In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2006-12-18 01:43:59 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message , Andy Hall writes
So it should be made incentive and not penalty.
How did you have in mind ?
There are plenty. Reductions in corporation tax for businesses
implementing a relevant environmental policy would be but one.
OK - a start, though this is hardly a market force. More of a
'financial instrument applied'.
It's exactly a market force. Make an action attractive and people buy.
Well - reducing corporation tax may be a force on the market, but it's
not an expression of, or a response to the will of the consumer, but a
government intervention. I thought that generally you regarded those as
a bad thing ?
Improvement in environmental reality won't happen to any worthwhile
degree until and unless the economic realities are addressed. Hence
the point about incentive rather than bullying.
Hmmm... There will always be a sense in which the prolong absence
of a carrot will be seen as a stick.
I'm not sure that these things can always be 'happiness led'.
It certainly won't work to always lead with the negativity of
legislation and penalties for trivia.
I agree with penalties for trivia, but the effectiveness of legislation
seems to be experienced every day.
Then to take it
further, this failed policy is not repealed but continued! A policy
that wastes energy and costs money is continued.
Not totally convinced it has failed...
It is focus on the irrelevant. In a typical house, lighting
accounts for 2% of energy consumption.
I seriously doubt that's true, at least unless they use low energy
light bulbs, heat electric, cook electric and have TIG welding as a
hobby.
Care to cite a source ?
I said energy consumption, not electricity consumption.
Even so, I'm not at all sure it's right, and as for every kW of
electricity we use, Drax et al push 2 kW up a chimney as 'waste' heat,
consumption at the point of use is a pretty silly way to look at it.
with the PRIMARY energy used to make that electricity.
That's a matter of generation and there are numerous more efficient
ways to do so than to burn fossil fuels at Drax.
Only if you can find a home for the waste heat.
I was, however, referring to energy use in the home.
Well yes, but if you don't take into account of the primary energy used
to deliver electricity, you will paint a very distorted picture.
It's really very simple. Add up the number of incandescent bulbs
required in a house with their ratings. Work out the usage pattern.
Calculate the amount of electricity used in kWh averaged over a year.
Then look at the energy bills.
Yes. I suspect it comes out to more than 2% though.
Try working it out.
I did, but it depends entirely on the assumptions you make.
I assumed that as you gave a particular figure, you might have a clue
where it came from.
They just have a no incentive to, and would rather not bother if
not doing so increases the sale of fittings in the long run.
Exactly. People don't want this stuff and are voting with their
money.
OK - a little cynical, but I would expect no less.
So that should give you the clue. Make it attractive and hassle free
to do something and people might just do it.
Force them and you will a) have a battle and b) a poorer result than if
you had spent the money cajoling and policing on incentivising.
I'm not particularly convinced.
Lets compare what happens with failed policies in the private
business
sector. Either the business corrects it, and they try to, or they cease
being a service provider, and those that come closer to what the buyer
wants stay in business. The motivation to do well is much larger there,
as the individual either prospers or loses it all.
Which is great in those areas that markets address well. The
environment has generally not been one of them.
Then those wishing to promote its maintenance need to go away and
think about how to make
that marketable rather than immediately falling on the easy way
out of forcing unnatural behaviour.
I'm not sure that living sustainably is unnatural, but it's not
something capitalism has been good at.
That's just broad brushed nonsense
It's broad brush, but I can't think of a lot of major environmental
improvements led by industry off the top of my head.
You ?
It doesn't have to be led by, only made attractive enough to win co-operation.
Hmmm... Sounds like woolly broad brushed nonsense to me.
Essentially you are saying that if something is made attractive to
industry it might deign to respond to an emerging mark, but that's about
it isn't
it ? But this is also true of just about anything from atom bombs to
xylophones !
So... It still sounds fair to me to assert that living / acting living
sustainably is not something capitalism has been good at.
Either marketing or legislation might contribute to getting the
job done. I'm not fussed which, and up to a point happy with both,
though marketing does seem to be the art of selling illusions.
Not sure that makes it the most appropriate tool.
Legislation certainly isn't. Marketing is very effective and
produces sustained results if done honestly and competently.
Where it's done honestly and competently, it's little different from
education. But how often is that ?
Look at government advertising on energy consumption. Terrifyingly
naff !
Terrifyingly wasteful
Quite probably.
as well and focussing on the wrong areas.
Not entirely the wrong areas I think, though out of interest, where do
you think they'd have got a better outcome ?
This is something that the green lobby has attempted to do and
has been found out on the first and failed on the second.
Well there are one or two thinks like Brent Spa where there has been
clear misinformation given. I suspect that such cases are rare, and
other state owned companies like BNFL have hardly been squeaky clean
in this area. The asbestos industry lies for the best part of a
hundred years. I don't think industry can lecture the environmental
movement on corporate responsibility !
So honesty needed all round it seems....
Yes !
THe question is how to achieve that.
Indeed.
It's too expensive to police it.
And very tedious and expensive to go to law over anything that might be
seen as misleading or whatever.
Education about environmental issues, in as quantitative a way as
possible seems to be the better long term strategy, and that is
something I'm happy to invest effort in.
That is reasonable, provided that it is even handed and facts are
separated from guesses and agendas.
Nobody is free of agenda, and there are significant errors likely to
be embedded in current climate models, environmental predictions and
economic predictions of all kinds.
A large part of education is learning to react sensibly to
uncertainty, while at the same time trying to establish a more
rigorous understanding of complex systems.
.. and addressing the areas that actually do make a difference. Has
anybody in the West had a word with the Chinese lately?
! Another of Alan Connors better points.
Actually - it is interesting that so many students of architecture and
sustainable technologies are Chinese these days !
It's interesting to note that groups like Eurosolar seem to sense that
the battle in slowly being won in Europe, and a lot of the active
innovative members have moved on to things like WCRE,
http://www.wcre.de/en/index.php
which is contributing to the debate globally. It's also interesting
that at the one Eurosolar AGM I went to in Berlin, some of the more
innovative material came from places outside the EU like Vietnam.
Technically their contributions were not news, but the interesting thing
was the level of 'buy in' they could get in a community. It looks as if
local social structures can have a very dramatic effect.
Cheers, J/.
--
John Beardmore