|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 1, 2015 12:28:37 GMT
'Post usage costs'? Oh, you mean like repairing potholes in the road that are caused by vehicles which run on fossil fuels? That sort of "post-usage" carbon cost beloved of The Guardian?
I always thought it was water freezing in winter that caused potholes, myself.
You can claim anything as a "post-usage" cost, aubrey, if you are Green enough, and stupid enough, and underestimate the brain power of people with different opinions to your own!
Weird, that you should consider Local Authorities' fixing winter potholes as a "subsidy" to "Big Oil", aubrey. Perhaps you also think traffic congestion and air pollution should be laid at the door of Big Oil and classed as a "subsidy" to Shell, Esso, BP et al?
Take your phoney arithmetic and shove it up your arse, pal. Meanwhile, the only fuels that get subsidy from both consumers and government in the UK are renewables whereas fossil fuels are a milch cow delivering £billions in TAXES to the government so we can afford to live in a "civilised society" and pay your medical bills, aubrey.
The largest energy subsidies are, in fact, those that oil-producing countries like Venezuela and Nigeria give their own citizen CONSUMERS! Most of them are in developing countries and are in the form of reduced energy prices to the poor by charging them below-market prices for gasoline and diesel. Won’t cutting them harm the most vulnerable citizens? Or do you expect them to "eat cake" in the form of windmills instead of their trusty back yard diesel generators?
If you want to tally up "post usage costs" of fossil fuels you must also include for comparison all the benefits we derive from them and could not live without. Otherwise your nutty, idiosyncratic concept of fossil-fuel "subsidy" is meaningless. This is called what we, the economically literate portion of society, call "cost-benefit analysis", ever heard of that, aubrey? Do you think your pals at the Guardian or the IMF know about it?
|
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Jun 1, 2015 13:25:12 GMT
Why do you keep going on about the Guardian? Is it some Macro you have that means that whenever you type "Aubrey" then "Guardian" comes out as well? I don't read it, and haven't for ages.
No, not pot-holes, why mention pot-holes?
I mean (and you oknow I mean) things like pollution, the costs of diseases caused by pollution, the costs of things like that Japanese power station (and others) - that negligible type of stuff. And who pays for nuclear waste to be stored? Stuff like that.
And people who live in oil producing countries - the ones you claim the oil companies are trying to help - do campaign and protest against the companies themselves, sometimes even unto death.
Yes, you can, as you keep saying, mitigate pollution, keep it to a minimum: but being able to do a thing and actually doing it are not the same thing: and oil companies do still lobby against laws designed to reduce pollution.
|
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Jun 1, 2015 13:45:25 GMT
And how about the trillions spent on wars in oil producing countries - or does the oil have nothing to do with that?
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 1, 2015 17:46:57 GMT
Why do I mention pot-holes? You have not been doing your homework on "post use costs" pal.
Mending potholes is PRECISELY the sort of "post use cost" that the IMF opos' article, so lurved by The Guardian and by Green foot soldiers like you, prattles on about. You're not even aware of the source of the crap you are retailing. How VERY crass an uncool!
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 1, 2015 17:54:37 GMT
Stop scraping the barrel, aubrey! War is hardly a "post-use cost". I doubt that even the IMF guys have the brass neck to claim that!
Who owns the oil in these nations devoured with sectarian strife? The Middle Eastern STATES, of course - NOT your bugbear "BIG OIL"!
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 1, 2015 18:01:16 GMT
I have never made any such claim. Why don't you stick to the facts and quit the flights of fancy, aubrey?
Companies work for their shareholders. If they have a truly excellent product, like fossil fuel, they also benefit humanity as a whole. Prating about chesty coughs and asthma isn't going to make one iota of difference to the balance of harm and benefit derived from fossil fuel. The benefits are utterly transformative.
Why don't you bugger off to Africa or Asia and heat your soup over a dung fire if you are in any doubt.
|
|
excoriator
Madrigal Member 
nearly a genius
Posts: 37,165
|
Post by excoriator on Jun 1, 2015 20:14:20 GMT
I have never made any such claim.
Oh yes you have! It's not the money, but a desire to bring the third world the benefits we enjoy in the wast was your claim as I recall.
|
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Jun 2, 2015 7:49:27 GMT
Why do I mention pot-holes? You have not been doing your homework on "post use costs" pal. Mending potholes is PRECISELY the sort of "post use cost" that the IMF opos' article, so lurved by The Guardian and by Green foot soldiers like you, prattles on about. You're not even aware of the source of the crap you are retailing. How VERY crass an uncool! I wasn't quoting any source. That's why I didn't mention the potholes. I was thinking it all up out of my own brane. |
|
excoriator
Madrigal Member
nearly a genius
Posts: 37,165
|
Post by excoriator on Jun 2, 2015 8:18:01 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 2, 2015 8:33:27 GMT
This is pure invention!
Oil companies are capitalist enterprises. They do not work on moral imperatives. They work to provide services and products people will buy at a profit - this means at the right price and of the right quality. One does not have to be a genius to understand that fossil fuels have transformed society and economies for the better and that electrification via cheap fossil fuels would enormously enhance the lives of the one billion people who currently live without its benefits. Sure there have been and will be some DISbenefits along the way but these are on a totally different scale from the manifold blessings we in the West enjoy courtesy of fossil fuels and that I believe could usefully be extended to all our fellow human beings on the planet. In addition to this oil companies are the biggest corporate tax payers on the planet - playing their part in ensuring we live in a civilised society. So shut the f*ck up with knocking this pillar both of capitalism and of socio-economic progress. Reason, not hatred, is the means of winning arguments. Sadly you have neither the brane (sic) nor the reason.
Your inability to follow an argument without distorting it for your own self-serving purposes with moralistic cant is getting tedious, aubrey
|
|
loop
Madrigal Member
bozo hypocritical prat
Posts: 2,218
|
Post by loop on Jun 2, 2015 8:52:54 GMT
March wrote Sure there have been and will be some DISbenefits along the way
Drawbacks? Disasters? Downsides? all a bit nasty, so now we move to DISbenefits.
March's lobotomy is now complete.
Capitalist jargon derived from IT excuses.
|
|
excoriator
Madrigal Member
nearly a genius
Posts: 37,165
|
Post by excoriator on Jun 2, 2015 9:10:04 GMT
So shut the f*ck up with knocking this pillar both of capitalism and of socio-economic progress.
Thank you for making my point for me so succinctly.
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 2, 2015 10:18:50 GMT
The word "disbenefit" has been in common parlance in academe for decades, exco, loop. I'm surprised you didn't hear it from your WEA Tutor. Ask her about it.
I first heard it when I started my degree in 1969. Yes, it sounds a little clumsy on first hearing but it is a useful antonym for "benefit" in some circumstances.
|
|
|
|
Post by marchesarosa on Jun 2, 2015 10:30:49 GMT
An open market in fossil fuels? Well, not when you consider the OPEC cartel, I suppose. But there are plenty of other suppliers that have boosted supply since the heyday of OPEC. OPEC no longer rules the roost, as they have found out with the massive competitive challenge from fracked oil and gas in the USA - and hence the falling oil price that has benefitted all consumers and has contributed to the zero inflation we are now enjoying in the UK. See my post from the WSJ here, yesterday. pinkmelon.proboards.com/thread/10415/bad-news-fracking?page=5Capitalist enterprises will always tend towards monopolistic behaviour unless they are prevented. But we don't have monopolies in fossil fuel production, do we? Or have I missed something? We certainly don't have any competition in the UK power generation sector AT THE MOMENT. We have government-instigated crony capitalism instead with "renewables" the flavour of the month and subsidies to them beggaring other viable would-be competitors! But that will change. Just because you hate capitalism and BIG OIL in particular, aubrey, is no reason to feel you are entitled to make up stuff about them. |
|
excoriator
Madrigal Member
nearly a genius
Posts: 37,165
|
Post by excoriator on Jun 2, 2015 11:13:03 GMT
The word "disbenefit" has been in common parlance in academe for decades, exco
Really?
Why should I care? I didn't challenge your use of it.
|
|
