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Originally Posted by Leondros
Are we not seeing the impact of what pricing the general consumer out of energy is doing? What people like you have been screaming for the last decade is effectively leading to every day people not being able to afford to fill up their cars or heat their homes. You will find out over the next two winters how painful this can really be. Well not you personally, you are still going to enjoy cheap natural gas by simple virtue of Canada not being tied to the global market, but Europeans are really going to struggle.
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When Europeans freeze, it'll be the fault of environmentalists, not the fault of Putin. Got it.
If ordinary people are unable to heat their homes, that's more than anything an indictment of the economic system as a whole. Ordinary people struggling more and more to get by, while corporate profits keep growing and the ultra-rich keep getting richer...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
All that said I agree you need a carbon tax. But it's a Shell game (pun intended). You know who is about to receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer subsidy to go install a gigantic climate capture project? CNQ, Suncor, all the majors partnered in Pathways. So let's see;
1. the government installs a carbon tax to try and stimulate economic investment in carbon capture projects;
2. proponents pursue projects and submit applications, and major oil and gas producers do so;
3. proponents say the government has to pay them to subsidize the project.
4. government gearing up to give them the lions share of capital for the project.
So they impose a tax, and then fund the oil company to do the project, and then the oil companies own the assets and infrastructure, and then the project won't be done for like, many years anyway.
That's a good example of the type of economic evaluations going on- as to why the private world isn't chasing around green projects with as much gumption as we all want them to. It's because they don't make much money, unfortunately. Not as much as fossil fuel projects. Because there is demand for fossil fuel projects still and the energy cost of fossil fuels is so much substantially cheaper than alternatives. Renewable / green projects don't compete very well with other capital projects. And that isn't to say there aren't many other capital projects in green or renewables or whatever other energy sources that do make money, there are. But ya, it might mean governments need to supply large subsidies for these types of projects. So we are to just crap all over private investors for not doing it? But they're goal / point / reason for being is to make money. So are we saying that all of society needs to change? Which societies? All societies around the world?
Anyway. It's not happening in 30 years.
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What are you going on about carbon capture? That's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about (relatively) carbon-free energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and yes nuclear.
No I don't want society to "crap on" the private sector. I just simply want genuine cooperation between all sectors.
I don't have a crystal ball and I can't say whether or not it'll happen in 30 years. But it's sad when people contribute to the problem by spreading cynicism.