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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate change: what would have Edward Theodore done? > Comments

Climate change: what would have Edward Theodore done? : Comments

By Ken McKay, published 19/8/2010

With the growing debate about global warming it is useful to delve into our recent past to look for alternative policies.

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So instead of a number of small companies taking advantage of government subsidies to set up wind farms and so on, we should have a large government-owned enterprise exempt from taxation to set up lots of these and wave generators and the like, and sell the electricity into the national electricity market. The resulting profits would be recycled into the industry. Probably it would work to the extent that this company might actually build lots of wind farms, but the author has overlooked the point that the capital to build them then has to come from somewhere. As there won't be any return on the capital (unless you count the building of more subsidied wind farms), it won't come from the private sector. Not only will the government have to subsidise the operations of the wind farms it will have to put up the money to build them.
In return taxpayers would get a company full of highly-paid ex civil servants whose main activity would be to devise proposals for further wind industry subsidies.
Nope, not buying.
As for this mantra about creating jobs and industries, what was the rule of thumb extablished for the Spanish economy? For every green job created four were destroyed elsewhere in the economy? Or was it eight? What was the ratio established for the Italian economy? It slips my mind.
Considering that green power increases electricity costs it is not surprising it destroys jobs.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 19 August 2010 11:40:35 AM
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There is a simple solution, Ken, which is to have your political activists tell the truth for once.

There is no need to do anything about human emissions, because they cannot be shown to have any effect whatsoever on climate change.

Despite the billions spent to find some scientific backing for the alarmism on global warming, the simple fact is that there is none. This money could have been spent usefully, cleaning up the environment or removing fuel to minimise bushfire danger, instead of on attempts to prove the existence of a non existent problem.

Even the arrant liar, Gore, has given up, and says that we should not look to science, but to religion, for proof. He had the Anglican Church invest $300m in his “green” nonsense, so he no doubt thinks that they will fall for anything.

The alarmists consider it unfair to ask for scientific proof, to justify something so important that it should have immediate, baseless, economically prohibitive, unjustifiable action.

Remember when they were about to demonstrate the “hotspot” in the troposphere, which would be the “signature” for AGW? No hotspot, or signature exists, but we were given no exciting announcement about the important good news that human emissions have no effect on global warming.

Just more articles on global warming, inferring that it required action, and articles like yours , Ken, about a solution not required, for a problem that does not exist.
Posted by Leo Lane, Thursday, 19 August 2010 3:16:25 PM
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we should have a large government-owned enterprise exempt from taxation to set up lots of these and wave generators and the like, and sell the electricity into the national electricity market. The resulting profits would be recycled into the industry. Probably it would work to [url=http://www.monclerjackets-us.net/]moncler jacket[/url]

the extent that this company might actually build lots of wind farms, but the author has overlooked the point that the capital to build them then has to come from somewhere.[url=http://www.monclerjackets-us.net/]moncler jackets[/url]As there won't be any return on the capital (unless you count the building of more subsidied wind farms), it won't come from the private sector. Not only will the government have to subsidise the operations of the wind farms it will have to put up the money to build them.In return taxpayers would get a company full of highly-paid ex civil servants whose main[url=http://www.monclerjackets-us.net/]moncler[/url] activity would be to devise proposals for further wind industry subsidies.
Nope, not buying.
Posted by wuchun, Thursday, 19 August 2010 5:31:42 PM
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capital can be funded by the issuance of green bonds backed by the commonwealth, with the interest(earnings) excluded from being taxed or treated as income for social security purposes. thus the funding would come from a variety of sources to establish the corporation, the interest return could be set at the cash rate, with this income excluded from taxation or being included as income it would be attractive to investors.
Posted by slasher, Thursday, 19 August 2010 5:42:40 PM
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Slasher - there is no reason why your green bond proposal would not work, but now we have returned to the private capital model but with a big government owned enterprise in the way. If this enterprise is going to rely on govenrment subisidies to attact capital what it the pont of it? why not just have the subsidies and leave the rest up to private enterprise? Why stifle the sector with regulations - investment must go through this body - and so on. All it would do is consume money that could be spent on wind energy - asusming we want to spend money on wind energy.

Wuchun - thanks for repeating my post with the addition of links that don't work. If you had a point to make its so subtle and brilliant that I missed it.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Thursday, 19 August 2010 6:31:56 PM
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it would be a new enterprise, state insurance firms worked, gmh has returned a profit when majority government owned, pvt sector management is nowhere near as accountable to individual shareholders as what public entities are, accountability is a key factor in improving management. gmh executives not blink an eye about chartering pvt jets to fly to washington, once the american people become the major shareholders they jumped on a normal commercial jet. pvt sector not always better manyt cases it is not
Posted by slasher, Thursday, 19 August 2010 6:49:57 PM
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