Who's going to carry Green politics in Ireland?

dlofnep

With the demise of the Green Party, I have to say - while I've always been conscious about the environment, I'm curious as to who's going to take the ball and run with it?

Nobody really wants to talk about green politics under the current economic climate (no pun intended), but it is certainly something that we're going to have to discuss, real soon - with the rise in fuel prices, and the pending peak oil crisis.

Now, I'm not talking taxation to clean up the environment. We all know India, China and the US have the real role to play in cleaning up the environment. And while we can do our tokenistic bit here in Ireland (which we should) - what I'm really talking about is renewable resources.

Do we need the likes of the Green Party back, under new leadership and a new backbone - one with a realistic vision.. or can another political party carry the torch and start implementing green politics?

Einhard

The Greens will.

They haven't gone away you know!;)

Seriously, rumour of their demise has been greatly exaggerated. The parliamentary party might have been wiped out, but the Green movement itself is still quite strong. I don't think the Greens are like the PDs, whose disastrous election showing was a prelude to their winding up. For the PDs, parliamentary representation was very much an end in itself, whereas I think that for the Greens, it is more a means to an end. So I think they'll be around for a while, and that the Green Party will continue to carry Green politics in Ireland. Indeed, the fact that such politics will probably not be wildly popular makes it even more likely that it will fall to the Greens to push them.

dlofnep

Do you think the public might start to become more attentive as fuel & heating prices continue to rise? Is it time the Government started to hold serious discussions on how we can best prepare for the pending crisis?

Nodin

dlofnep wrote: »

With the demise of the Green Party, I have to say - while I've always been conscious about the environment, I'm curious as to who's going to take the ball and run with it?

Nobody really wants to talk about green politics under the current economic climate (no pun intended), but it is certainly something that we're going to have to discuss, real soon - with the rise in fuel prices, and the pending peak oil crisis.

Now, I'm not talking taxation to clean up the environment. We all know India, China and the US have the real role to play in cleaning up the environment. And while we can do our tokenistic bit here in Ireland (which we should) - what I'm really talking about is renewable resources.

Do we need the likes of the Green Party back, under new leadership and a new backbone - one with a realistic vision.. or can another political party carry the torch and start implementing green politics?

A green party thats in touch with the rural population is whats needed.

danbohan

Nodin wrote: »

A green party thats in touch with the rural population is whats needed.

yes, not one that tries to deny people the opportunity to live in rural areas like the last bunch . that bunch fools have done so much damage to the green image in Ireland that it will be decades before its undone

bazza1

The Green party will go underground and re emerge as the Provisional Green Party and will split into the Real Green Party and the Continuity Green Party!:D

johngalway

Nodin wrote: »

A green party thats in touch with the rural population is whats needed.

That's an interesting idea. It's tough enough making a living in rural Ireland without being hammered by fuel taxes and farming by calendar on top of it.

My problem with the carbon tax on diesel and petrol is there was no readily available alternative, so the motivational ingredients read as "100% stick, hold the carrot".

Inverse to the power of one!

Why do we need a political party for the Green cause?

In NZ the Green outlook is a societal one which is in place regardless of which party is in power, anything that endangers their Green image is tackled head on by majority and a reluctance to endanger one of the most pristine environments in the world.

In fact there's a lot that could be said for society taking up these causes itself as opposed to relying on political parties, I think the Irish Greens have given a costly lesson in that regard.

Denerick

Greens will be back. They just mightn't ever get a parliamentary seat for a generation or so. They were a luxury of the Celtic Tiger; we can't afford luxuries like that anymore.

Spudmonkey

A few weeks quite a number of people on here were delighted to see the back of the greens. Id assume these same people would be expecting the new government to take charge of these issues.

later12

Many of our European neighbours have no Green Party representation in their national parliaments and I cannot realistically see that either they or the planet are any the worse off for that.

In fact it is worth mentioning that the most meaningful green initiatives in this country were actually taken by Fianna Fail and did not come from the GP at all.

I believe that the sole legacy of the GP in Ireland, which is dead, will be civil partnership.

Corsendonk

Who is likely to take the leadership of the Greens?

later12

Corsendonk wrote: »

Who is likely to take the leadership of the Greens?

I would think Dan Boyle, but in the capacity of a campaigner as opposed to a continuing Senator obviously, having no chance of re-election.

gurramok

Their policy of fuel hikes hit the poor as well as ordinary workers harder more than the rich. When that 8c rise was slapped on petrol a couple of years ago, the rage against the greens was at boiling point among my friends and colleagues, it was like the last straw.

Scofflaw

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

Why do we need a political party for the Green cause?

In NZ the Green outlook is a societal one which is in place regardless of which party is in power, anything that endangers their Green image is tackled head on by majority and a reluctance to endanger one of the most pristine environments in the world.

In fact there's a lot that could be said for society taking up these causes itself as opposed to relying on political parties, I think the Irish Greens have given a costly lesson in that regard.

The Irish Green Party exists largely because Irish society at large doesn't seem to have any desire to take up such causes.

cordially,
Scofflaw

flutered

a green party who sprout sense, not the drivel we have had to endure for some time, my lasting impression of the green party is, they propped up f.f. while they raped my country, that will take a lot of forgiving, they also were running with the idea of putting a 20 euro tax on all cattle each year, i do not own any cattle, also i take my envoirnmet duties seriously, the main ingrediant of any movement has to be common sense, something the greens never had or used.

CokaColumbo

I welcome the demise of the Green Party and was relieved to see that their annihilation at local level was followed by their annihilation at national level. They have been relegated back to the fringes of society where they belong.

Neo-environmentalism and the Green Economy destroys productive, private sector employment and carbon taxes disproportionately harm the least well off in society. Less wind-mills, more jobs is what I say!

ei.sdraob

dlofnep wrote: »

Do you think the public might start to become more attentive as fuel & heating prices continue to rise? Is it time the Government started to hold serious discussions on how we can best prepare for the pending crisis?

What crisis? 2/3rds of petrol price is tax, people are not stupid you know they know they are being ripped of and by the state no less.

Scofflaw

gurramok wrote: »

Their policy of fuel hikes hit the poor as well as ordinary workers harder more than the rich. When that 8c rise was slapped on petrol a couple of years ago, the rage against the greens was at boiling point among my friends and colleagues, it was like the last straw.

I continue to find this one really quite weird - and hold up just a second before everyone hits me at once, because I'm genuinely curious here.

The 'carbon tax' was a carbon tax in name only. It was exactly the same size as a standard budget excise rise - slapping 4.3c on a litre of petrol is an absolutely bog-standard rise in excise:

A new carbon tax of €15 Euro per Tonne was announced in the 2010 Budget. The tax will apply to Petrol and Diesel from midnight tonight.
Petrol will go up by 4.2c a litre and diesel by 4.9c a litre

So why the fury? As ei.sdraob points out, 2/3rds of the price of petrol is made up of tax - the result of years of excise rises, all about the same size as the so-called 'carbon tax'. Why is this particular excise rise the object of so much fury? Would a tax by any other name not cost as much?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Nodin

johngalway wrote: »

That's an interesting idea. It's tough enough making a living in rural Ireland without being hammered by fuel taxes and farming by calendar on top of it.

My problem with the carbon tax on diesel and petrol is there was no readily available alternative, so the motivational ingredients read as "100% stick, hold the carrot".

....it's just they come across as a group of urban-centric 'meat grows on trees' people (yes, thats a generalisation, but that is the perception). There seemed to be no link to people far more affected by their policies than town and city dwellers, which struck me as rather bizarre, given the supposed agenda of the party.

the groutch

hopefully nobody, Green politics is just a case of tax everything in anyway connected with global warming/greenhouse effect (both of which are pure BS, they even contradict each other)

Corsendonk

later10 wrote: »

I would think Dan Boyle, but in the capacity of a campaigner as opposed to a continuing Senator obviously, having no chance of re-election.

Is that a joke? He did run for the Dail in the last election and polled as one of the worst(2.5%) of the Greens big hitters. His constant twitting irriated and alienated many voters that had given the greens transfer votes in the past. He was Cardinal Richelieu to John Gormley Louis XIII.

gurramok

Scofflaw wrote: »

I continue to find this one really quite weird - and hold up just a second before everyone hits me at once, because I'm genuinely curious here.

The 'carbon tax' was a carbon tax in name only. It was exactly the same size as a standard budget excise rise - slapping 4.3c on a litre of petrol is an absolutely bog-standard rise in excise:

So why the fury? As ei.sdraob points out, 2/3rds of the price of petrol is made up of tax - the result of years of excise rises, all about the same size as the so-called 'carbon tax'. Why is this particular excise rise the object of so much fury? Would a tax by any other name not cost as much?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Add another year, it happened in October 2008, time flies Then the other rises after that, mostly tax/excise based, must of been at least 20cent in petrol alone.

Thing is, penalising people for using fuel is penalising the vast majority of consumers and most importantly does not discriminate between rich and poor. On the environment front, Ireland is small fry in the global pollution stakes relating to fuel, there was no need to hike fuel so much, that is forgotten by the Greens.

Liam Byrne

Spudmonkey wrote: »

A few weeks quite a number of people on here were delighted to see the back of the greens. Id assume these same people would be expecting the new government to take charge of these issues.

We're delighted to see the back of the type of Greens that were in power - those that supported the corrupt FF and voted for NAMA and put all of the fines and charges in place for not choosing the right alternatives without doing an iota to provide the alternatives; the ones that punished people who were ALREADY being green.

If a decent, well-thought-out green movement emerges from the ashes of the previous shower of has-beens, then great.

But the zealots have been - rightly - punished for (as has been said already) being 100% stick and 0% carrot.

Good riddance to those, but not to a sustainable and fair green initiative, whoever may take it on.

Inverse to the power of one!

Scofflaw wrote: »

The Irish Green Party exists largely because Irish society at large doesn't seem to have any desire to take up such causes.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Chicken and Egg?

But I'm not sure about Irish society not having any desire to look after what we have, add to that the Irish greens did more to alienate people from Green causes then take them up. But I can see that you're right in that the origins of the Greens came about during a time of little interest, but how long ago was that?

We're quite gung-ho about renewables seeing the opportunity to make some cash as well as looking to address our energy requirements, probably not as altruistic as well meaning Green's would like, but none the less things have changed and can change further if we focus more having the existing parties look after the environment as opposed to placing faith in a party by it's nature that attracts firebrands that care for nothing but their single cause and how they think it should be implemented, the rest of us be damned.

A political party is a handy focus point for particular causes, but ultimately as a minority party in our form of parliamentary democracy is ineffectual and potentially self-defeating as I believe the Green party in Ireland has just demonstrated in the strongest sense.

Having seen the NZ model with my own eyes, I believe it far more effective that society champion these causes........or I suppose we could ask the German Greens come and bailout the Irish Greens

ei.sdraob

Scofflaw wrote: »

Why is this particular excise rise the object of so much fury? Would a tax by any other name not cost as much?

1. Because its yet another tax on a list of taxes pushing the price up (and not just petrol)

2. The money collected was not used elsewhere as counterbalance as promised



Anyways I am for one happy to see this party running on politics of fear, doommongering and telling lies go away. They promised alot and made more noise about their "ethics" and "integrity" but when the time came they shown to be no different to the people they claimed to despise.

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

I suppose we could ask the German Greens come and bailout the Irish Greens

The German Greens done well on the back of Japanese events, like I said politics of fear, now they will help the country burn more coal and add more CO2 to the air

ednwireland

Scofflaw wrote: »

I continue to find this one really quite weird - and hold up just a second before everyone hits me at once, because I'm genuinely curious here.

The 'carbon tax' was a carbon tax in name only. It was exactly the same size as a standard budget excise rise - slapping 4.3c on a litre of petrol is an absolutely bog-standard rise in excise:


So why the fury? As ei.sdraob points out, 2/3rds of the price of petrol is made up of tax - the result of years of excise rises, all about the same size as the so-called 'carbon tax'. Why is this particular excise rise the object of so much fury? Would a tax by any other name not cost as much?

cordially,
Scofflaw

this is exactly what really p****d me off about the greens they dress up a standard revenue raising excercise as a green tax (which is supposed to allright because its green) just call it what it is a tax.
stop trying to pretend its somehow going to change peoples behaviour where there is no alternatives (i have an oil boiler i really wanted a wood pellet boiler, well actually a log burning boiler but when it was going to cost me the guts of 20k+ its not going to happen (11k for a decent boiler, extend boiler house put in storage etc etc ) honestly these people really dont live in the real world

dynamick

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

Why do we need a political party for the Green cause?

In NZ the Green outlook is a societal one which is in place regardless of which party is in power, anything that endangers their Green image is tackled head on by majority and a reluctance to endanger one of the most pristine environments in the world.

The New Zealand Green Party is the third largest in parliament.

later10 wrote: »

Many of our European neighbours have no Green Party representation in their national parliaments and I cannot realistically see that either they or the planet are any the worse off for that.

In the German state elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg (population 10m), the Greens are now the largest party and Germany will have its first Green 'minister president' of a German Land.

http://bilder.bild.de/fotos/winfried-kretschmann--13463496/Bild/1.bild.jpg

ei.sdraob

This is bad news for environment and peoples health
no nuclear plants will be build to replace old ones that need to go (what are chances of tsunami in Germany?) instead they be replaced by yet more dirty coal of which Germany is already burning plenty

oh goody goody go Greens **** up the environment some more

dlofnep

ei.sdraob wrote: »

What crisis? 2/3rds of petrol price is tax, people are not stupid you know they know they are being ripped of and by the state no less.

I'm not referring to the high-taxation on fuel costs. I'm talking about when the demand for fossil fuels exceeds the available supply, and fuel prices sky-rocket. We're going to see many wars in the middle-east over the next 3-4 decades with intent of controlling fuel-resources.

Essentially, I feel we have become over-dependent on these said fuels and that as an island nation, we are in a prime position to start working on renewable energy so that we are prepared for the pending fuel crisis when it comes. It may not happen in the next 10 years, but it's certainly feasible within the next 30.

This is worth a browse: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

It discusses transportation fuel issues, rising fuel costs due to an unsustainable demand, energy supplies and so forth.

I'm not anywhere near an expert on green issues. I'm trying to educate myself more on it - But I certainly see some causes for concern with the unsustainability of fossil fuels.

Scofflaw

Couple of answers there, thanks, but not quite hitting the target.

gurramok wrote: »

Add another year, it happened in October 2008, time flies Then the other rises after that, mostly tax/excise based, must of been at least 20cent in petrol alone.

Thing is, penalising people for using fuel is penalising the vast majority of consumers and most importantly does not discriminate between rich and poor. On the environment front, Ireland is small fry in the global pollution stakes relating to fuel, there was no need to hike fuel so much, that is forgotten by the Greens.

OK - but the following years' excise rises were just that, excise rises. The Greens got their name on one excise rise and people are now associating them with all the excise rises, even though excise rises on fuel are a standard part of a tax-raising Budget?

ednwireland wrote:

this is exactly what really p****d me off about the greens they dress up a standard revenue raising excercise as a green tax (which is supposed to allright because its green) just call it what it is a tax.

OK, and now we've called it a tax, which I have no problems with, why does it get special outraged treatment? That's what I'm trying to understand here. We've had excise rises before, and there has never really been any promise of compensatory payments or anything for such rises - they're tax. And a Green tax is a tax, too.

So there's an objection because it was a tax, and an objection that seems to be based on there having been other such taxes, none of which attracted the same notoriety as this one.

Why is this particular one in a long series of excise rises so outrageous just because it happens to have the Green label? Aside from for those people who believe that taxes are intrinsically evil and scientists incompetent or bent?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Spudmonkey

Liam Byrne wrote: »

We're delighted to see the back of the type of Greens that were in power - those that supported the corrupt FF and voted for NAMA and put all of the fines and charges in place for not choosing the right alternatives without doing an iota to provide the alternatives; the ones that punished people who were ALREADY being green.

If a decent, well-thought-out green movement emerges from the ashes of the previous shower of has-beens, then great.

But the zealots have been - rightly - punished for (as has been said already) being 100% stick and 0% carrot.

Good riddance to those, but not to a sustainable and fair green initiative, whoever may take it on.

I would like to imagine Liam that the hatred directed at the greens was purely for the support they gave FF. As Scofflaw has pointed out however, the carbon tax was a minuscule amount added to a myriad of other taxes and yet it is treated as though it is the total amount. If an untainted party were to arrive with the same suggestion, I am sure they would meet with the same opposition.

As has been pointed out, there does not seem to be an appetite for these kind of initiatives here, and especially not if it hits my pocket.

Scofflaw

Spudmonkey wrote: »

I would like to imagine Liam that the hatred directed at the greens was purely for the support they gave FF. As Scofflaw has pointed out however, the carbon tax was a minuscule amount added to a myriad of other taxes and yet it is treated as though it is the total amount. If an untainted party were to arrive with the same suggestion, I am sure they would meet with the same opposition.

As has been pointed out, there does not seem to be an appetite for these kind of initiatives here, and especially not if it hits my pocket.

The funny thing, though, is still that the Greens didn't introduce much in the way of taxes. I've asked posters before to say what taxes or costs are on them that were the result of Green Party initiatives, and the answers I get back tend to include taxes the Greens had nothing to do with, as per gurramok's point - and to mention things that haven't happened yet but that will happen even now that the Greens are out of government, such as water charges and septic tank licence fees.

I hate to say it, but that suggests to me that you're right - there is little public appetite for green initiatives in Ireland. The mismatch between the perceived actions of the Green Party and the real actions is hard to explain any other way - the complaints seem to be rather largely about green initiatives tout court, not Green Party initiatives, so that the Greens act as a focus for resentment against environmental initiatives whether they're responsible for them or not.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Liam Byrne

Spudmonkey wrote: »

I would like to imagine Liam that the hatred directed at the greens was purely for the support they gave FF. As Scofflaw has pointed out however, the carbon tax was a minuscule amount added to a myriad of other taxes and yet it is treated as though it is the total amount. If an untainted party were to arrive with the same suggestion, I am sure they would meet with the same opposition.

As has been pointed out, there does not seem to be an appetite for these kind of initiatives here, and especially not if it hits my pocket.

There's no doubt that a lot of hatred is based on them supporting FF against the wishes of the majority of Irish people, some of whom - like myself - had given them a vote but definitely didn't give them a mandate to do anything like that.

In addition, their choices re NAMA & Anglo were despicable, as was the manner in which the vote topic was reversed to invert the two-thirds majority required.

But if you think that is the only reason, then you are deluding yourself. The extra taxes are one thing, and despite what you'd like to think the greens are not being blamed for all of the taxes, they are being - correctly - blamed for the ones that are the straws that broke the camel's back, without providing any viable alternative for those of us who wish to be green.

Likewise, they further punish those of us who are doing our bit by adding septic tank charges and other stealth taxes, as well as presiding over a regime which charged people unsustainable amounts for using toll roads that would also reduce pollution.

They also hit people who simply cannot afford to change their cars with additional taxes, despite the fact that the creation, transport and scrappage of cars creates more pollution than an average driver.

So basically they have no interest in sustainable and realistic policies.

If they
a) reduced tolls so that people take the quicker, traffic-free, green route
b) reduced car taxes for those driving under, say, 6K a year
c) stuck to their polluter pays principle re septic tanks, paying the inspectors out of polluters' fines
d) stopped rewarding rich people who can afford new cars and new insulation by giving them discounts and grants, while further punishing those who would change if they could afford to

.......THEN I would take them seriously.

However they pretend that they have the monopoly on the "right" way of thinking and ignore all alternatives, which is biased, bigoted and objectionable.

ei.sdraob

dlofnep wrote: »

I'm not referring to the high-taxation on fuel costs. I'm talking about when the demand for fossil fuels exceeds the available supply, and fuel prices sky-rocket.

When exactly will that happen?

The arguments bandied out by people falling for "peak energy" theory are no different from the arguments seen around here during the property bubble.


Finally if we really are about to hit a peak energy wall and need to cut CO2 out then why the Green movement is so against nuclear energy which addresses both issues at low cost and reliably.

CokaColumbo

dlofnep wrote: »

I'm not referring to the high-taxation on fuel costs. I'm talking about when the demand for fossil fuels exceeds the available supply, and fuel prices sky-rocket. We're going to see many wars in the middle-east over the next 3-4 decades with intent of controlling fuel-resources.

Essentially, I feel we have become over-dependent on these said fuels and that as an island nation, we are in a prime position to start working on renewable energy so that we are prepared for the pending fuel crisis when it comes. It may not happen in the next 10 years, but it's certainly feasible within the next 30.

This is worth a browse: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

It discusses transportation fuel issues, rising fuel costs due to an unsustainable demand, energy supplies and so forth.

I'm not anywhere near an expert on green issues. I'm trying to educate myself more on it - But I certainly see some causes for concern with the unsustainability of fossil fuels.

Fuel prices will not "sky rocket" due to diminishing supply. It's not like there'll be plenty of oil one second and none the next. Prices will gradually increase as newly discovered oil reserves become less and less common. People will naturally consume less of the stuff; natural rationing will occur as prices increase. Government doesn't have to do anything.

At the moment there are more known oil reserves in existence than at any previous point in history. It's not as though oil is going to disappear in the next few decades. "Expert" environmentalists and world leaders have been predicting that oil will run out in a few decades for the last hundred years and they have been consistently wrong.
Aside from natural rationing, another benefit of rising prices is that known but currently unprofitable sites of oil will become, in the future, viable to drill as the increasing market price of oil makes it more profitable to do so. Also, as oil supplies slowly decrease in many, many years from now, the market system will naturally make alternative fuel sources viable to invest in and consume.

We are not in a "prime position to start working on renewable energy." The Greens fed us this BS with their €6,000,000,000 wind-mill proposal. They said that we need to reduce our reliance and our exposure on natural gas. And then what happened? The U.S. became a large-scale exporter of natural gas, something which had been entirely unforeseen.

The Green Economy sounds all fluffy and cuddly but at the end of the day, in order to sustain it, large amounts of resources have to be taken out of the private sector which destroys productive jobs. Renewable energy is also very unreliable, inefficient, and very expensive. Carbon taxes and cap and trade etc. also decrease people's purchasing power and standard of living and impact upon the poor the most.

The earth is packed full of resources that we haven't found uses for yet. It's 4000 miles to the centre of the earth and we've barely even scratched the surface. Did you know that petroleum used to be a waste product or that land with oil on it used to be worthless at one time?

ei.sdraob

CokaColumbo wrote: »

Fuel prices will not "sky rocket" due to diminishing supply. It's not like there'll be plenty of oil one second and none the next. Prices will gradually increase as newly discovered oil reserves become less and less common. People will naturally consume less of the stuff; natural rationing will occur as prices increase. Government doesn't have to do anything.

At the moment there are more known oil reserves in existence than at any previous point in history. It's not as though oil is going to disappear in the next few decades. "Expert" environmentalists and world leaders have been predicting that oil will run out in a few decades for the last hundred years and they have been consistently wrong.
Aside from natural rationing, another benefit of rising prices is that known but currently unprofitable sites of oil will become, in the future, viable to drill as the increasing market price of oil makes it more profitable to do so. Also, as oil supplies slowly decrease in many, many years from now, the market system will naturally make alternative fuel sources viable to invest in and consume.

We are not in a "prime position to start working on renewable energy." The Greens fed us this BS with their €6,000,000,000 wind-mill proposal. They said that we need to reduce our reliance and our exposure on natural gas. And then what happened? The U.S. became a large-scale exporter of natural gas, something which was entirely unforeseen 10 years prior.

The Green Economy sounds all fluffy and cuddly but at the end of the day, in order to sustain it, large resources have to be taken out of the private sector which destroys many productive jobs. Renewable energy is also very unreliable, inefficient, and very expensive. Carbon taxes and cap and trade etc. also decrease people's purchasing power and standard of living and impact upon the poor the most.

The earth is packed full of resources that we haven't found uses for. It's 4000 miles to the centre of the earth and we've barely even scratched the surface. Did you know that petroleum used to be a waste product or that land with oil on it used to be worthless at one point?

Amusingly more wind makes us even more reliant on gas since when the wind doesnt blow the grid needs gas turbines which can come on stream relatively quickly.

djpbarry

CokaColumbo wrote: »

People will naturally consume less of the stuff; natural rationing will occur as prices increase.

Oh you mean like the way people bought less and less property as prices rose?

Scofflaw

djpbarry wrote: »

Oh you mean like the way people bought less and less property as prices rose?

That's very different, though, because fuel is not generally an asset.

cordially,
Scofflaw

dlofnep

CokaColumbo wrote: »

Fuel prices will not "sky rocket" due to diminishing supply. It's not like there'll be plenty of oil one second and none the next. Prices will gradually increase as newly discovered oil reserves become less and less common. People will naturally consume less of the stuff; natural rationing will occur as prices increase. Government doesn't have to do anything.

Fuel Prices sky rocket at the slightest hint of war. Petrol prices are astronomical right now.

The report which I previously posted stated the following:

As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented

Peaking will result in dramatically higher oil prices, which will cause protracted economic hardship in the United States and the world.

When oil decline occurs is anyone's guess, but from most papers I've read - they expect it to be sooner rather than later. In any case, it is something that this generation will need to prepare for, if not for us - for our children.

The simple reality is, there will come a point where are dependency for oil exceeds the amount available - and without the proper precautions - it will have a huge impact on the entire globe. As for the Government not having to do "anything".. that's nonsense. Of course they have to do something - they have an extremely large role to play in creating a more sustainable infrastructure.

Scofflaw

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Amusingly more wind makes us even more reliant on gas since when the wind doesnt blow the grid needs gas turbines which can come on stream relatively quickly.

Or it needs good storage - such as might be provided by electric cars. But that involves taking change seriously and embracing it, rather than thinking of it as simply a dreadful disruption to the status quo.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ei.sdraob

Scofflaw wrote: »

That's very different, though, because fuel is not generally an asset.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Its a fingible commodity which can be replaced with any number of other energy sources.
And even created for other sources as Germans have done during WW2 with coal to oil tech and current gas to liquid facilities are doing.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Or it needs good storage - such as might be provided by electric cars. But that involves taking change seriously and embracing it, rather than thinking of it as simply a dreadful disruption to the status quo.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Tell us what happens when you repeatedly charge and discharge your laptop battery.

Even if we converted every single car in Ireland to electric and hooked these batteries up to the grid that would still not cover us during week long periods of no to low wind as seen last December.

Ironically the distortion in the market created due to subsidies of wind and ensuring it gets preferential treatment means there is little incentive to invest in storage technologies in Ireland.

Scofflaw

dlofnep wrote: »

Fuel Prices sky rocket at the slightest hint of war. Petrol prices are astronomical right now.

The report which I previously posted stated the following:





When oil decline occurs is anyone's guess, but from most papers I've read - they expect it to be sooner rather than later. In any case, it is something that this generation will need to prepare for, if not for us - for our children.

The simple reality is, there will come a point where are dependency for oil exceeds the amount available - and without the proper precautions - it will have a huge impact on the entire globe. As for the Government not having to do "anything".. that's nonsense. Of course they have to do something - they have an extremely large role to play in creating a more sustainable infrastructure.

It's worth thinking about peak oil in a somewhat more nuanced way than is provided by simple doomsday scenarios. 'Peak oil' will occur for different oil uses at different stages, and may already have occurred for some industries and sectors. Peak oil isn't anything particularly sharp or necessarily noticeable in any case, because oil prices are subject to a very large number of exogenous shocks which tend to dominate price variation. As long as there are large low-cost producing fields - and there are - and supply is partly throttled for political reasons - which it is - then the effects of moving to more costly sources is not dominant in the market price. That the low-cost and large sources are not being replaced means that when the effects of resource depletion finally begin to dominate market price, the upwards movements will be sharp.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Its a fingible commodity which can be replaced with any number of other energy sources.
And even created for other sources as Germans have done during WW2 with coal to oil tech and current gas to liquid facilities are doing.

Tell us what happens when you repeatedly charge and discharge your laptop battery.

You need to replace the battery...

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Even if we converted every single car in Ireland to electric and hooked these batteries up to the grid that would still not cover us during week long periods of no to low wind as seen last December.

Assuming 100% wind generation, yes. Not sure anyone is planning that, though. The figures for vehicle storage depend on a variety of things, as well - battery capacity, spare batteries per vehicle, percentage of electric vehicles in both the private and goods fleets - but I doubt there will be any plan to use it on its own either.

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Ironically the distortion in the market created due to subsidies of wind and ensuring it gets preferential treatment means there is little incentive to invest in storage technologies in Ireland.

Not sure how you figure that one. One could equally say that wind subsidies prevent the creation of new playgrounds, or prevent spending on other environmental initiatives.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ei.sdraob

Scofflaw wrote: »

Assuming 100% wind generation, yes. Not sure anyone is planning that, though. The figures for vehicle storage depend on a variety of things, as well - battery capacity, spare batteries per vehicle, percentage of electric vehicles in both the private and goods fleets - but I doubt there will be any plan to use it on its own either.

A Nissan Leaf has a 24 killowatt hour battery

Assuming every single one of the 1.7 million cars in Ireland (yeh :rolleyes: )is replaced by a Leaf and plugged into the grid at same time (yeh :rolleyes:)
that would power the country for a whole of 12 hours

Considering that we have weeks of no to little wind nationwide with high pressure systems that a long time to go

So yes we will need more gas as backup, so still reliant of fossil fuels and still creating CO2


sorry to shatter your green dream with some facts

Scofflaw

ei.sdraob wrote: »

A Nissan Leaf has a 24 killowatt hour battery

Assuming every single one of the 1.7 million cars in Ireland (yeh :rolleyes: )is replaced by a Leaf and plugged into the grid at same time (yeh :rolleyes:)
that would power the country for a whole of 12 hours

Considering that we have weeks of no to little wind nationwide with high pressure systems that a long time to go

So yes we will need more gas as backup, so still reliant of fossil fuels and still creating CO2


sorry to shatter your green dream with some facts

You do kind of need to consider that there's likely to be more than one battery per vehicle (because swapping charged batteries is faster than charging), that goods vehicles already have heavier batteries than the Leaf, as do several private vehicles, that battery technology is under active improvement, and so on - but mostly you need to consider that nobody but you has suggested trying to run on 100% wind power and vehicle battery storage alone. You're not shattering my 'green dream', I'm sorry to say, and it's always a pleasure to see a dedication to facts, even when they're only being used to tilt at windmills.

cordially,
Scofflaw

djpbarry

Scofflaw wrote: »

That's very different, though, because fuel is not generally an asset.

Fair point. However in the case of property in Ireland, as prices climbed up and up, demand went with them. When prices collapsed, people questioned why nobody stepped in to discourage property speculation, through taxation measures for example.

Hypothetically speaking, if in say, 10-15 years time, owning a petrol-based vehicle in Ireland becomes prohibitively expensive for some, I would not be at all surprised if a similar mindset emerges – “why didn’t anyone discourage me from adopting a car-dependent lifestyle through taxation and such”.

I would be very surprised, for example, if the majority of people buying cars this year are giving much consideration to the projected cost of petrol in say, 5 years.

Scofflaw

djpbarry wrote: »

Fair point. However in the case of property in Ireland, as prices climbed up and up, demand went with them. When prices collapsed, people questioned why nobody stepped in to discourage property speculation, through taxation measures for example.

Hypothetically speaking, if in say, 10-15 years time, owning a petrol-based vehicle in Ireland becomes prohibitively expensive for some, I would not be at all surprised if a similar mindset emerges – “why didn’t anyone discourage me from adopting a car-dependent lifestyle through taxation and such”.

I would be very surprised, for example, if the majority of people buying cars this year are giving much consideration to the projected cost of petrol in say, 5 years.

I have to say I'm not expecting to see the death of the private car. The urge for personal mobility is simply too great. I'd say that as long as it's possible to build personal transport vehicles, it will be done, whatever the energy source.

cordially,
Scofflaw

djpbarry

Scofflaw wrote: »

I have to say I'm not expecting to see the death of the private car.

Oh no, nor am I. But my point is that people will make poorly-judged decisions while resisting any attempts by government to regulate said decisions (via taxation, for example), then subsequently complain, when their poor judgement becomes apparent, about the lack of regulation.

Scofflaw

djpbarry wrote: »

Oh no, nor am I. But my point is that people will make poorly-judged decisions while resisting any attempts by government to regulate said decisions (via taxation, for example), then subsequently complain, when their poor judgement becomes apparent, about the lack of regulation.

Flood plains...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

And, of course, part of the answer to who'll carry on green policies is "the government", because quite a bit of environmental policy flows from the EU (indeed, that's the origin of the infamous "80% of national legislation comes from the EU" statistic):

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/taoiseach-caught-on-the-hop-by-new-toad-study-2598208.html

cordially,
Scofflaw