James Annan wrote: > William M Connolley wrote: > > > > On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, James Annan wrote: > >> Time for a bit of transatlantic perspective: petrol prices in the UK are > >> currently over $9/gallon. OK, that's a bigger gallon. But still...it's > >> close. > >> > >> People might like to work out the effective "carbon tax" on petrol in > >> the UK too... > > > > I've seen it done, its well above whats required for climate purporses I > > recall... it was on Tim Worstalls blog I think. > > Well I meant it semi-rhetorically, but the current tax is about 60p > ($1.20) per litre, which contains about 600g of carbon, which by my > calculation makes UKP1000 ($2000) per tonne. Multiply by 3 1/3 to get it > in terms of CO2. Worth thinking about when you hear the claims that $20 > or even $100/t will shut down the world economy/greatly reduce usage > (delete as applicable). > > Of course other fossil fuel usage may turn out to be substantially more > price elastic than transport has proved to be.
Of course, in the U.S., our politicians are moving in exactly the opposite direction. Senate Democrats Propose Loans for Coal-Based Fuel Plants By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON, June 12 -- As the Senate began debate Tuesday on a sprawling bill to reduce oil consumption, top Democrats were circulating a proposal to provide $10 billion in loans for plants that make diesel fuel from coal.... ... Mr. Bingaman's draft proposal would offer up to $10 billion in direct government loans for coal-to-liquid plants.... More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/washington/13energy.html One is tempted to ask, how large would the carbon tax need to be to offset all the government subsidies which promote the use of fossil fuels? And, where are the loans for the folks that want to build/install renewable energy systems? I think that a good case can be made that it is already cheap to install solar thermal heating for HVAC and hot water in many locations, if the accounting is done on a 40 year lifecycle using the same cost of money that the BIG BOYS get when they go to the bank. E. S. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
