Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Taking The Nanny State To The Extreme

Some people think that only our betters in government know what's best for us, and that we should leave all of life's decisions in their capable hands.

Ask the citizens of the former Soviet Union how that turned out.

Anyway, here's a proposal that's sickening and scary at the same time:

Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.

The influential Environmental Audit Committee says a personal carbon trading scheme is the best and fairest way of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions without penalising the poor.

Under the scheme, everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights.


Somehow I just don't see Richard Branson living with, or abiding by, the same allotment that my relatives in Kent or Rugby will have. As Instapundit said on the topic, "not until rich celebrities and government officials fly commercial".

Update: What happens when our government, in an attempt to "do something", chooses the wrong "solution" to the so-called problem? Here's a state-by-state breakdown of potential costs of the proposed Lieberman-Warner Climate Change legislation. It's not pretty.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Well wouldn't the system require the rich to purchase unused carbon rations from other people? So if one person doesn't drive or fly he can sell his rations to someone who does both often. It would effectively limit the entire country's carbon emissions to a government set rate, while allowing people who need to create carbon emissions to do so. Now does CO2 need to be limited, and are the consequences of limiting CO2 better than the alternative are both separate questions for other blog posts, but this is the most logical solution I've seen if your goal is to actually reduce CO2. It effectively taxes everything that produces CO2 at a variable rate of demand creating a constant level of CO2 production. It also has the unique consequence of a redistribution of wealth, which some people find favorable.

Ellen K said...

If it walks like rationing, smells like rationing and quacks, it's rationing-except for the quacking part.

Anonymous said...

"It effectively taxes everything that produces CO2..."

Yep, that sounds like the government to me. They might as well tax me everytime I exhale.