Do you still believe our governments, military, media and scientists never lied to us during WWII?
If so, you probably still have a simple sturdy faith in all the old certitudes, in particular the one where the Triumph of the human Will over the wind (and other climate inconveniences) is inevitable.
You are a harmful climate change denier , a NAIF BOOMER, like prime ministers Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott.
Because beneath Harper & Co's cast-hardened steel-like exterior, there resides a soft child-like interior, where there really still is a Santa Claus, a Tooth Fairy and Tinkerbell.
Yes, Peter Pan and Pollyanna are both climate deniers.
But none of the anti-heroes of the old Film Noir films would ever ever believe that their government ,media and industry could be trusted to prevent harmful climate change.
These doomed protagonists might be all heading straight for a hot date with a chair and a electric wire, but they were an early warning system for the REALIST BOOMER's coming postmodern world, where nothing was ever quite as simple as it seemed on the surface ...
Showing posts with label tony abbott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tony abbott. Show all posts
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Today's Conflicted Boomers : typical of any Transitional Generation
The main reason why the long dead Adorno and Horkheimer still get the big bucks in intellectual currency, while you and I pal pick about for chicken feed, all comes down to a mimeographed collection of turgid speculative essays the pair circulated among a few friends at the end of WWII.
At the time, all the rest of the world was beaming in self-satisfaction about Modern Science's obvious success (here insert A-Bomb) at beating back 'Barbaric Age' Axis science.
But Adorno and Horkheimer alone suggested that Janus Year 1945 really meant that the world was now in a 'transitional era' between a fading Modern Science (aka 'modernity') and a rising postmodern world.
But as the humble mimeographed nature of their book (The Dialectic of the Enlightenment) suggests, the pair were completely ignored at the time.
So what was first noted about all the kids being born between the early mid-1940s to the early mid-1960s was simply that : their extraordinary large numbers : hence 'Boomers'.
But would their highly unusual behavior during their plastic formative years been any different if their birth numbers had been considered 'normal' or low ?
I argue not.
The coincident fact that the peak of the transitional era's passing turbulence coincided with the Boomers' crucial formative years would have produced 'The Sixties' irregardless.
At the time, 'The Sixties' social conflict was neatly explained away by simply pointing to the Boomers' extra large numbers as sufficient explanation.
So the transitional nature of The Sixties was never recognized.
In particular no one looked at who all was retiring at the world's High Schools and Universities, instead of looking simply at who was newly coming in as students -- and then promptly protesting.
For in all times of transition, tides go out just as much as they come in.
Unlike their parents raised in unconflictedly modern schools - or their children raised in unconflictededly postmodern schools - the boomers got it from both barrels.
Early on : taught by moderns; later on : taught by post moderns : who now to believe ?
Before 1989, those Boomers who took the postmodern science way of viewing physical reality dominated their peers and the news pages.
But I argue that since "The End of The Cold War", those Boomers who went on to rule the world after 1990 - and who still do rule our world - held more to the older 'modern science' way of viewing physical reality.
I argue their rise to power was itself transitional .
Mostly due to others abruptly retiring, due partly to old age but mostly because of satisfaction at completing their life work : defeating Communism.
The new bosses, like the old bosses, were a hard,mean,uncharitable lot but their target and hence its solution, had greatly changed.
Their target was now environmentalists, not communists .
No longer was conflict over direct questions of ideology, basically 'trickle down' theories versus claims of 'human equality of access to basic life necessities'.
Now the conflict had become modern production science confronting postmodern impact science (over climate change in particular) to use Allan Schnailberg's highly influential formulation.
The dying-off Old Guard (the Modernist cum Greatest Generation) could find almost none among the Gen X and Millennials to carry on their battle against their true mortal enemy, the postmodern majority among the Boomers.
But not all Boomers resolved the conflict between modern and postmodern schooling in 100% favouring postmodernity.
This minority, the Rogue Boomers, (Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott come to mind) swallowed their internal doubts (that as conflicted Boomers they must have had) and made a big career advance - nailing their Boomer colours 100% to the fading modernist cause.
For these relatively young leaders have always found most of their votes among those much older than themselves - rather than among their peers.
But the older voter is always a constantly wasting resource.
Soon Boomers, more and more, will become the true older voter (because voting falls off sharply after age 75 - and all of the Greatest Generation will be over 75 in 2016's presidential election year.)
Because of their higher - age-related - turnout, Boomers will be the key voter up until the climate crisis's tipping point.
The fate of our world will thus turn not on a conflict between nations, ethnicities, religions, classes, genders or even generations - Fox and CNN to the contrary.
It will turn on a conflict within a highly conflicted transitional generation : the Boomers ....
At the time, all the rest of the world was beaming in self-satisfaction about Modern Science's obvious success (here insert A-Bomb) at beating back 'Barbaric Age' Axis science.
But Adorno and Horkheimer alone suggested that Janus Year 1945 really meant that the world was now in a 'transitional era' between a fading Modern Science (aka 'modernity') and a rising postmodern world.
But as the humble mimeographed nature of their book (The Dialectic of the Enlightenment) suggests, the pair were completely ignored at the time.
So what was first noted about all the kids being born between the early mid-1940s to the early mid-1960s was simply that : their extraordinary large numbers : hence 'Boomers'.
But would their highly unusual behavior during their plastic formative years been any different if their birth numbers had been considered 'normal' or low ?
I argue not.
The coincident fact that the peak of the transitional era's passing turbulence coincided with the Boomers' crucial formative years would have produced 'The Sixties' irregardless.
At the time, 'The Sixties' social conflict was neatly explained away by simply pointing to the Boomers' extra large numbers as sufficient explanation.
So the transitional nature of The Sixties was never recognized.
In particular no one looked at who all was retiring at the world's High Schools and Universities, instead of looking simply at who was newly coming in as students -- and then promptly protesting.
For in all times of transition, tides go out just as much as they come in.
Unlike their parents raised in unconflictedly modern schools - or their children raised in unconflictededly postmodern schools - the boomers got it from both barrels.
Early on : taught by moderns; later on : taught by post moderns : who now to believe ?
Before 1989, those Boomers who took the postmodern science way of viewing physical reality dominated their peers and the news pages.
But I argue that since "The End of The Cold War", those Boomers who went on to rule the world after 1990 - and who still do rule our world - held more to the older 'modern science' way of viewing physical reality.
I argue their rise to power was itself transitional .
Mostly due to others abruptly retiring, due partly to old age but mostly because of satisfaction at completing their life work : defeating Communism.
The new bosses, like the old bosses, were a hard,mean,uncharitable lot but their target and hence its solution, had greatly changed.
Their target was now environmentalists, not communists .
No longer was conflict over direct questions of ideology, basically 'trickle down' theories versus claims of 'human equality of access to basic life necessities'.
Now the conflict had become modern production science confronting postmodern impact science (over climate change in particular) to use Allan Schnailberg's highly influential formulation.
The dying-off Old Guard (the Modernist cum Greatest Generation) could find almost none among the Gen X and Millennials to carry on their battle against their true mortal enemy, the postmodern majority among the Boomers.
But not all Boomers resolved the conflict between modern and postmodern schooling in 100% favouring postmodernity.
This minority, the Rogue Boomers, (Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott come to mind) swallowed their internal doubts (that as conflicted Boomers they must have had) and made a big career advance - nailing their Boomer colours 100% to the fading modernist cause.
For these relatively young leaders have always found most of their votes among those much older than themselves - rather than among their peers.
But the older voter is always a constantly wasting resource.
Soon Boomers, more and more, will become the true older voter (because voting falls off sharply after age 75 - and all of the Greatest Generation will be over 75 in 2016's presidential election year.)
Because of their higher - age-related - turnout, Boomers will be the key voter up until the climate crisis's tipping point.
The fate of our world will thus turn not on a conflict between nations, ethnicities, religions, classes, genders or even generations - Fox and CNN to the contrary.
It will turn on a conflict within a highly conflicted transitional generation : the Boomers ....
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Boomers : the 'Greater Generation' or the generation that precipitates the ending of the entire human experiment ?
Come on Boomers, we can do so much better !
We were supposed to be the generation from whom great things were expected.
Instead (somebody, somewhere, certainly not humanity itself) will remember us merely as the pathetic little generation that ended the entire human experiment for all time in a great big global meltdown.
Some of us Boomers will do so actively (big shout out to PMs Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott !)
But most of us will merely passively help end the human experiment : apparently we Boomers are not ones for much passion --- or commitment.
We'll just be inert Netflix Potatoes, as the equivalent of our parents' war against Nazi values grinds on outside our comfortable living rooms.
What we do - or don't do - on harmful human climate change, not Elvis, Rock 'n' Roll or Civil Rights Marches, will end up being what defines us Boomers.
Yes, we're all a little older, a little slower : the youngest of us are almost fifty and the oldest are in their early seventies - but we're not dead yet, not yet in the nursing home.
We still have time to do that One Great Thing that we all promised the world way back when....
We were supposed to be the generation from whom great things were expected.
Instead (somebody, somewhere, certainly not humanity itself) will remember us merely as the pathetic little generation that ended the entire human experiment for all time in a great big global meltdown.
Some of us Boomers will do so actively (big shout out to PMs Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott !)
But most of us will merely passively help end the human experiment : apparently we Boomers are not ones for much passion --- or commitment.
We'll just be inert Netflix Potatoes, as the equivalent of our parents' war against Nazi values grinds on outside our comfortable living rooms.
What we do - or don't do - on harmful human climate change, not Elvis, Rock 'n' Roll or Civil Rights Marches, will end up being what defines us Boomers.
Yes, we're all a little older, a little slower : the youngest of us are almost fifty and the oldest are in their early seventies - but we're not dead yet, not yet in the nursing home.
We still have time to do that One Great Thing that we all promised the world way back when....
I have here in my hand a list of names : rogue Boomers who deny climate change
I don't - yet - have 205 or 81 or 57 names or whatever alcohol-induced fantasy number Senator Joe came up with in the end.
But I'm working on it.
First, definitions.
The Baby Boom wasn't really a boom in babies conceived , taking the long view.
Rather it was a 25 year long interregnum (a blip upwards) in the one hundred and fifty year long slow slide downwards in the number of live births among families in the westernized world.
Starting generally around 1941 and continuing generally till 1966, the number of live births in the West edged upwards from its nadir of the Great Depression decade, before settling down once again to Great Depression levels or less.
In social science terms, harmful human climate change deniers/skeptics/hubrists aren't exactly hard to define (or to find) : they come right out and freely admit to their disbelief.
Traditionally, we denier watchers have tended to focus on the most strident ones and I now believe this to be wrong.
They are the most strident because (a) they are either very old, know they are dying and out of office or (b) they are very young and not yet in office.
But the ones with all the actual power to do things and not just to complain about things are the Boomer deniers.
They will be running our world - in terms of both formal politics and informal wealth and cultural influence - right up to the global melt down tipping point.
Just for example : Mitt Romney and prime ministers Harper, Abbott, Key and Cameron.
All leaders of the Anglo Saxon cum free world, all Boomers and all very weak on stopping harmful climate change.
I'm making a list of powerful Boomers, checking it twice trying to find out ,on the issue of the climate, who has been naughty and who has been nice.
And I will post the names of naughty little boomer kids permanently on the side column of this blog ....
But I'm working on it.
First, definitions.
The Baby Boom wasn't really a boom in babies conceived , taking the long view.
Rather it was a 25 year long interregnum (a blip upwards) in the one hundred and fifty year long slow slide downwards in the number of live births among families in the westernized world.
Starting generally around 1941 and continuing generally till 1966, the number of live births in the West edged upwards from its nadir of the Great Depression decade, before settling down once again to Great Depression levels or less.
In social science terms, harmful human climate change deniers/skeptics/hubrists aren't exactly hard to define (or to find) : they come right out and freely admit to their disbelief.
Traditionally, we denier watchers have tended to focus on the most strident ones and I now believe this to be wrong.
They are the most strident because (a) they are either very old, know they are dying and out of office or (b) they are very young and not yet in office.
But the ones with all the actual power to do things and not just to complain about things are the Boomer deniers.
They will be running our world - in terms of both formal politics and informal wealth and cultural influence - right up to the global melt down tipping point.
Just for example : Mitt Romney and prime ministers Harper, Abbott, Key and Cameron.
All leaders of the Anglo Saxon cum free world, all Boomers and all very weak on stopping harmful climate change.
I'm making a list of powerful Boomers, checking it twice trying to find out ,on the issue of the climate, who has been naughty and who has been nice.
And I will post the names of naughty little boomer kids permanently on the side column of this blog ....
Saturday, January 3, 2015
dear Children of Janus Manhattan '45 : "If CO2 not at 350ppm by 2040, you'll tip us into a runaway disaster"
An Open Letter to my fellow members of the Boomer Generation:
(By 'boomer', I mean roughly all of us born after the initial start of what was to be the Manhattan Project and before the final implementation of the first Test Ban Treaty.)
Some of us, like myself, probably won't be alive when 2040 rolls around - we will never suffer the most severe consequences of our folly.
But we boomers currently rule the world and have done so since news of the 'hockey stick crisis' first hit the public media.
We are the boss in government and in the military, in finance, in intellectual and cultural circles.
We have heard the news, we are intelligent, highly educated people, we rule the world : we have no excuse, no barrier lay before us.
Only our selfish wills.
We are the children of Janus Manhattan '45 .
That janus year in the eternally janus city.
The New York City physicists of the Manhattan nuclear Project claimed that they had successfully bent even the most recalcitrant atoms to do Man's will: the signal triumph of 500 years of the Enlightenment Project.
By contrast, the New York City chemists of the Manhattan penicillin Project had admitted defeat : they had been unable to bend some very recalcitrant atoms into commercially viable synthetic penicillin.
Instead New York City biologists had shown how by working with Nature and not against her, humanity could produce abundant cheap natural penicillin-for-all : postmodern penicillin, Adorno's penicillin.
We boomers were given a choice : on one hand look backwards to the Manhattan nuclear Project with all its top down, anti-democratic secrecy and violence as a model of our relationship with the world and each other.
On the other hand, the Manhattan penicillin Project had involved tiny teams, even single individuals working on kitchen counters, using freely exchanged samples of penicillium spores.
With almost no government monies - often only hostility - they had proven to the rest of a doubting scientific world the clinical and economic value of freely-cooperating humanity and Nature working together around the commensal table.
We boomers had a choice : and some us became the classic boomer image of back to the land environmentalists - we got the message of natural penicillin.
But many others - like Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott - spurned that trend among boomers, became instead rogue Boomers and drank deep from the tainted Kool-Aid of the myth of the Manhattan nuclear Project.
Now they are driving this planet , like a car with its emission controls removed, off a climatic cliff.
As long as we boomers control most of the world's governments, its wealth and its biggest media outlets, only us can stop them.
My part in this effort - as I see it - is to urge all of us to take a hard look again at the legacy we were left with from Janus Manhattan's twin - warring - Projects in the Fall of 1945 ...
Saturday, December 20, 2014
'Rogue Boomers' : Running our world ; ruining our planet
When one thinks of Rogue Boomers, one immediately thinks of people like prime ministers Stephen Harper (born 1959) and Tony Abbott (born 1957) --- and not just because they are currently leading the charge (from the rear) against doing anything substantial about man-made climate disaster.
Rather it is something so unexpected about the vivid contrast between their still-baby faces and their totally Old School ways of thinking that humans can control the natural world - thinking we'd might expect more from their grandfathers, let alone their fathers.
Yes, those I call Noir's Children , the most vocal (and regrettably the smallest) segment of the Boomer kids got it, successfully absorbed the dire lessons (on all sides) from WWII , and adjusted their thinking.
But the Rogue Boomers ( the silent majority of my Boomer generation) carried right on as if nothing had changed, still believing in the simplistic old pre-war ways , despite Science (reluctantly) revealing an ever more complicated world.
It was as if they were to be frozen in aspic, forever locked into a time warp with the first generation of comic book super heroes.
Entombed forever within WWII's golden age of superheroes, superpowers, super-weapons and super-easy solutions to controlling unpleasant reality....
Rather it is something so unexpected about the vivid contrast between their still-baby faces and their totally Old School ways of thinking that humans can control the natural world - thinking we'd might expect more from their grandfathers, let alone their fathers.
Yes, those I call Noir's Children , the most vocal (and regrettably the smallest) segment of the Boomer kids got it, successfully absorbed the dire lessons (on all sides) from WWII , and adjusted their thinking.
But the Rogue Boomers ( the silent majority of my Boomer generation) carried right on as if nothing had changed, still believing in the simplistic old pre-war ways , despite Science (reluctantly) revealing an ever more complicated world.
It was as if they were to be frozen in aspic, forever locked into a time warp with the first generation of comic book super heroes.
Entombed forever within WWII's golden age of superheroes, superpowers, super-weapons and super-easy solutions to controlling unpleasant reality....
Sunday, September 9, 2012
'Nasty' Abbott and Howard Florey : told they'd be important from day they were born
 |
| the new Howard Florey ? |
Both men were the only spoiled child - the only male child - in a family of girls. From birth they were told constantly they, not the girls, would be somebody--- that they had to be somebody.
Spoil a child and raise up a sociopath....
"At all costs , get there !"
Energy, sharp elbows and "take no prisoners" attitudes got them to the top but left very few, except fellow sociopaths, really liking them.
The lazy but studiously modest Alexander Fleming charmed his way into getting a Nobel Prize and most of the glory for merely discovering penicillin ("to be basically useless as a life-saver") .
Fleming left it to others to work hard (onto death in the case of Martin Henry Dawson) to prove the reverse : that penicillin is in fact the most useful life-saving medicine yet invented (my italics).
One who worked hard to prove up penicillin was Florey - but widespread dislike of Florey led the media (and Fleming and his hospital) to make Alec Fleming the star of this saga.
History isn't done with wannabe DLP leader Nasty Abbott : but I doubt it will be kind.
Both Florey and Abbott had much in their characters to admire but because they were warped from birth by their parents, the bad always seemed to outweigh the good in them, as they obeyed their parents' dictates to succeed at all costs, unceasingly issued to them since before they could even speak.
Spoil a child and ruin a nation.....
Thursday, August 16, 2012
"You're an absolute disgrace (A. "Nasty") Abbott", says indie MP in blistering attack video
 |
| Tony -arsing about |
Enjoy watching Indie MP for New England, Australia (Tony Windsor) let go a blast at Tony Abbott, leader of the Libertarian-Liberals and leader of Australia's Official Opposition.
Warning : the un-parliamentary term ," arse ", was used in reference to the Honourable Abbott.
Windsor claimed that during the long drawn-out negotiations after the last election produced a hung parliament, Abbott promised that his carbon-reducing policies would have different mechanisms but would be no different in effect than those of the now-ruling Labour-Green government.
Abbott willing to go "warmist" even, if only it would make him PM....
That Abbott always said he would say and do anything warmist, just as long as he could be PM, please, please, please.
But his ambition was sooo very naked , none of the Indies in the Canberra House trusted Abbott's claim that he really would bring in some form of carbon reducing measure, if made PM.....
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Area 51 Alert : 97% of ice MELTING ; 97% of scientists VOTE agreement
the 97 % solution ....
Or A. "nasty" Abbott's worst nightmare.
An unlikely but true coincidence ----- or is it, boys and girls ?
Space photos showing 97 % of Greenland's ice cap melting at the same time that 97 % of the world's climate scientists have voted that the whole Earth is getting hot.
97 Percent - wow !
Like that is three times the vote that Stephen Harper got when he was elected absolute - majority government - dictator of Canada for 5 years to life, with time off to Canadians for good behavior.
But is just 97% of the votes of the climate scientist electorate enough to push ahead on bold new changes on how we run our national governments ?
The 37% solution
No, of course not, for that you need a, er, much lower vote - like 37%.
Like the sort of vote that Nasty Abbott or Harper or Cameron get when they are given majority government to make bold new decisions.
97% is much too , er, high for politicians.
But for scientists ? Politicians - the lying, denying politicians anyway - say that 97 % is way, way too low.
Politicians simply point out that on this, as in so many things, citizens must simply learn to suck it up ; it is "do as I say --- never, do as I do" .
the 100.00000000% solution of the think tankers
Libertarian denier think tankers have made this point very clear - and as long as Tobacco or Oil or Asbestos keeps feeding them money, they're the experts.
They say we shouldn't act on the gravest crisis facing us since Adam ate the apple until every last one of us, that is all 6.7 billion of us , becomes part of the consensus: 100.00000000% agreement, or nothing.
'Cause I mean, after all, saving our great grandchildrens' lives isn't anything like voting is it ?
For something like saving our own kiddies, it is a case of every last one of us on Earth must be on board or none of us is.......
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Carbon Ate My Homework 2 : Aussie grave robbers
The Nasty 'Abbott
Last week it was Brumby's the bakers who were after stealing bread - from their customers.And then blaming it on the new Australian carbon tax.
The head of the company resigned, after that PR disaster.
The person who really should have resigned is Libertarian Party leader Tony "the Nasty" 'Abbott, the reputed Prime Minister in waiting, who has been smearing mistruths about the carbon tax's effect on prices from morning to dusk.
The stupid gits in the business community who fall for his line unfortunately end up falling on the sword , not our Tony.
Grave Robbers
Latest sword-faller will be someone in a Melbourne area funeral home business which told a grieving family that sequestering the carbon in their relative's body into a grave would now cost an extra $55 thanks to the new carbon tax.
Actually the increase in the price had been in the pipeline for months and had nothing to do with carbon taxes - this just seemed ( at the time) an easy way to deflect an unpopular price increase upon any even more unpopular (er demonized) carbon tax.
Well the media went ballistic on this one -- burying dear old dad instead of burning him in a cremation greatly reduces, not increases the CO2 we pour into the heavens : if anything the family deserved a refund not a price increase !
Denier New Math : an extra $100 a litre carbon tax .....
When I read this story I searched green and denier-fighting parts of the blog-o-sphere for their take on it.
Believe it or not, I found the story only on hundreds of climate change sites, even though the story hardly flattered their cause.
Comforting to know they are too stupid to see this - but also scary to see that they and their readers are too stupid to see this.
What sort of tax on carbon could possibly drive the price of petrol up so much that it would be an EXTRA $55, just for using a backhoe for 5 minutes to dig a grave ?
What a new $100 per litre tax or something ?
Truly, "Greed Never Sleeps" - and in this case, I do not mean greed for money.Even global threats quail before Universe-sized Egos
No, I mean the greed some politicians have to hold the highest office in the land: Tony "the Nasty" 'Abbott is so hungry to be PM, he can almost taste it and he will stop at nothing to win it.Even if that means reversing his own personal position on carbon taxes from what he said but a year or two earlier.
Yes global warming is a threat to human existence but there are times when even a threat this global seems sub-atomic sized compared to the size of the threat to humanity posed by the size of some mens' egos and ambitions.....
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
DEANE PRIEST led to Canberra guillotine while pot-banging housewives jeer
Whoa Pony ! Not quite there yet , but there is no doubt Aussie housewives are hot to trot about the soaring prices at the outlets of the Brumby's Bakery chain.
I learned all this from Mike at Watching the Deniers who in turn got it from The West Australian, who first broke the story - kudos to them !
Deane Priest , the MD (boss) of the chain wrote a chatty little newsletter to all of the chain's franchisee telling them to jack up prices in July and just blame it all on the new Carbon Tax.
Outrage followed when The West Australian newspaper reprinted the newsletter.
The carbon-pollution-loving ultra-Liberal party went ducking for cover and the federal government's consumer protection agency ,the ACCC, announced it would investigate for possible price gouging.
Deane Priest's only crime, as far as I can see, is stupidity and a marked lack of ability in the two-facedness-department.
He should have taken a lesson in two-faced audacity from the ultra-Liberal party leader Tony Abbott who said:
Well Tony - I can call you Tony can't I ? - the government here in Canada can put up taxes all it likes on booze, fags and lottery tickets - I don't drink, smoke or gamble and as long as they don't tax swearing , I feel secure.
The fact is that taxes often have a differential impact, not a universal impact , which is why new taxes are so frequently used to nudge society in different directions rather than simply used to raise extra revenue.
In fact Green Party types like Canada's Jim Harris frequently propose "revenue neutral taxes" - for example, taxing carbon polluters but then giving all that revenue to encourage new renewable energy producers.
The net effect is that the government has no more revenue, but human society has been eased away from self-engineering its own 'climatic' doom.
So for example, a small local bakery that generates its own electricity off its own roof panels and then sells its bread in its own shop won't see the cost of its bread rise, but their big competitor, reliant on external energy and selling their bread - by carbon-burning truck - over a wide area, is going to see a true cost rise.
Ultimately, locally-made and sold bread, using local sunlight, will cost less to the customer and become more popular, while the big regional bakery (say Brumby's) goes belly up.
Its called a market solution and its coming from a socialist government - a bit odd that , Tony, but what can you do ?
Yes, Tony, they did used to call them 'sin' taxes - "hitting only the sinners and sparing the saints" , back in the days when most people still believed in sin.
But Tony, burning carbon is a sin, when there are cost-competitive* renewable alternatives.
Cost-competitive, as in the eyes of energy accountants' bean counting.
A lot more tough-assed than slackers like you, me and Tony, these hardnosed buggers rightfully count in the cost of externally-borne pollution costs , set them against internal profits, and then find consistently negative values.
For example, when burning the most common types of coal (sulfur-dirty,high moisture content, low BTU per mass) used in much of our electrical production.
I feel I can call Tony Abbott an ultra-Liberal (aka a libertarian) rather than a conservative as most media are inclined to do, because true conservatives, like myself, tend to be a censorious lot - always wanting to tax the other guy's sins.
But Mr Abbott has consistently been against taxing any sins - in opposing a tax on sinful carbon he is at least being consistent - to himself and his party's true (ultra-Liberal) values.
But just as consistently, even in very rich countries, bread remains the Staff of Life and woe be tide any party that lets its cost soar too high.
Then they face certain defeat at the polls - or even a date with the modern version of the dreaded guillotine blade, as the events of Libya in the Arab Spring demonstrate yet again.....
I learned all this from Mike at Watching the Deniers who in turn got it from The West Australian, who first broke the story - kudos to them !
Deane Priest , the MD (boss) of the chain wrote a chatty little newsletter to all of the chain's franchisee telling them to jack up prices in July and just blame it all on the new Carbon Tax.
Outrage followed when The West Australian newspaper reprinted the newsletter.
The carbon-pollution-loving ultra-Liberal party went ducking for cover and the federal government's consumer protection agency ,the ACCC, announced it would investigate for possible price gouging.
Deane Priest's only crime, as far as I can see, is stupidity and a marked lack of ability in the two-facedness-department.
He should have taken a lesson in two-faced audacity from the ultra-Liberal party leader Tony Abbott who said:
The truth is the carbon tax is going to impact on every price in our country
Well Tony - I can call you Tony can't I ? - the government here in Canada can put up taxes all it likes on booze, fags and lottery tickets - I don't drink, smoke or gamble and as long as they don't tax swearing , I feel secure.
The fact is that taxes often have a differential impact, not a universal impact , which is why new taxes are so frequently used to nudge society in different directions rather than simply used to raise extra revenue.
In fact Green Party types like Canada's Jim Harris frequently propose "revenue neutral taxes" - for example, taxing carbon polluters but then giving all that revenue to encourage new renewable energy producers.
The net effect is that the government has no more revenue, but human society has been eased away from self-engineering its own 'climatic' doom.
So for example, a small local bakery that generates its own electricity off its own roof panels and then sells its bread in its own shop won't see the cost of its bread rise, but their big competitor, reliant on external energy and selling their bread - by carbon-burning truck - over a wide area, is going to see a true cost rise.
Ultimately, locally-made and sold bread, using local sunlight, will cost less to the customer and become more popular, while the big regional bakery (say Brumby's) goes belly up.
Its called a market solution and its coming from a socialist government - a bit odd that , Tony, but what can you do ?
Yes, Tony, they did used to call them 'sin' taxes - "hitting only the sinners and sparing the saints" , back in the days when most people still believed in sin.
But Tony, burning carbon is a sin, when there are cost-competitive* renewable alternatives.
Cost-competitive, as in the eyes of energy accountants' bean counting.
A lot more tough-assed than slackers like you, me and Tony, these hardnosed buggers rightfully count in the cost of externally-borne pollution costs , set them against internal profits, and then find consistently negative values.
For example, when burning the most common types of coal (sulfur-dirty,high moisture content, low BTU per mass) used in much of our electrical production.
I feel I can call Tony Abbott an ultra-Liberal (aka a libertarian) rather than a conservative as most media are inclined to do, because true conservatives, like myself, tend to be a censorious lot - always wanting to tax the other guy's sins.
But Mr Abbott has consistently been against taxing any sins - in opposing a tax on sinful carbon he is at least being consistent - to himself and his party's true (ultra-Liberal) values.
But just as consistently, even in very rich countries, bread remains the Staff of Life and woe be tide any party that lets its cost soar too high.
Then they face certain defeat at the polls - or even a date with the modern version of the dreaded guillotine blade, as the events of Libya in the Arab Spring demonstrate yet again.....
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