was the learning curve given in the Nemet PV study) increase our capacity for transition and reduces the risk of collapse.
PVs, even if they were as cheap as coal-fired electricity, make absolutely no difference to the demand for oil. Even if electricity was free, EVs would still have trouble competing with oil-based transportation. You are conflating two nearly independent issues.
Feeling a need to lash out are you, Fran, a bit of name calling to sooth the bruised ego? Do you feel better now?
Not at all. I was merely calling you on your misogyny. I’d be genuinely stunned if any Green spoke as you did above. What you said was right out of the toolkit of Tony Abbott. GetUp! did an ad on it during the election.
Chris I see we are speaking at cross purposes. I am not arguing that clean energy like PV will stop peak oil, I am arguing that we need clean energy like PV to be broadly available before peak oil bites and risks leaving us stranded and unable to transition.
Note, while clean energy like PV will not stop peak oil, its availability before a deep oil shock will improve opportunties for other than the frenzied conversion of coal. And widely deployed clean energy will work to lessen the shock, and increase our capacity for transition rather then collapse.
I am arguing that we need clean energy like PV to be broadly available before peak oil bites and risks leaving us stranded and unable to transition.
Perhaps it would be helpful if you could outline how PV can stop us being “unable to transition”. What would be the mechanism we’d have that “peak oil” would deny us if we hadn’t by then acquired sufficient PV capacity? If PV were so useful, how would “peak oil” prevent us from acquiring it?
If the real boon is PEVs then would it not make more sense to focus on how to get more PEV capacity out there? (I’m not saying it would be. I’m just trying to follow your argument). We don’t need PV for that as we could run these on the grid.
Well, Fran Barlow, to call me a mysogenist you would need to prove that I hate women. What I have written can in no way be interpreted as mysogeny. Pointing out peoples failures including yours is not a mysogenist act. It is more a nurturing kindness I would have thought.
Your rant was directed at women in general rather than me in particular. I figured as merely a further instantiation of your maxim that women are of doubtful value in public policy.
As this is a text-based medium, none need take my word for that. They need merely to review what you wrote. No reasonable person will reckon it as “nurturing kindness”.
I would like to say that I felt BilB’s comment on some of our prominent female politicians was neither a rant, nor directed at women in general, nor in any way mysogynistic.
I see his comment as coming from some one like me who has had great hope for more women in politics raising the standard of our politicians in many ways but being especially disappointed with the ones he mentioned.
This is what you are saying is not directed at women in general nor in any way misogynistic:
Are our women just not confident enough within themselves, does power really change people, are there lobbyists of immense persuasion, or is there really a conspiracy? The real question is can I afford to risk voting for another female politician?
It is telling what the desire to act as self-appointed lawyer for a particular position can do to one’s ability to perceive the world. What would you have said if some rightwinger had directed such comments at Christine Milne, for favouring renewables or Tony Abbott at Julia Gillard following the Rudd dumping? Something rather different I’m guessing.
Your comment reflects very poorly on you and does nothing for your broader cultural claims about nuclear power.
Fran, sorry this time.
It is legitimate to wonder-at a progressive blogsite most of all- as Bilb says, in the light of Anna Bligh, Kenneally, Palin, Gillard and co, who we were told would “make a difference”, unencumbered by the “mysogony”which feminists assured us was the original problem with politics, whether feminist claims as to “mysogony” and politics were correct, in light of the nauseatingly gormless failed performances of these women, when given the chance. What is “mysogony”in this case, in his scepticism of duplicitous and perhaps quite arguably fascist in some cases, politicans?
I do realise that at other sites I’d be excised for even presenting the above post, but hopefully, at a balanced site I can ask, because to dismiss queries as to the politicans mentioned above, as merely “mysoginistic”, is so lazy and dishonest as to defy comment.
We need to know, same as we did about Howard and Bush and where applicable, question outcomes.
I see. So by way of comparison, if we clook at decolonisation in Africa and noting that some of the replacements of the old imperial rulers were/are corrupt or brutal, locate this failure in their ethnic patrimony, we could merely respond to charges of ethnic bigotry with BilB’s defence of “nurturing kindness”?
Don’t apologise Paul. It’s all very instructive. The vast majority of the world’s rulers have been men and have thus been the authors of almost everything we see in public policy, for good or ill, and yet the perceived failures of women are located by some here as being in their chromosomes. That seems very plain to me.
BilB is bothered by whether he can support another woman politician, presumably because in his view men have done a measurably better job. Is he right? Is having the right chromosomes dispositive of political virtue?
Apologise?
For what?
Plese go back and re read my post, except this time not standing on your head.
We already knew the male polis were deadwood, we were promised these”new” folk would do a job ignored by the old guard, not being burden by this vague (mix’n match, according to situation))”mysogony” that is supposedly at the bottom of all political failure.
What have we seen, apart from more of the same and perhaps worse, involving Bligh and Kenneally at least?
If its ok to bring males to book for their failings why so wrong the same process when it applies to females?
If I despise people like Tripodi or Kevin Andrews, say and then spot something similar in Kenneally or Bligh as to defective character, why am I not allowed to say so in the second instance?
Can iask fran for her assessmentof Kenneally and Bligh and whether should she would be attacking rather than defending, if they were males?
Fran, what I wrote was intentionally provocative. I hoped to get some punchy replies defending the actions of the politicians. I got 2 responses (so far) Jill Rush’s response talked about political conviction and outcomes, great material, and yours which immediately launched into mysogeny, ethnic patrimony, bigotry and chromosomes. Half way there.
My wife periodically gets her back up about some of my utterances because she assumes motives or machinations which just don’t exist in my mind. I am usually completely baffled as to how I could be the heinous person she has perceived me as and am sure I never said most of the things she said I did but that’s how she heard them.
#27 and #29 have me completely baffled which hasn’t helped your case one bit Fran. My feeling is that putting me down is more important to you than getting your point across.
My feeling is that putting me down is more important to you than getting your point across.
How amusing. It’s all about you and your feelings, even when I put the very words you’re defending before you. I wouldn’t dare explore your matrimonial relationship, but you might reflect on that.
If I despise people like Tripodi or Kevin Andrews, say and then spot something similar in Kenneally or Bligh as to defective character, why am I not allowed to say so in the second instance?
You are allowed to say so, but if you want to say that you hate Kevin Andrews actions as a politician but attribute the flaws of female politicians to their gender I call foul. I’ve attacked the policies of Julia Gillard and Anna Bligh and Kristina Keneally — but I didn’t attribute their shortcomings to their chromosomes.
@Fran Barlow
Female – whats female about female puppets Fran, with right wing macho type blokes pulling their strings. Id rather call them sell outs and so would the sisterhood.
Let me see now there is Anna Bligh, Kristina Keneally, Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop and dont forget Prue Goward, Bronwyn Bishop, and now you can add Amanda Fazio (who has heard of her?) for trying to can the inqquiry into the electricity sell of debacle in NSW
and to that Ill add Caren whatsername for doing nothing as education minister in the great sell off of school and university lands in NSW.
Need I go on?. Females or puppets of the party? Not an ounce of feminity in any of them bar a physical examination which you would need for conlusive evidence.
Political party animals, without exception.
Sorry thats Careml Tebbutt – ex minister for one failed system (education) now another failed system (health).
Never did much for either but was considered for leadership of NSW ALP. Says it all.
@Salient Green
Salient – I work for a lovely 70 year old accountant. His wife, when obviously ticked off by him says “and you are supposed to be an accountant!!”
As if being an accountant can solve all problems..
I rather wish I could say it to my partner but I am left saying “and you are supposed to be a used car salesman!!”
Doesnt quite have the same effect!.
@Fran Barlow
This is what you claim as the moral high ground for your adocation of user pays road charges Fran
“This is a policy mess. I don’t so much want to get the poor off the road as to get as many people as is rational, regardless of wealth) into safe, clean, efficient public transport, abating pollution, resource depletion, urban sprawl and road trauma. ”
Noy once anywhere have you offered any colution to what exactly would fund this safe, clean, efficient public transport Fran
Higher taxes? Count me in. But build the bloody thing before people like you impose road user charges. Ill beleive it when I see it. Do you honestly think the government has the means, the inclination, or the expertise to build “safe, clean, effective public transport Fran”
The inclination being the most important thing here. They dont have it. They do have an inclination for user pays road charges without providing the public transport option you mention. You must be living in dreamland. They are more interested in your user pays, and its people like you who totally naively consent to it, without getting the “safe, clean efficient public transport”.
So thanks a lot for helping rightist governments rip us off more by being naively trusting Fran, and having lovely theories that dont work.
Just want to say, at this moment, how nice it is to see someone else on the the end of a thread hiding, instead of myself.
Alice, while you await FB’s reply, thank you for attempting objectivity, and congratulations on the difficult accomplishment, succeeding in such an endeavour.
@paul walter
I suspect I know a (usually fixed smiling) puppet politician when I see one Paul and it does not distingusih between genders and if that makes me a misogynist then I must be one.
and Paul – you want me to say which females are OK in politics?. Id place a bet on Jenny Macklin and Tania Plibersek.
I am not arguing that clean energy like PV will stop peak oil, I am arguing that we need clean energy like PV to be broadly available before peak oil bites and risks leaving us stranded and unable to transition.
So what you mean is that our ability to develop new industries such as PV mains-electricity is very dependent on the availability of cheap oil. I guess you could say this is yet one more type of adverse effect from peak-oil. If it’s as bad as that, maybe people will be more worried about other things than global warming. What a fun world peak-oil will be.
Alice & Fran: It seems obvious, especially from the former’s comments, that neither of you has ever been to New York, London, or Tokyo, Shanghai or Beijing. Despite the most brilliant public transport systems in the world, with vast underground metro systems etc, commuting on those systems in those cities is pure hell. Seats? forget it, they are all occupied before you get on, mostly by rapists and other unsavouries (personal observations of myself and my daughter in London and Paris, especially after 8 pm – and Sydney is not much better, ever tried Redfern after 8 pm except when you need a fix?).
However where there are serious user charges (eg fees for driving into Central London or Singapore’s CBD) people are indeed forced to use public transport. But in London the undergound is hell on earth, heat, stink, and the seats all occupied ab initio so standing room only for all who get on from the 2nd outermost stations. Things are better in Singapore where the car entry fees are high enough to keep most private cars out of the CBD and at least unlike London and Paris the trains are air conditioned. Dream on if you think that could ever be the case in Brisbane or Sydney!
God help us if they’re not (Plibers, Macklin and co); there sure aint much left in the male side of that particular guinea-pig hutch.
I always thought Nettle was on the square and could have done wonders also, but like most other independent figures, they found a way of getting rid of her, too.
Charlie, I think Alice and Fran would remind you that outcomes like the one you describe relate very much to economic rationalism.
We read in these threads of $trillions squandered on warsm bridges that lead nowhere and tax cuts anmd avoidance legisalted for the rich and TNC’s, yet we see with the London underground an example of what comes, for ordinary people, of the shortfalls that have occurred in service provision as result of all the waste.
London underground sounds like the old and sly ploy of “situational bads” and resulting simulacra that prevents subjects from recognising the reality of their situation, as to cause; also beingable to instigate reform, against a “captured” system controlled by smug vermin.
So what you mean is that our ability to develop new industries such as PV mains-electricity is very dependent on the availability of cheap oil.
Yes, but depending on the scale of the shock, peak oil risks impeding many developments that we currently have capacity to address. So I guess the goal becomes setting priorities, as if any one will listen.
Just want to say, at this moment, how nice it is to see someone else on the the end of a thread hiding, instead of myself.
While being right in the majority is clearly better than being right and in the minority, being wrong and in the majority is ugly. cowardly and creepy. I guess that is why it hasn’t occurred to me to cast a formal vote for either of the major parties in any federal, state or local election since 1977 and why I’m now a Green.
You are welcome to be with the misogynist faction. I’m happy to be in a faction of one against that.
Not once anywhere have you offered any solution to what exactly would fund this safe, clean, efficient public transport Fran
You didn’t read my post, did you?
Fran, what will you do when something presents itself that can’t just be waved away with the blanket ad hominem, “misogynist”.
After you pals elsewhere, you lazily and recklessly employ the term as a catch-all, to distract people away from an inspection of your claims; the same as the righty jerks who scream “political correctness” when someone tries to examine their truth-claims re events like privatisation.
And having never met me, what encourages you to such an adhominem?
The fact that I think that scum like Bligh and Kenneally should be subject to the same scrutiny as jerks like Costa and Andrew Fraser?
@Fran Barlow
Yes I did read it Fran – you suggest road user charges would fund safe clean reliable public transport. I dont know what dream world you live in but you apparently failed to notice that the harbour bridge tolls which were introduced to pay for the construction of the harbour bridge have never been removed, the fuel excise tax which was introduced to pay for road construction and maintenance has never been fully applied to that,
and that numerous road tolls now in place fall into “general revenue streams” the outcome of which shows clearly that investment in safe, clean, relaible public transport provision is not high on the list of government pursuits.
The current state government cant even clean existing trains Fran.
As I suggest to you – you are another dreamer with a nice pretty economic plan, which will go the way of all pretty plans when the user pays revenue falls into the hands of a state government like Kenneally’s.
The far more likely outcome is that when the user pays revenue starts flowing in, the state government will sell it as a going concern business to Macquarie Bank (Roads, tolls, the lot) or the Singapore Government or the Saudi Arabians without building your safe, clean, efficient public transport at all.
John Quiggin 
@Alice
You say I’m not worth responding to and then you keep responding. You can’t even last 24 hours. Nobody who takes themself seriously can believe a word you say.
Fran – drop the pretense. I dont know what local political party you belong to but there is just too much “pat nonsense” in what you say, for me to ever think you actually considered the argument yourself.
Rightist cliches.
Hello all, hope you had a nice Xmas. Recalling a pre-break discussion about Peak Oil and Peak Everything, I would just like to note that Krugman agrees with me:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/rising-commodity-prices-will-mean-changing-our-lifestyles-20101227-198io.html
Fran is a member of the Greens, Alice. She says.
@BilB
Oh no …they must have been infiltrated…
(From other thread) :
Chris writes:
Transport isn’t the only aspect affected by peak oil. There is the mining, the infrastructure that dependents on fuel taxes. But there is also the integrated economy that provides a living wage for families and which in turn provides labour and skills that can be used to transition to a new economy.
If the shock to the current economy is too great, we risk getting less transition and more collapse. How great does the shock have to be before people in the suburbs start going hungry? That is uncertain, but we do know that millions of Australians, and 100’s of millions around the world have invested their life earnings in property that requires oil produced food continually conveyed to their shopping district. And our system of organisation requires each family travelling some 100km per week to get to a job and may or many not be relevant in a world with $x00/barrel oil.
Even if the shock is not great enough for collapse do we get a situation where coal survives longer where most lower carbon alternatives are further suppressed? Why might that happen: because cost are sky rocketing (impeding externaliztion of coals costs) and lower carbon alternatives tend to produce electricity rather than oil substitute and hence compete with coal. Thanks to the Germans in WWII we also have established industrial scale process for turning coal into oil (at high energy cost)
We certainly get a situation where tar sand gets extracted, boiled and great energy costs, and then burnt.
And is the US doing anything about this situation? Begrudginly adding some ethanol to their fuel. The Chinese are limiting the registration of new vehicles. How well would that one go down here or in the US?
@Alice [from <in the name of god, go
It’s clear Alice that you set very little store by the claims you make. You say that I’m not worth responding to, and then when I challenge you to stick by that you repeatedly respond. You can’t manage it for even a single whole day. You call me a rightist but as it turns out your fellow traveller on uncharged fees, who had the temerity to invite me to absent myself from this progressive blog turns out to be an actual rightist who thinks the wealthy pay enough tax and should get something back from the poor and a climate change mitigation opponent as well. It is clear that you are far friednlier to rightists than I am. QED!
As usual, you do a lot of handwaving on “user pays” and how perncious this is on the poor. I’m not that interested in your posturing, so let’s just get down to your central claim:
This is wrong all over the place. It is a basic piece of equity that the burdens and the benefits of every community asset be shared about more or less evenly. If a small section of the community benefits privately while “socialising” costs, equity is subverted. This can be called a collective action problem. Every insured individual has an interest in defrauding the insurance company, but if even a significant number of individuals did that the entire remaining pool would stand to lose. So we have a paradox. What is in the interest of every individual is not in the global interest of every individual. Every individual in the insurance pool has an interest in restraining every other individual from doing what he or she personally would like to do. This is because the renegade imposes an externalises to others the cost of his or her actions while privatising the benefit.
Road usage is like that. It is in the interest of every individual to get into his/her car and try to get to work with greater convenience than is possible with public transport. This is especially so because the infrastructure that makes this possible is substantially paid for out of a common pool of funds which maintains the roads regardless of how often any individual uses them or the damage they cause. This is an incentive scheme for individual to use roads. It’s a kind of road usage loyalty scheme. Of course, if every individual, or even a signficant number) take up the cheap access to the roads, then the marginal utility falls for all of them. There’s only so much road space to go around. Since the marginal cost of using cars is so amll, and the most visible parts of the cost are modest people use them wastefully, from the point of view of the commons. Vehicles sitting in tailbacks use enormous amounts of fuel, polluting the air and burning a scarce resource. They suffer elevated engine wear and tear, consuming another resource. Having cars and roads facilitates urban sprawl and saps people’s discretionary time, commuting rathern than having recreation. Because we are so dependent on oil, vast expensive armies occupy the middle east and the subcontinent in order to ensure price stability. And of course, the resort to private vehicle transpoirt massively ramps up road trauma. As I write these lines, the Christmas toll in road morbidity stands at 10 with no details on those seriously injured.
This is a policy mess. I don’t so much want to get the poor off the road as to get as many people as is rational, regardless of wealth) into safe, clean, efficient public transport, abating pollution, resource depletion, urban sprawl and road trauma.
As I’ve said a number of times, I’d gladly abolish CTP, all but nominal registration fees, fuel excises, stamp duties on motor products and the like in exchange for a rigorous, ubiquitous set of externality-driven road usage charges. And if non-road users (e.g. agricultural and mining for example) were using petroleum products, let them pay the externalities specific to them.
Then let the money raised be applied to:
a) maintaining the quality of the existing roads,
b) improving the quality and extent of existing public housing stock focusing on urban consolidation and abating urban sprawl
c) improving the efficiency and quality of public transport
d) taking care of people injured on roads
@BilB From in the name of god go
That is an appalling comment in a progressive blog. Your prefatory “I don’t want to believe this but …” is not unlike “Some of my best friends are …” in terms of it disingenuity.
Breathtaking in its misogynist condescension. You overlooked the possibility that a woman might just possibly make up her own mind rather than being the victims of sex-based psychological suggestibility/weakness, malice or stupidity. Dare a woman disagree with you? Not in your view. If she does, she is simply showing her female side.
Perhaps women should leave politics to the men, rather than enter and put good public policy at risk?
I should add that while the term ad hominem is often abused, your post is an excellent example of an ad hominem argument, as you assert that propensity to error is an attribute of women, and thus that the claims of women ought to be deprecated.
@Alice
It was very sneaky. I applied online, paid the fees, began attending meetings and helping out with party projects. This included staffing polling booths and putting leaflets in boxes. It was a stunning piece of infiltration.
@jakerman
By transport I meant transport/mining. Coal mining/transport for a power station can be done without using fueled vehicles.
These things are affected much more directly by peak oil than the indirect effect that comes through in the form of higher electricity prices. So your argument is turning into a strawman. None of the problems you mention are any more soluble with PVs than without, and if you’re implying that EVs will solve the problem with PVs then there is no reason why EVs can’t be used in exactly the same way without PVs but with coal etc as an energy source.
Chris, I’m not sure what you are arguing. I was arguing that waiting for peak oil to provide a carbon price was bad policy as it increases the risk of collapse and reduce the capacity we have to build transition.
Where as, bringing forward clean energy price parity via subsidy (in this case the specific was the learning curve given in the Nemet PV study) increase our capacity for transition and reduces the risk of collapse.
How you claim this is a strawman is beyond me. I’ve not be clear on how your argument intersects with mine. Perhaps we are talking past each other, or perhaps you could make what ever case you are wanting to make in a different way?
Bilb:
Thanks for your unsupported opinion. Not really interested.
@jakerman
I suspect that Chris was questioning the magnitude of the ripples from surging oil prices. While oil is used in recovering coal and uranium for example, it is peripheral, and potentially replaceable.
Like me, he is wondering, even if you are right, how PV could stop this or even slow it down appreciably.
Ditto Chris Oneill
A carbon price would make very little difference to peak oil because a carbon price would affect other, much bigger sources of carbon than oil long before it affected the demand for oil.
PVs, even if they were as cheap as coal-fired electricity, make absolutely no difference to the demand for oil. Even if electricity was free, EVs would still have trouble competing with oil-based transportation. You are conflating two nearly independent issues.
Feeling a need to lash out are you, Fran, a bit of name calling to sooth the bruised ego? Do you feel better now?
@BilB
Not at all. I was merely calling you on your misogyny. I’d be genuinely stunned if any Green spoke as you did above. What you said was right out of the toolkit of Tony Abbott. GetUp! did an ad on it during the election.
Chris I see we are speaking at cross purposes. I am not arguing that clean energy like PV will stop peak oil, I am arguing that we need clean energy like PV to be broadly available before peak oil bites and risks leaving us stranded and unable to transition.
Note, while clean energy like PV will not stop peak oil, its availability before a deep oil shock will improve opportunties for other than the frenzied conversion of coal. And widely deployed clean energy will work to lessen the shock, and increase our capacity for transition rather then collapse.
@jakerman
Well, Fran Barlow, to call me a mysogenist you would need to prove that I hate women. What I have written can in no way be interpreted as mysogeny. Pointing out peoples failures including yours is not a mysogenist act. It is more a nurturing kindness I would have thought.
@BilB
Your rant was directed at women in general rather than me in particular. I figured as merely a further instantiation of your maxim that women are of doubtful value in public policy.
As this is a text-based medium, none need take my word for that. They need merely to review what you wrote. No reasonable person will reckon it as “nurturing kindness”.
I would like to say that I felt BilB’s comment on some of our prominent female politicians was neither a rant, nor directed at women in general, nor in any way mysogynistic.
I see his comment as coming from some one like me who has had great hope for more women in politics raising the standard of our politicians in many ways but being especially disappointed with the ones he mentioned.
Thanks, SG.
@Salient Green
This is what you are saying is not directed at women in general nor in any way misogynistic:
It is telling what the desire to act as self-appointed lawyer for a particular position can do to one’s ability to perceive the world. What would you have said if some rightwinger had directed such comments at Christine Milne, for favouring renewables or Tony Abbott at Julia Gillard following the Rudd dumping? Something rather different I’m guessing.
Your comment reflects very poorly on you and does nothing for your broader cultural claims about nuclear power.
Fran, sorry this time.
It is legitimate to wonder-at a progressive blogsite most of all- as Bilb says, in the light of Anna Bligh, Kenneally, Palin, Gillard and co, who we were told would “make a difference”, unencumbered by the “mysogony”which feminists assured us was the original problem with politics, whether feminist claims as to “mysogony” and politics were correct, in light of the nauseatingly gormless failed performances of these women, when given the chance. What is “mysogony”in this case, in his scepticism of duplicitous and perhaps quite arguably fascist in some cases, politicans?
I do realise that at other sites I’d be excised for even presenting the above post, but hopefully, at a balanced site I can ask, because to dismiss queries as to the politicans mentioned above, as merely “mysoginistic”, is so lazy and dishonest as to defy comment.
We need to know, same as we did about Howard and Bush and where applicable, question outcomes.
@paul walter
I see. So by way of comparison, if we clook at decolonisation in Africa and noting that some of the replacements of the old imperial rulers were/are corrupt or brutal, locate this failure in their ethnic patrimony, we could merely respond to charges of ethnic bigotry with BilB’s defence of “nurturing kindness”?
Don’t apologise Paul. It’s all very instructive. The vast majority of the world’s rulers have been men and have thus been the authors of almost everything we see in public policy, for good or ill, and yet the perceived failures of women are located by some here as being in their chromosomes. That seems very plain to me.
BilB is bothered by whether he can support another woman politician, presumably because in his view men have done a measurably better job. Is he right? Is having the right chromosomes dispositive of political virtue?
Apologise?
For what?
Plese go back and re read my post, except this time not standing on your head.
We already knew the male polis were deadwood, we were promised these”new” folk would do a job ignored by the old guard, not being burden by this vague (mix’n match, according to situation))”mysogony” that is supposedly at the bottom of all political failure.
What have we seen, apart from more of the same and perhaps worse, involving Bligh and Kenneally at least?
If its ok to bring males to book for their failings why so wrong the same process when it applies to females?
If I despise people like Tripodi or Kevin Andrews, say and then spot something similar in Kenneally or Bligh as to defective character, why am I not allowed to say so in the second instance?
Can iask fran for her assessmentof Kenneally and Bligh and whether should she would be attacking rather than defending, if they were males?
Fran, what I wrote was intentionally provocative. I hoped to get some punchy replies defending the actions of the politicians. I got 2 responses (so far) Jill Rush’s response talked about political conviction and outcomes, great material, and yours which immediately launched into mysogeny, ethnic patrimony, bigotry and chromosomes. Half way there.
My wife periodically gets her back up about some of my utterances because she assumes motives or machinations which just don’t exist in my mind. I am usually completely baffled as to how I could be the heinous person she has perceived me as and am sure I never said most of the things she said I did but that’s how she heard them.
#27 and #29 have me completely baffled which hasn’t helped your case one bit Fran. My feeling is that putting me down is more important to you than getting your point across.
@Salient Green
How amusing. It’s all about you and your feelings, even when I put the very words you’re defending before you. I wouldn’t dare explore your matrimonial relationship, but you might reflect on that.
@paul walter
Your first word was “sorry”.
You are allowed to say so, but if you want to say that you hate Kevin Andrews actions as a politician but attribute the flaws of female politicians to their gender I call foul. I’ve attacked the policies of Julia Gillard and Anna Bligh and Kristina Keneally — but I didn’t attribute their shortcomings to their chromosomes.
@Fran Barlow
Female – whats female about female puppets Fran, with right wing macho type blokes pulling their strings. Id rather call them sell outs and so would the sisterhood.
Let me see now there is Anna Bligh, Kristina Keneally, Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop and dont forget Prue Goward, Bronwyn Bishop, and now you can add Amanda Fazio (who has heard of her?) for trying to can the inqquiry into the electricity sell of debacle in NSW
and to that Ill add Caren whatsername for doing nothing as education minister in the great sell off of school and university lands in NSW.
Need I go on?. Females or puppets of the party? Not an ounce of feminity in any of them bar a physical examination which you would need for conlusive evidence.
Political party animals, without exception.
Sorry thats Careml Tebbutt – ex minister for one failed system (education) now another failed system (health).
Never did much for either but was considered for leadership of NSW ALP. Says it all.
@Salient Green
Salient – I work for a lovely 70 year old accountant. His wife, when obviously ticked off by him says “and you are supposed to be an accountant!!”
As if being an accountant can solve all problems..
I rather wish I could say it to my partner but I am left saying “and you are supposed to be a used car salesman!!”
Doesnt quite have the same effect!.
@Fran Barlow
This is what you claim as the moral high ground for your adocation of user pays road charges Fran
“This is a policy mess. I don’t so much want to get the poor off the road as to get as many people as is rational, regardless of wealth) into safe, clean, efficient public transport, abating pollution, resource depletion, urban sprawl and road trauma. ”
Noy once anywhere have you offered any colution to what exactly would fund this safe, clean, efficient public transport Fran
Higher taxes? Count me in. But build the bloody thing before people like you impose road user charges. Ill beleive it when I see it. Do you honestly think the government has the means, the inclination, or the expertise to build “safe, clean, effective public transport Fran”
The inclination being the most important thing here. They dont have it. They do have an inclination for user pays road charges without providing the public transport option you mention. You must be living in dreamland. They are more interested in your user pays, and its people like you who totally naively consent to it, without getting the “safe, clean efficient public transport”.
So thanks a lot for helping rightist governments rip us off more by being naively trusting Fran, and having lovely theories that dont work.
Just want to say, at this moment, how nice it is to see someone else on the the end of a thread hiding, instead of myself.
Alice, while you await FB’s reply, thank you for attempting objectivity, and congratulations on the difficult accomplishment, succeeding in such an endeavour.
@paul walter
I suspect I know a (usually fixed smiling) puppet politician when I see one Paul and it does not distingusih between genders and if that makes me a misogynist then I must be one.
and Paul – you want me to say which females are OK in politics?. Id place a bet on Jenny Macklin and Tania Plibersek.
Oh and Sylvia Hale who could not be faulted ever.
@jakerman
So what you mean is that our ability to develop new industries such as PV mains-electricity is very dependent on the availability of cheap oil. I guess you could say this is yet one more type of adverse effect from peak-oil. If it’s as bad as that, maybe people will be more worried about other things than global warming. What a fun world peak-oil will be.
Alice & Fran: It seems obvious, especially from the former’s comments, that neither of you has ever been to New York, London, or Tokyo, Shanghai or Beijing. Despite the most brilliant public transport systems in the world, with vast underground metro systems etc, commuting on those systems in those cities is pure hell. Seats? forget it, they are all occupied before you get on, mostly by rapists and other unsavouries (personal observations of myself and my daughter in London and Paris, especially after 8 pm – and Sydney is not much better, ever tried Redfern after 8 pm except when you need a fix?).
However where there are serious user charges (eg fees for driving into Central London or Singapore’s CBD) people are indeed forced to use public transport. But in London the undergound is hell on earth, heat, stink, and the seats all occupied ab initio so standing room only for all who get on from the 2nd outermost stations. Things are better in Singapore where the car entry fees are high enough to keep most private cars out of the CBD and at least unlike London and Paris the trains are air conditioned. Dream on if you think that could ever be the case in Brisbane or Sydney!
God help us if they’re not (Plibers, Macklin and co); there sure aint much left in the male side of that particular guinea-pig hutch.
I always thought Nettle was on the square and could have done wonders also, but like most other independent figures, they found a way of getting rid of her, too.
Charlie, I think Alice and Fran would remind you that outcomes like the one you describe relate very much to economic rationalism.
We read in these threads of $trillions squandered on warsm bridges that lead nowhere and tax cuts anmd avoidance legisalted for the rich and TNC’s, yet we see with the London underground an example of what comes, for ordinary people, of the shortfalls that have occurred in service provision as result of all the waste.
London underground sounds like the old and sly ploy of “situational bads” and resulting simulacra that prevents subjects from recognising the reality of their situation, as to cause; also beingable to instigate reform, against a “captured” system controlled by smug vermin.
Yes, but depending on the scale of the shock, peak oil risks impeding many developments that we currently have capacity to address. So I guess the goal becomes setting priorities, as if any one will listen.
@paul walter
While being right in the majority is clearly better than being right and in the minority, being wrong and in the majority is ugly. cowardly and creepy. I guess that is why it hasn’t occurred to me to cast a formal vote for either of the major parties in any federal, state or local election since 1977 and why I’m now a Green.
You are welcome to be with the misogynist faction. I’m happy to be in a faction of one against that.
@Alice
You didn’t read my post, did you?
Fran, what will you do when something presents itself that can’t just be waved away with the blanket ad hominem, “misogynist”.
After you pals elsewhere, you lazily and recklessly employ the term as a catch-all, to distract people away from an inspection of your claims; the same as the righty jerks who scream “political correctness” when someone tries to examine their truth-claims re events like privatisation.
And having never met me, what encourages you to such an adhominem?
The fact that I think that scum like Bligh and Kenneally should be subject to the same scrutiny as jerks like Costa and Andrew Fraser?
@Fran Barlow
Yes I did read it Fran – you suggest road user charges would fund safe clean reliable public transport. I dont know what dream world you live in but you apparently failed to notice that the harbour bridge tolls which were introduced to pay for the construction of the harbour bridge have never been removed, the fuel excise tax which was introduced to pay for road construction and maintenance has never been fully applied to that,
and that numerous road tolls now in place fall into “general revenue streams” the outcome of which shows clearly that investment in safe, clean, relaible public transport provision is not high on the list of government pursuits.
The current state government cant even clean existing trains Fran.
As I suggest to you – you are another dreamer with a nice pretty economic plan, which will go the way of all pretty plans when the user pays revenue falls into the hands of a state government like Kenneally’s.
The far more likely outcome is that when the user pays revenue starts flowing in, the state government will sell it as a going concern business to Macquarie Bank (Roads, tolls, the lot) or the Singapore Government or the Saudi Arabians without building your safe, clean, efficient public transport at all.
Dream on.