for my take click here http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Dec2006/dec-06-stern.htm

If we build a lot of renewable generating capacity, this will also be largely unwanted overnight and ideal for charging electric cars. So while having lots of nuclear electricity would be good for electric cars, the converse is not so clear.

In any case nuclear is clearly a potential part of the solution to global warming even if it is the cause of other problems. It seems difficult to oppose unless the other problems are more serious than that of global warming.

But as we showed in the 1970s, and as the comparison of the US and Europe shows now, raising petrol prices persuades people to buy mroe fuel efficient cars – my sister’s Yaris has averaged over 50mpg in the 5000 miles that she has had it. The wonders of a market economy!

The autocar test of the tesla is here:
http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/FirstDrives/Tesla-Roadster-Roadster/223095/

http://joeotten.blogspot.com/2007/06/being-green-and-socialism-response-to.html

trying html again:

joeotten.blogspot.com/2007/06/being-green-and-socialism-response-to.html

Just to add. The steps we might take are not so reliant on innovation as is suggested. Enough technology exists, but it has not been widely used to to its cost. Innovation will drive down those costs – I am not suggesting that we gamble on new clean energy sources being invented – I am suggesting that we switch to the cleaner energy sources that already exist.

I suppose I’ve two points to make on this: the kind of negative freedom where individuals, businesses and Governments are free to ruin the planet is not liberalism at all, I don’t think – such action would heavily restrict the freedom of most of the world’s population. But we don’t have to make a choice between a free for all and rigid authoritarianism.

Secondly, we adhere to a number of regulatory rules without feeling our liberties have been taken away from us already. For example, health and safety rules. Most Liberal Democrats(?) see Government as the regulator and the enabler, performing the difficult balancing act, keeping such interventions as small as possible, and making decisions at the correct level of Government, which maximises the involvement of those affected. The key is how such rules are framed.

Richard points out that we feel that natural innovation is more effective than state planning – so we have to frame Government action, local, national and international, in ways that either disourage polluting activities or encourage non-polluting activities, or both. The Green Tax Switch is one such attempt. As is, on a different scale, Islington’s climate change partnership and grant-making Climate Change Fund.

John assumes this is a question of whether we can stomach the necessary socialistic measures, when I’d argue that fixing the carbon-blindness of the market is much more likely to succeed that state planning (as well as being less likely to the erosion of our liberties, but in the apocalypse scenario, that’s a side issue).

We need to create a tax system that penalises environmentally damaging behaviour, and then let the power of innovation respond to it. Soon, you’ll see cars being advertised for their fuel efficiency more often etc. etc. and companies competing on the point. Much better than blunter interventions.

The point where you may have a point is on energy and public transport policy, where it could be that an expansion in state subsidy (e.g. for renewables and rail infrastructure) is needed. But on the more general idea of curbing carbon outputs from personal behaviour, I am sure tax will be more effective than ID card carbon allowances.

There will be a need for state intervention to curb the biggest market failure in the history of the world. But that must be an intervention that patches the failure, rather than one which attempts a Soviet-style change in our economy overall. I think the Green party’s dislike of liberal capitalist democracy leads them to supporting a lot of things which aren’t very Green, just socialist. The confusion of eco-tinged-communism with environmentalism has done the latter enormous harm.

Not only is it more likely to succeed, but it’s more likely to take the public with us (vital in a democracy) and guarantee individual liberties (vital in a liberal society).

The best book I’ve seen on this principle (and more broadly as a vision of a social liberal economy) is Adair Turner’s “Just Capital”. Can’t be praised enough, IMHO.

The debate you’ve raised is one that may bubble about when we have our party policy debate on the environment. There is still is a vital debate to be had, and I for one hope we continue to develop a liberal environmentalism, not ape a watered-down version of the Green party’s eco-communism. Certainly, the Green Tax Switch was an excellent move towards Georgist principles, which I think will be the core of a liberal environmentalism.

And yes, the Peelite Tories were in favour of repealing the Corn Laws, while the (majority) Bentinck Tories were convinced protectionists. The 1846 repeal act split their party, and left a strange interlude in the party system where the various free-trading factions slowly coalesced into… us. Anyway, I don’t think the historical example helps you at all.

But this example also points to a rather significant truth: that markets can often do far more efficiently what state planning is hopeless at. The corn laws lead to mass starvation; socialist planned economies do pretty much the same thing. Has China’s one child per family policy actually worked? That’s a significant question because it was concerned about a scarcity of resources.

Apart from the fact that I doubt such soviet-style planning would actually work, I certainly can’t see it being very popular.

It may well be that we can’t solve this problem and that the human race is headed for a fall. It won’t be a pleasent experience, but I suspect we’ll survive as a species. I also suspect that the absolute worst case scenarios simply won’t happen: most doomsday scenarios discount the human race’s ability to knuckle down in a crisis and its ability to develop new technologies.

Ultimately we have to win hearts and minds on this issue. I doubt we’ll achieve that by stamping on people.

It really won’t be hard to move to zero carbon for all stationary power within a generation, which combined with a 50% cut in land and sea transport (trains and ships are getting worse not better, helped by paying no tax on fuel). The tough one is aviation, but so long as we get the rest right, aviation on its own is not sufficient to produce enough CO2 to matter, on any plausible aviation projection, including building new runways.

We could also be ingenious. For example, we could build more roads, which will mean people drive further. Petrol is heavily taxed, and the govt can use some of that new tax revenue to subsidise solar/wind etc to carbon offset the new road twice over (and still cover the cost of the road, etc etc). Result, we all do more of what we want to do, and total carbon emissions fall. Equally we could raise the speed limit to 100mph on motorways when the road is clear and dry. Cars use more petrol at that sort of speed, that means more tax, and the govt can double offset the extra carbon emissions. Again, less carbon, and no need for any socialism.

We have adapted pretty well to petrol having a 100% tax on it. We could do the same to other forms of CO2 emission.