On 2006-11-30 03:01:53 +0000, John Beardmore said:



I have no more right to dictate than anybody else does. What we have
been talking about is what we WANT, and the axioms that underpin our
relationship with the environment and government.

Ultimately, these are the axioms that underpin most things. If people
experience too many things not to their liking, they will take action.
This begins with choosing to buy elsewhere, including behaviour at
the ballot box. It also includes people ignoring stupid legislation,
as we are starting to see.


But I do have a right to express what I think the priorities should be
in making a determination, which I do. I contribute my thoughts freely
to the debate in the hope, rather than expectation, that they will help
what I regard as 'common sense' prevail.

It may seem like common sense to you, but I would prefer to take the a
la carte menu and to choose which things I believe to be worthwhile and
leave aside things that I don't. I am not interested in people who
can't come with definable cases for actions and outcomes attempting to
run my life for me.



I freely acknowledge that acting on my wishes would deny you access to
uniformed sycophantic bin men and other perks of the market, but the
very act of establishing a competitive market is also likely to
undermine the environmental outcomes I seek, even if the service we
have now continues to be available, so simply putting a market in place
may deny me, and others, my preferred outcome.

That's fine, but then you will understand that others will not hold
that view and will make decisions not to co-operate with schemes where
no choice is on offer.



I don't think there are any overriding 'rights' here. We should all
have a right to make practicable choices, and we should all have a
right to live sustainably as far as is practicable. In the technical
sense of the word, this is a classic 'messy' problem.

The issue here is around the definition of practicable. For me, that
strongly includes the amount of time taken and the economic factors.
Any of these things have to pass those two tests first. If they
don't, then for me they are not practicable.



I seek to address it by asking people the real value of the outcome
they seek, and the real cost of the alternatives.

All of the above said, if somebody wants to put up a detailed LCA case
for a market based solution that indicates real net environmental
benefits, I'm up for examining it.

That would need to be done by a set of impartial and disinterested
people, and one is quite unlikely to do so. I would count
environmental benefit as anything that results in more *sensble*
recycling provided that there are choices in how that is implemented in
terms of the impact on the customer.
I am not going to buy into anything that doesn't meet the economic and
convenience factors first.