The latest little proposalette over what we should do about climate change:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Some solutions are simple: state intervention to nationalise the railways and further subsidise prices would be a start. Meanwhile, banning all non-essential domestic flights within England, Scotland and Wales is common sense thinking. Simply increasing taxes on air travel isn’t going far enough. Restricting flight numbers might initially sound drastic, but with 8% of global emissions coming from travel, and the sector set to grow at 4% per year internationally, there is no other choice.[/perfectpullquote]This is to ignore the most basic economics of course. The most efficient manner of rationing anything is by price.
That though runs into that equity problem. But so too does this idea of banning non-essential. For who is it that determines what is essential? We know damn well that MPs will be declared as essential travellers. So too civil servants. And we can no doubt look forward to those attending climate change conferences as being so. Possibly those who work in woke NGOs – after all, combating the societal exclusion of the ill-gendered snowflake is a vital function, is it not?
And the Senior Lecturer must be allowed to visit Scotland, his time is far too valuable to waste on a train.
Who determines essential then? And why in buggery would we trust in those who claim that it should be them doing the determining?
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When we all have Smart Meters, the providers of electricity and gas to our homes will presumably be able to cut off supplies on a meter-by-meter basis.
Will there be exceptions for 'essential workers'? MPs, perhaps?
And who will decide who is an 'essential worker'? MPs, perhaps?
.. or waiting in the green-room to be cancelled off Newsnight...
I wish you'd stop giving credence to the climate scam
Too right Thruppennybit.
Tim, stop saying 'lets just accept it's real for a minute' and suchlike and do some bloody research. Despite the near total MSM buy-in to the cult of CAGW there are enough proper scientists on the net refuting it.
And if you really interested in the economics side of this, you could do a cost - benefit analysis:
Using the IPCC's numbers if the UK cut its emissions to zero the reduction in temperature would be 0.000002c. The cost? Upwards of a couple of trillion pounds.
We are facing a man-made climate emergency so how about a non-price response? (More feminine?). Something like: if you want to travel by plane you first fill out a 10 page online request which is then perused by a gender-neutral committee who may ask you to front up and explain further your need to fly to Scotland to clinch a contract that will create and extra 5 jobs (Hint: If you the business owner are going to only pocket less than 10% of the extra revenue and labour will get the lion share then your chances of approval increase dramatically). Once approved you take the documents to the airline and stand in a queue for hours and eventually when it is your turn the flight is full. But suddenly a seat becomes available after an envelope passes hands.
Personally, I would think bugger that and go to Lord's instead for the day!