Further comment on Harper's UN speech - someone missed the boat
As I listened to the report on CBC of the Prime Minister's speech on climate change, I heard a reference to his belief that market forces will lead to technological innovation which will eventually lead to solving the climate crisis.
What market forces is he talking about? The market forces I see operating are that people and corporations will buy the cheapest power available, irrespective of CO2, GHG or the impact of depleted uranium. The enlightened few may pay more for clean energy, but the market force is predominantly "fueled" by price. These same market forces drive manufacturing and assembly operations to the countries with the lowest labour cost, irrespective of worker conditions and human rights.
Market forces can be used to advantage through tax shifting, cap and trade mechanisms and well designed programs, such as R&D funding for alternative energy development and commercialization. The Prime Minister is missing the point that without these measures, the market will continue to do exactly what it has always done, consuming the unvalued portions of our habitat - particularly clean air and fresh, clean water.
Economic fundamentals say that the price point drives both the supply curve and the demand curve. Without changing the price points, market mechanisms will not solve the problems that face us today. In fact, the market mechanisms based on "free" air, "free" water, "free" ecosystem and "free" garbage disposal are what got us into trouble in the first place.
Jim Johnston,
Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
The opinions expressed are my own.
- Jim Johnston's blog
- Vous devez vous identifier ou créer un compte pour écrire des commentaires
Commentaires
A pollution pass for corporations is what Harper is proposing
We should be hammering anyone who suggests that 'market forces' will fix the problem we're in - those same forces have created the problem. We need to talk about the government levelling the playing field so that polluters pay and clean companies are encouraged.
Mr. Harper is following the Bush/U.S. model of voluntary targets (laughably called 'aspirational' in their APEC meeting) for corporations that are obliged to maximise short-term profits at the expense of all other considerations, including jobs and our children's future.
Mr. Harper and the other party leaders are all on record opposing a carbon tax; without it, the proper 'market signals' will not be sent or received.
Brian Gordon
Nominated Candidate, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca
Green Party of Canada
Trained Presenter
An Inconvenient Truth
People - Planet - Prosperity
The New Green Economy
Market forces are changing.
Lambton Kent Middlesex EDA (SW Ontario)
Consumers are anticipating higher fuel costs and are starting to push the market toward more fuel economy on all fronts.
Our problem is not to regulate the companies but to get voters onside with greater taxes in the fuels they have to pay for, included in products or directly. Government is very shy of adding taxes that consumers in the long run have to pay,for fear of voter backlash.
Our duty then is to prepare the voters as consumers to accept higher taxes in fuels without beating up on governments that impose those taxes, at least not for adding the tax. We might reasonably encourage voters to beat up on governments for other reasons.
Decisions like those facing Ontario in early replacement of our nuclear electrical generation are decisions that will be with us for half a century. They are not driven by consumers wanting cheap power only. They are also driven by insistence that we must have a continuous, reliable supply of almost unlimited energy. What are we about to offer Ontario consumers misses the mark, widely, on that score. We could provide clean Green energy, but to make use of it we have to either provide fossil fuel backup or deliberately plan to learn to live with major fluctuations in our supply of power.
Market forces do mitigate against a system of smart-panels that could allow our utilities to get by with far less reliable sources of energy, because wind power, our poster Green energy, is not just short-term unreliable. It is all summer unreliable... all summer we will have far less power than we would generate in winter. Yes, I know, that means we have to build wind power big enough to provide our power in summer, and have energ y left over for winter heating. Are we ready to tell the public that, get the consuming and voting public onside with that scale of investment? If not, we can not use the excessive investment cost of nuclear as an argument.
We can NOT expect our government to take action that nobody has prepared the voter and consumer for, whether it be a conservative, or Green government. We have to do the selling job, not just the griping when they do not commit political suicide.