PowerSwitch

This looks great. Is it really that good?

Over the last three years, with its economy in tatters, Ireland embraced a novel strategy to help reduce its staggering deficit: charging households and businesses for the environmental damage they cause.

The government imposed taxes on most of the fossil fuels used by homes, offices, vehicles and farms, based on each fuel’s carbon dioxide emissions, a move that immediately drove up prices for oil, natural gas and kerosene. Household trash is weighed at the curb, and residents are billed for anything that is not being recycled........

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/scien ... .html?_r=0

The motor tax rates based on emissions have had an effect, moving people towards lower-CO2 vehicles. I'm not sure I really trust the figures - they're like manufacturers' mpg figures, based on ideal conditions. They're greenwash in so far as no account is taken of pollution generated actually making the car or disposing of it.

As for bin collections, they're just about all privatised now iirc. So that means a lot of dumping of rubbish.

Eamonn Ryan's 'targets' they're 'smashing through' are like the bar in the Monty Python's upper-class twit race.

Green taxes, austerity taxes, whatever, they're all ending up in the pockets of rich gamblers.

I have this probalem about "sin" taxes...I mean, what on earth would the government do if we all decided to behave ourselves?

The same applies to energy from waste. Better to not produce the waste thereby saving the energy used to produce the waste in the first place

It also re-raises the question of whether it really is greener to replace an existing car with a brand new one or just keep the old one running. It can certainly work out cheaper.

There's the contradictory nature of 'green' government for you: tax heavily polluting stuff so people throw it out and buy new stuff, doubling polluting in the process.

Well yes but cars are imported so that pollution happens somewhere else. Sometimes I think that's the whole point of "green" taxes: I've never really been for them.

Yer almost certainly wrong about the auld bangers and all: especially the really auld ones you can fix yerself. Here at Chateau Renewable we run a 28mpg/10litres-per-100wotsit crate. We just, don't run it very far.

I have a similar issue.

My 30mpg diesel burning beast is old but I can keep it running forever. So long as i don't do too many miles the increased cost of the diesel and road tax is better value than the depreciation and service costs of a new car.

I can choose to do either but I choose to make do and mend.