The Vampire Cartel (credit to Neil Young, "I'm a vampire baby, sucking blood from the earth. I'm a vampire baby, I'll sell you twenty barrels worth." Vampire Blues, from the album On The Beach.
Maybe this is part of all the deals along with the crypto/chip deal u.a.e. made with demented don and his family. This being done to help him once the strait is opened so gas prices will drop and republicans will be elected in november. They also counter the saudis, who dropped don’s liv making them closer to don. This is the conspiracy administration.
Yes on OSPEC but for the Organization of Select Petroleum States. The new name would be chosen by the remaining members of OPEC to try to confer some dignity to the defection.
I'll accept OSPEC, but what I'd really prefer is that it not exist at all, primarily because the world will have wisely moved on to non-fossil-fuel based energy production. Today, NYT published an article stating that Europe is warming faster than any other continent. Surely part of the reason is dependence on fossil fuels. Earlier this week, there was an article about the inadequacy of America's electric power grid and the huge amounts of power it will take to operate huge data centers, including AI. Trump's foolish objections to clean energy like wind and his canceling of permits for offshore wind farms has hurt us and will continue to hurt us. We are falling behind China in this and other areas. Dependence on oil needs to fade away as horses and buggies did.
Sorry to weigh down this lighthearted discussion with serious argument, but if we think that there are serious external costs associated with fossil fuel based energy production (and I do) the best answer is not "clean energy" per se, but carbon tax.
The problem with carbon tax is that it does not necessarily lead to alternative energy though it could if the tax is hefty enough. The biggest external cost in fossil fuel based energy now is climate change. Whether we institute carbon taxes or use another method to urge companies to find alternative ways to produce electricity, we have already wasted a great deal of time due to the incompetence of the current administration. BTW, I could have sworn I was being serious.
I didn't mean to offend you, but it seemed like you and I were the only ones being serious. I am making, I guess, the original Pigouvian argument that if alternative energy is the most cost effective response to the external cost of fossil fuel based energy, and if the tax is set at the level of the external cost, it will, indeed lead to the appropriate quantity of alternative energy. It will also lead to other beneficial responses, like greater investments in the efficient use of energy and possibly simply using less energy. Also, it will involve the entire economy, and will leave it free to seek and find the most cost effective response(s). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, global environmental externalities require global responses. While there have been some attempts at global carbon reduction agreements, they have been pretty ineffective. I think that a global carbon tax would be much easier to negotiate, establish, and enforce than any other structure of global carbon reduction agreement.
Sorry to have misunderstood your remark. I agree with you in principle. At the same time, I hold little hope for global responses to climate change in such a disorganized world. Who would collect such a tax and how would it be distributed among nations, for example? Perhaps the money should go to island nations that are very likely to be wiped out by rising sea levels, though it seems unlikely that would happen. At least one nation (whose name escapes me) is already facing the need to relocate en masse. So many issues simply doing what's right.
If you are discouraged, so am I. We face serious challenges that I think could be met, but I really don't think we will. Anyway, my dream for a carbon tax would be for many (hopefully most) of the world's nations to enter into a treaty requiring each to pay into a common fund an amount determined by the amount of carbon based fuel used by the nation (I think that fuel used would be a convenient and accurate proxy for CO2 produced because with only one exception that I can think of (concrete), burning fuel is the only way we produce significant CO2). The fund would then be distributed back to the participants on some other basis. Per capita would be one obvious possibility, and maybe the per capita distributions could be inversely weighted by income, but another possibility if we could bring ourselves to agree on it, would be compensating nations that have been harmed by atmospheric CO2. It could be some combination of methodologies.
I am inclined to believe that countries that were subject to a carbon tax would, in turn, impose a similar tax on their own people, as I believe that carbon tax is the most efficient way to achieve reductions in CO2 production, but I don't think that the treaty would have to require that. Each nation would still determine its own approach to controlling its ownCO2 emissions.
Before Covid, I audited a college course that addressed this issue among others. One method then touted was to tax industries that produce CO2, but that never really happened in this country. With this administration denying climate change, it won't happen before 2028. We are well on our way to the poisoning of our own children and grandchildren.
It should be called opec, all lower case.
And members are opeckers.
I don’t think I can do better than your OSPEC. PECR also made me chuckle.
Oil R Us.
OFBT - Organization For a Barren Tomorrow
The Vampire Cartel (credit to Neil Young, "I'm a vampire baby, sucking blood from the earth. I'm a vampire baby, I'll sell you twenty barrels worth." Vampire Blues, from the album On The Beach.
PECR pronounced pecker for petroleum exporting states reduced
The Ostriches.
TOE - tired old energy
My thought was the same as yours.
OuttaSPEC
OPEGM
Pronounced O PEG M
Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Greed Mongers
Organization Of Petroleum States.
Maybe this is part of all the deals along with the crypto/chip deal u.a.e. made with demented don and his family. This being done to help him once the strait is opened so gas prices will drop and republicans will be elected in november. They also counter the saudis, who dropped don’s liv making them closer to don. This is the conspiracy administration.
Yes on OSPEC but for the Organization of Select Petroleum States. The new name would be chosen by the remaining members of OPEC to try to confer some dignity to the defection.
I'll accept OSPEC, but what I'd really prefer is that it not exist at all, primarily because the world will have wisely moved on to non-fossil-fuel based energy production. Today, NYT published an article stating that Europe is warming faster than any other continent. Surely part of the reason is dependence on fossil fuels. Earlier this week, there was an article about the inadequacy of America's electric power grid and the huge amounts of power it will take to operate huge data centers, including AI. Trump's foolish objections to clean energy like wind and his canceling of permits for offshore wind farms has hurt us and will continue to hurt us. We are falling behind China in this and other areas. Dependence on oil needs to fade away as horses and buggies did.
Sorry to weigh down this lighthearted discussion with serious argument, but if we think that there are serious external costs associated with fossil fuel based energy production (and I do) the best answer is not "clean energy" per se, but carbon tax.
The problem with carbon tax is that it does not necessarily lead to alternative energy though it could if the tax is hefty enough. The biggest external cost in fossil fuel based energy now is climate change. Whether we institute carbon taxes or use another method to urge companies to find alternative ways to produce electricity, we have already wasted a great deal of time due to the incompetence of the current administration. BTW, I could have sworn I was being serious.
I didn't mean to offend you, but it seemed like you and I were the only ones being serious. I am making, I guess, the original Pigouvian argument that if alternative energy is the most cost effective response to the external cost of fossil fuel based energy, and if the tax is set at the level of the external cost, it will, indeed lead to the appropriate quantity of alternative energy. It will also lead to other beneficial responses, like greater investments in the efficient use of energy and possibly simply using less energy. Also, it will involve the entire economy, and will leave it free to seek and find the most cost effective response(s). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, global environmental externalities require global responses. While there have been some attempts at global carbon reduction agreements, they have been pretty ineffective. I think that a global carbon tax would be much easier to negotiate, establish, and enforce than any other structure of global carbon reduction agreement.
Sorry to have misunderstood your remark. I agree with you in principle. At the same time, I hold little hope for global responses to climate change in such a disorganized world. Who would collect such a tax and how would it be distributed among nations, for example? Perhaps the money should go to island nations that are very likely to be wiped out by rising sea levels, though it seems unlikely that would happen. At least one nation (whose name escapes me) is already facing the need to relocate en masse. So many issues simply doing what's right.
If you are discouraged, so am I. We face serious challenges that I think could be met, but I really don't think we will. Anyway, my dream for a carbon tax would be for many (hopefully most) of the world's nations to enter into a treaty requiring each to pay into a common fund an amount determined by the amount of carbon based fuel used by the nation (I think that fuel used would be a convenient and accurate proxy for CO2 produced because with only one exception that I can think of (concrete), burning fuel is the only way we produce significant CO2). The fund would then be distributed back to the participants on some other basis. Per capita would be one obvious possibility, and maybe the per capita distributions could be inversely weighted by income, but another possibility if we could bring ourselves to agree on it, would be compensating nations that have been harmed by atmospheric CO2. It could be some combination of methodologies.
I am inclined to believe that countries that were subject to a carbon tax would, in turn, impose a similar tax on their own people, as I believe that carbon tax is the most efficient way to achieve reductions in CO2 production, but I don't think that the treaty would have to require that. Each nation would still determine its own approach to controlling its ownCO2 emissions.
Before Covid, I audited a college course that addressed this issue among others. One method then touted was to tax industries that produce CO2, but that never really happened in this country. With this administration denying climate change, it won't happen before 2028. We are well on our way to the poisoning of our own children and grandchildren.
Sounds like a plan 👍