Wisdom from The Action Wisdom In Action

WWII-Style Energy Rationing as Part of Cap-and-Trade

From the U.K. Register--May 29, 2008

"The ration, or "personal carbon allowance" or PCA, is a measure of an individual's energy usage, either at home or traveling. Such usage is capped, and "further emissions rights will simply not be available," the Committee says. You may choose between a holiday, and turning on the heating. Points win prizes, however, and frugal individuals would be rewarded financially from the creation of an internal market.

"We could not find or imagine analogues in other fields of human activity for individual carbon trading beyond rationing during and after World War 2," the authors of the DEFRA-commissioned report "A Rough Guide to Individual Carbon Trading" wrote in 2006.

The Committee, chaired by Tim Yeo MP, lauds the potential for "engagement", which will "increase awareness" of energy consumption - what the Tyndall Centre calls "carbon consciousness" - which in turn would "spearhead behavioural change". According to the MPs, "awareness is crucial if behaviours are to change."

The committee called for "a shift in the debate away from ever-deeper and more detailed consideration of how personal carbon trading could operate towards the more decisive questions of how it could be made publicly and politically acceptable."

In other words, the MPs want to end the debate about whether or not it's a desirable option, and start marketing it as the only option.

(That's what you pay your taxes for, folks)."

In the bigger scheme, rationing is part of Obama's grand plan to "spread the wealth" through social justice--first, health care rationing, next it's energy rationing...just wait for the food part--you see the school lunches coming under attack already. If this catches on, it'll be spread globally, but what if an imbalance occurs? What if the formerly (and currently) poorer countries suddenly became rich (through better nutrition and money-saving), rose up, and demanded more power--are the rest of us going to be expected to succumb to a Zimbabwean dictator, a North Korean dictator, or even a Cuban dictator, or worse...China? Will the Somali pirates at last get what they're plundering for now?

This is the problem I see with global rationing, spreading the wealth, and social justice--it would be like handing the reins of power over from Obama to the Black Panthers. This may be exactly what some people have in mind, and had all along.

Posted by Cute at 7:38 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax), politics