That’s a good point, if something were harmful to economic activity I can understand, it could be argued that co2 and emissions in the long term are harmful to economic activity.Cyclepath wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 3:03 pm I'm not sure I'd totally agree with you here. When you're tasked with raising the funds necessary to run the country, there should be a justification of any proposed raise in taxation rate. I think it's a sensible enough metric to recommend that we place the most taxation on the most socially/economically harmful items. Fags and booze cost us in health provision terms so they're taxed to within in inch of their lives. Diesel particulates area a known polluter of the atmosphere and we definitely should discourage usage.
However the problem occurs when a commodity is essential to a persons important work. Farmers don't need fags/booze to run a tractor/combine but they very much need diesel. I just can't see why it's so damn difficult to set up a sensible tax exclusion for the fuels that are used to create value in the economy. They can then run rampant and scalp the folks that run diesel SUVs around town, or tax the hole off the stupid cruise ships that pollute every port they dock at.
Energy prices are already on the rise, inflation is soaring and even more taxation would definitely cause real harm to people. If our farmers don’t produce the food because costs are too high it’ll just be produced somewhere cheaper in the world and flown in, surely this won’t be of any tangible benefit to the world in terms of emissions. It’s not as simple as reduce our emissions therefore reduce world emissions. The government knows this and that surely one of the reasons that they didn’t ban booze/fags, whoever wants to would just end up buying them somewhere else or create a black market for it.
I fear this type of report is too narrowly focused to take this into account, and a brief look at the available minutes for the meetings confirms this. ‘Moving to a low carbon economy’ doesn’t take into account that if we don’t produce food we need to fly or ship it in. They use words like equity and all come from university backgrounds. Ideologues more interested in saving the world then the upcoming winter.
