you have to have done it to get it

from Wulfmorgenthaler

a carbon tax

I'm sure someone can produce any number of intricate economic arguments into why a TAX on carbon helps to reduce the unaccounted for externalities of carbon.

Heck I'm sure someone can make a rational series of arguments to almost any proposition, but that does not change the fact that a TAX reaches into my pocket and takes money from me.

Governments have been way way too comfortable about taking taking and taking.

I find it reprehensible that these economic instruments are being employed in an attempt to help the market to transit from Coal to "clean", particularly in the face of the Australian Govenment spending billions of dollars "propping up" the industries which we are now supposed to require economic incentive to transit from.

Worth reading are these two documents:


Subsidies that Encourage Fossil Fuel Use in Australia

As well as subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption, other economic incentives are often built into the structure of the economy, and particularly the taxation system, which encourage greater consumption of fossil fuels. These incentives act as structural barriers to greenhouse gas abatement. Removal of these incentives also has the potential to deliver a double dividend of improved economic performance and greenhouse abatement.

Although public funds are used to provide subsidies, the public is often unaware of the existence and magnitude of the subsidies. One of the aims of this paper is to describe and quantify public subsidies to fossil fuel use and production in Australia to improve the transparency of government funding allocation.

and

Coal subsidies far outweigh funding for renewables

The study commissioned by Greenpeace found in an average year, the Government subsidises coal, oil and gas companies to the tune of about $9 billion.

But renewable industries like solar and wind received $330 million.

so perhaps they could just stop spending my tax money on the "polluters" and let the market work effectively at finding what people are actually willing to spend on their energy and where it comes from.

the facebook demographic?

I've always thought the health was important (being some one who has struggled to regain and maintain my own in the past). Being the recipient of life saving transplant surgery myself I do value the role of the modern medicine and that skills of the surgeon, however there is a variety of surgery which I personally find distasteful and that is such which encourages people to remain living unhealthy lifestyles and offering them crutches to avoid facing the personal responsibility for their own actions.

This morning I checked my facebook account and found an add for just such a thing:



gastric banding ... I'm sure its got a place for chronically obese people, but advertising it in the main stream is something I find disgusting. I wonder why its on an ad on Facebook? Is it because there are so many facebook people who may find this advertisement attractive?

To me it seems that its just like the actions of drug companies who try to invent syndromes and problems in order push people onto drugs which they sell.

Eat well, exersize frequently and enjoy your life. Its a beautiful world, so go out and enjoy it ... no matter where you live.

Christchurch

its hard to grasp for me that little over 24 hours after I left Christchurch that it was again hit with earthquakes.

On Sunday the 20th I was standing outside the Cathedral there and took this pano



now the church is in rubble and this window



is likely smashed

Having been there and stood in these places just so recently this seems all the more real and engaging than had I never been there. My thoughts and best wishes to to the people there.