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Too much faith in the market : Comments
By Sharon Beder, published 18/7/2008Why do we put so much faith in the market to solve environmental problems?
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"Nevertheless, there is a limit to what can be achieved in Germany because electricity has been privatised, which precludes direct intervention and investment by government."
We're in exactly the same situation here in Australia. Power companies are driven by the profit motive which means they need to generate as much power as possible and as cheaply and quickly as they can. If we're to cut emissions, they should be aiming to reduce overall consumption of power rather than increase it. There are so many ways we could be doing this which would collectively make a real difference, but it will never be a process led by private providers.
When our electricity provider was privatised, we relunctantly opted out of the Green Choice power we'd been consuming for many years, because the cost to achieve the same level we'd been on was going to double. We're now on the lowest "Green" option there is, but we're paying more overall for our power than we were and we've had to watch our greenhouse gas emissions increase. Instead of encouraging people to switch to renewable power, this company is actively discouraging it, and I can't imagine other private providers being much different.
Part of the government's present predicament is the fact that too much power and freedom has been handed to the market over the last few decades. And now, as Sharon points out, even when government can see what needs to be done, it is powerless to achieve it.