Talk about Newsnight

The solution to environmental problems is going to be technical rather than taxation. Develop more efficient cars and and slowly increase limits on the amount of allowable pollution from new ones. Do the same for new houses, new factories, industrial processes, product packaging etc.

Green taxation just hits those who can least afford it hardest, and reduces quality of life for most of us.

I suspect Green taxes are far from dead, but there seems to be a growing appreciation that they are a very blunt and inequitable policy instrument.

I think the future will see very different and more sophisticated approaches taken (probably in combination with some green taxes) - most important of which will be a system of carbon credits.

The government needs to be clear and honest about their intentions - are they committed to cutting emissions? Yes? Good, but how do they propose to encourage people to change their habits?

Green taxes are the future I'm sure, but should never be used to bludgeon people into submission. Carrot and stick is the way forward. We need green credits as well.

Green taxes must never be seen as a one way street - 'change or it will cost you'. People simply see these taxes as a cynical way to gather more tax revenue.

The government should always promote the green(est) alternative at the same time. So raise the tax on petrol or diesel fuel by all means but lower it on the greener alternatives. Raise the tax on polluting vehicles, but give a tax credit to those that do low or zero mileage.

People should always be able to see money flowing back to people for green behaviour -that focuses minds.

Look at how much effort people and corporations go to cut their tax burden. We would see a meaningful shift in emission related behaviour should real short-term incentives be in place.

The government needs to stop sleep-walking and be imaginative and brave in tackling this issue.

They must show they mean business.

If the green taxes imposed on fuel continue to rise - and the share of VAT too as the prices at the pumps continue to rocket - the people on the bottom rungs of the labour ladder will have to take Norman Tebbitt's "On yer bike" advice literally if they are to remain as mobile as the labour market demands. Not easy if your job is miles away from where you live.

No thought was ever given on this tax. Easy money hit the motorist. What about Old Coal fired power stations, Old aircraft, Old Trains etc. All because government wants to try and look good.

Green taxes on fuel should certainly be dead. They are immensely damaging economically and it is by no means scientifically proven that CO2 emissions are causing enviormental damage.

I spend half my time in USA and I used to be sceptical of their scepticism that global warming is caused by human activity. Then I looked at the science and was especially influenced by the views of such scientists as Prof Bob Carter of James Cook University.

His position is supported by many other experts, including Phillip Stott (UK) who was in the Global Warming Swindle Ch 4 film, along with Lord Lawson who headed the Inquiry which found that the arguments (that global warming was man-made) did not add up.

In the BBC’s reporting, which is usually balanced, why is it that I don’t see any mention of the compelling arguments against the position that global warming is man-made? Everything seems to assume that it is man-made.

In an age when party political differences defined by ideology have given way to a universal embrace of global agendas and neo-liberal economics, the 'green tax' issue will just be another political football thus: the Tories will shout 'no no no' for as long as they can but once in power, they will themselves quietly adopt the policy, because ultimately they have no alternative if they are to sustain the economy in a world of high cost oil and climate change.

This government is spineless and negligent when it comes to environmental protection.

Gordon Brown has consistently refused to use the tax system in a way that would serioulsy encourage environmentally-friendly behaviour.

The alternative to green taxes is the – arguably fairer - system of Tradeable Energy Quotas. Under this scheme, every adult gets an equal carbon allowance that reduces rapidly in line with the national target. The idea seems to have some distinct advantages over a carbon tax. It could be more politically acceptable than a tax, conferring carbon literacy on every adult in the population and providing a massive demand for low carbon goods and services. Moreover since the allowance is tradable, the scheme could help effect income redistribution. The rich, who generally emit more carbon, will have to pay for extra emissions credits – while the poor and those who have adopted a low carbon lifestyle voluntarily will be rewarded financially when they sell their surplus units.

However a recent DEFRA study came out against these as an option as well. This leaves the government with no demand management tools in it's bag when it comes to personal energy use.

Add to this the planned increases in aviation, road building, coal-fired power stations and open-cast coal mining and we have a government that seems intent on locking us into a high carbon future.

The religion of man made Climate change is hitting the buffers.... along with all the related additional "green tax" scams and costs.

About time.

Apologies for any confusion caused by the previous draft of this post which said that Alistair Darling's meeting with MPs was taking place today. The meeting is in fact planned for next week.

Stuart

We have arrived at the crunch point. Is any political party or politician who takes green policy seriously electable. I believe that a truly green manifesto would be taking us back to the sort of economy and life style of the rationing period just after WW2. We had to do it then for survival and we need to do it now to approach anything like a policy which will reverse the headlong progress towards climate disaster. A few taxes will not scratch the surface. I am afraid there is no easy way back it will be extremely hard. Growing wealth and growing economies may be the way forward but they are not the way backward and that is the direction we need to go.

'Are green taxes dead?'

Cripes. That's a big... sweeping... question to a complex issue... set of issues.

Short answer: I certainly hope not, if 'Green taxes' means sensible, fair, practical ways to help people make personal choices on their consumption of 'travel'.

However, if it is anything like the historical, and current crop of ill-conceived, poorly thought-through, city-centric, revenue over planet, stupidly-communicated 'initiatives' tried or floated to date, I certainly hope NOT!

For instance, retroactive taxes on the majority of the poorer electorate's older cars to fund pay and pensions black holes for legions more box-tickers (even if 'green'), many of whom never actually pay for the consequences of their travel, was never going to fly as anything like helping person or planet.

And with each clunking great effort of this nature, the chances of selling something rational to an expanding, travel-imposed (work) or addicted (social) race gets ever harder.

A tax on a fairly inelastic demand doesn't make it green. Nor particularly helpful when it is regressive as well.

We need smarter policies (including taxation) which have a broader coalition of support.

Not sure I believe in manmade climate change, but I do believe we have had far too much of this government's punitive taxation.
And if current petrol prices are not keeping us all indoors what are specifically 'green' taxes supposed to be going to achieve?
AW

We are totally dependent on the black stuff. It's time for change .
For once, I support the government on this . We should depend less on oil and on the countries that supply it .
Today's UK economy can take an oil tax hike on its stride, a new, cleaner economy will spring up (think on the impact on renewable energy sources for example) . In any case, the government should redistribute the tax windfall to promote cleaner energy.

For me its the management issue. I am for higher prices as a stick so long as there are carrots in the form of renewable energy sources that should be cheaper in the long run and viable alternatives i.e. significant investment in safe public transport.

But it was never a secret that there is supposed to be a significant carbon shortfall by 2020.

So the kinds of problems we are facing now were inevitable. You had to account for that and decide on how to redress it. But politicians will avoid the hard decisions because of short term electoral gain.

Similarly so far as I am concerned population levels (possibly only in connection with food supply) will start to come more onto the agenda in the next few years. Again if you have finite resources and a potentially infinite population the balloon must burst at some point.

Is there a connection between booming global populations and environmental impacts?
Will we start to consider our options well in advance?

Nah!

We are all more worried, apparently, about what legacy our leaders will leave behind. Its brown coloured guys!

It rather depends if it is an administration of principle or a government with one eye on Crewe and Nantwich and the other on the next election, does it not?

Watch this space.

Green Taxes are a luxury, this country could afford, it can't now, as luxuries are only viable when necessities are complete, they ain't.

Higher tax on the worst polluters has to be the right thing to do, as per "The Polluter Pays" principle. And that's regardless of whether the worst polluters are inefficient coal powered stations or gas guzzling cars. Are we serious about leaving a planet that our children can live on or not?

Whoops. I meant 'I hope SO' for my first short answer. But hope does spring eternal.

Isn't the rising (doubling) cost of fuel man made? I don't see anyone discussing this. The 'green' issue is all too often rolled out as a smoke screen to hide the actual problem we need to face. With all today's wizzardry I simply can't accept that Oil needs to stay as dominant as Governments claim it needs to be. Let's move on instead of protecting an industry harming the planet - the tax issue has little-to-no effect.

It is time to take a LARGE step back and look at the problem through realistic eyes,
We think of ourselves as a LARGE nation with a large population, this is rubbish, in the REAL WORLD we are, believe it or not, an insignificant minority!!! we accuse ourselves (through the politically aligned press and other media) of being major polluters of the atmosphere and ALL OTHER ecological systems, this is also complete tripe, If we stopped all the alledged methods of pollution we are accused of, it would mean that 1/ there would not be ANY noticeable difference in the total emissions world wide. 2/ We would be put in an unecessary situation of hardship. 3/ There would be that much more pollutants for the so called emergent nations to use. 4/We would be the laughing stock of the rest of the world as they see this once great nation finally descend into the depths of self immolation, while they just sit back urging us on with yet more horror stories of the end of the world at the same time as they boost their output, we are being brainwashed by extremely clever people of ALL political attitudes into a self imposed state of guilt, which is designed to make us accept a return to the old Victorian system of the landed gentry and serfdom, over the last century, by various means "the working class" managed to close the "class" divide, now however, the powers that be have decided that it has gone far enough and that by any means the balance must be restored, and we must pay and be made to feel guilty for trying to better ourselves.

There is no hard and fast evidence that mans habits are causing the latest round of global warming - it has happened before on this planet - I might add - a long time before the car was invented.
Green taxes are just another stealth tax.
For many people the car is an essential item - not a luxury, for those people who cannot travel to work on public transport.
No longer do we work a 10 minute walk from where we live.
Many people cross cities or travel city to city to get to work.
A higher tax on older polluting vehicles introduced retrospectively is unfair and will hit hardest on the people who are least capable of upgrading their cars.
This should apply only to new cars.
As a point of interest, evidence indicates the little reported fact that significant changes are taking place on ALL planets within our solar system.
The changes taking place on this planet are apparently perfectly natural, and will not be changed by filling the governments coffers with more taxes.

Other posts have suggested that car technology has to be improved and I would agree and the best way of doing this is to impose a deadline on the car industry by which time ALL new cars MUST have maximum emissions or cannot be sold - period. Currently they have NO incentive to change and neither do consumers. Few would willingly buy a small but efficient car if a larger less efficient but more prestigious one were within their budget. It is fascinating just how fast industry can develop new technologies when the alternative is a zero on the bottom line!

Here’s a revolutionary idea. Why not take the average cars miles per gallon (say 25) and the average drivers annual mileage say (10000) and work out that this represents 400 gallons of petrol per year. Now take the car desired ONE LEVEL car tax say £150 and divide by 400 = 37.5p. Now add this to the pump price of petrol and collect the revenue with the VAT. Everyone will pay proportionate to their road usage, the more miles you drive the more you pay. Also everyone pays proportionate to their sociability, the bigger the gas guzzler you own the more you pay! A little old granny with a Mini popping to the shops once a week should not have to pay anything close to say me, who has a 4.2lt sports car and drives 20+ miles a year. It is a fair system and, by the way, would also stop people dodge paying their car tax. (All figures are for illustration only, no doubt, if adopted, the powers that be would say the average car only gets 20 to the gallon and drives 5000 miles a year – do the maths, you’ll see why!)
Revolutionary? I think not, my father was talking about this idea 40 years ago he also talked about charging to be able to buy/move number plates between cars, it took the government 30 years to implement the last idea, wonder when common sense will prevail on the former?

One last thing, my father, yes him again, maintained that the ordinary worker was worse off under Labour than the Conservatives – looks like he was a bit of a Prophet!

WAR ON ERROR

If we were still Great Britain we might, progressively, pull up the drawbridge on foreign oil and go back on the Coal Standard. Not to burn, but to convert to various fuels; as an interim measure, while harnessing all that moon-pull round our shores. Then we could move to hydrogen. No new technology needed. If we can fight one abstract noun, why not fight another? War means you don't mess around; War means you dump Party Games. But even if the EU would let us, I guess the Non Doms, or their oily chums, would pull some all-powerful plug on us.

I wish I could put my Carbon Footprint up the backside of all those who subscribe to the green debate which appears to me as good an excuse to "cream" us with taxes for our own good.

It is an unproven concept to which everyone pays lip service , just like in the Emporor's new Clothes story, so we don't appear a fool.

For me I agree with the Labour MP, Austin Mitchell, who this lunch time told us how all of us who bought a car since 2001 now have to pay in my case, on a pension £480/year with no chance of selling it except to virtually give it away. CO2 emissions never entered the debate when I bought it nor was the arbitory limit of 220.

Road charging, another rip off to hit the poor with no effect on congestion. (see London) Only the rich will be able to drive. We had one clown, on the radio this lunchtime, wanting to limit driving licenses so you will have to wait until I die before you got mine. (I am not joking!)
No alternative transport except to charge premium rates when we need to use it.

As somone above blogged, the greenies will have us all living like mother earth hippy's if they had their way. (probably how we will all end up). They oppose coal, oppose nuclear, don't like non renewables like oil, so make us pay; oppose barrages (damages wildlife and mud flats). love windmills spoiling our skylines, and like telling us on camera what an ignorant lot we are who drive our cars and do whatever else they don't like, preening themselves in their self-righteous smugness.

God, I am really becoming an angry old man. I am now going to outside to shake my fist up at God a la Basil Fawlty.

Green taxes were a scam from the start!
They have no impact whatsoever on so called "global warming" which itself is increasingly seen as yet another political swindle.

Green issue are not going to go away; personally I believe it is the new mantra for all the redudant 'Ban the Bombers' and beardies with plastic sandals (made from oil based products). Disciples who, hysterically label 'unbelievers' (me) as blasphemers. However it enables Brown and his glove puppet Darling the excuse to raise taxes from good honest hard working citizens. While (Not him! Despite his many faults; Gordon Brown would never take advantage of public money for his own use) , the majority of MPs fill their boots at taxpayers expense - complaining about how hard done they are (Mind you, they never resign and find another job where their extensive talents might see them suitably employed.) Green taxes only achieve one thing; they enable his fag Darling to refill the coffers emptied by head boy Brown while trying to bribe the upper sixth to vote for him as head boy again. Green Taxes are a con, no more, no less!

In his post (8) Philip England appears to support the idea of Tradable Energy Quotas.

This ridiculously expensive to administer scheme sounds identical to the Waste Management Scheme introduced into industry a few years ago. Many people thought this a “cop-out” by government who, lacking any idea how to tackle waste decided to throw the problem back to industry and tax them if they failed. The same formula appears to be being suggested to curb the carbon emissions of individuals and sorry, it just will not work. It will however create a whole new infrastructure of government, or quasi government, employees to administer it, with all the attendant carbon emissions they will produce and cost the country millions if not billions.

Industry has not significantly cut waste production, we still over package merchandise not in the name of protection but for the advancement of the marketing message, brand loyalty and the bottom line! Tradable Certificates simply become a tax.

Industry is far more “switched on” than the average person in the street. They will not have a clue how to make a real dent in their carbon emissions. No doubt, if this barmy idea reaches reality, the emission level will be set at an average based on, well good question, based on what? Sure people will think about turning off the odd light in the house, they might even turn the thermostat down a couple of degree’s in the winter but will it stop those, who can afford it, taking extra holidays, or driving to the shop rather than walking? Not a bit of it, they will simply have to pay yet another TAX because they can afford more than the average person. Remember with an average there are a lot higher as well as lower and I will lay money on the fact there will be far more people having to buy credits than able to sell them!

Government is great at deciding to do something but terrible at deciding what, hence putting the onus back on the people “Hey we know we need to cut (insert whatever is current) but don’t have a clue how, so you figure it out and by the way, we’ll tax the life out of you if you are as clueless as we.”

These car tax bands are a great idea ..... until we all drive hybrids running on grass cuttings! 'Poor' people dont look after their cars but pollute the same as rich people driving gas guzzlers, what to do, what to do ... i cycle.

If you really want a green tax then every single manufactured item and every single factory making them must have a portion of their costs both in the final product and production cycle linked to environmental taxation. Irrespective of it being a litre of fuel, water, beer or bag of sugar, toys or hi-fi. An ID card for products.

Green Taxes are a joke they are Brown Taxes. I have not seen any benefit from Green Taxes only an increase in my out goings to prop up this failed government and their expensive lifestyles.

31.mullerman wrote:
"If you really want a green tax then every single manufactured item and every single factory making them must have a portion of their costs both in the final product and production cycle linked to environmental taxation. Irrespective of it being a litre of fuel, water, beer or bag of sugar, toys or hi-fi. An ID card for products"


I take it you work for a Treasury think tank then

Even normally environmentally incoherent Tim " nice but dim " Yeo has come to the conclusion that green taxes are unfair to the poor. Personal carbon credits must be the true way forward despite what empty headed Joan Ruddock had to say about them the other day. Even Louise Ellman can see that green taxes have no future and believes in energy efficiency saving. Perhaps in her new roll as transport select committee chairman she can start by abandoning new traffic calming projects and gradually removing what's already there. ( starting with the busiest roads first )

Forget Hydrogen and a bomb in the boot, pure electric cars with battery trailers for longer distances are the way forward for personal transport. We could also reduce emissions by keeping vehicles longer, plenty of maintenance jobs there. It is in all of our interests to ensure fossil fuels last as long as practicable.

So called "Green" taxes may well be appropriate - but not when imposed retrospectively as in the case of the proposed increase in Road Fund Tax.

Where is my post?

High prices of oil and food are here to stay -- they reflect massive growth in demand (mainly from China and India) not matched by increased production. Neither Gordon Brown nor any other government can do anything to change that. Cuts in taxes or fuel duties would soon be offset by price increases replacing the reduced taxes to bring the price back to the market level -- i.e. how much people will agree to pay for a given scarce commodity in the light of the cost of any alternatives. Anyway high oil prices are beneficial -- they encourage the search for alternative (and renewable) energy sources and also fuel economy (people and companies will use their gas-guzzlers less and public transport or other forms of more environmentally friendly transport more). Similarly high food prices improve rewards to farmers in developing countries, encourage them to invest in more productive technology and provide incentives for them to grow more food (thus eventually bringing prices down again).

Reducing taxes on petrol and diesel, or increasing food subsidies, is therefore counter-productive. The objective should be to give financial help through the tax system only to those who are hardest hit by the price increases, i.e. those least able to pay the higher prices. The cost of these tax rebates and reductions should be met from vastly increased taxes (including a one-off windfall tax) on the corporations and individuals who have made inflated profits (and paid themselves inflated bonuses and salaries) out of the price increases without having done anything to add value to the economy -- notably the oil companies and their executives. Take from those who have done nicely out of the price changes without deserving it, and give it to those hardest hit by and most vulnerable to the price increases. But don't try to intervene to keep oil or food prices lower than the market dictates.

Brian
https://www.barder.com/ephems/

Look, there's going to come a time - soon - if it hasn't arrived already, when a lot of people simply cannot afford to go on paying out, paying out, paying out ... We should organise one or more "one-day-no-private-transport" protests - where EVERYONE leaves their car at home - and see what happens to the public transport system, and the economy. Somone should organise a protest march/blockade/sit-down in the middle of, for example, the M4. (When the oil tankers struck in 2000, within two days the M4 was EMPTY!!!) Just like the French! And then do it again, and again, and again !!! until the politicans in Westminster, on their gold-plated expense accounts, actually do listen to us!

So called 'green taxes' have always been more to do with raising revenue and little to do with the environment; Tony Blair admitted that during the 2000 fuel protests when he said reducing road fuel duty would mean cutting NHS spending. The opposition parties are just as bad, they propose higher 'green taxes' to fund headline grabbing cuts in Income Tax.

This is simply dishonest; if the 'green taxes' work, and people reduce their use of fossil fuels, general taxation will have to increase to make up the revenue shortfall. Experience, however, suggests that higher taxes alone will not change individual behaviour (people like their cars too much) and this is probably what the government is counting on.

If the government were serious about reducing carbon emissions it would start with things it can directly influence; fossil free power generation or cheap, clean and safe public transport.

'Green taxes' simply allow the government to appease the Green lobby, by pretending to do something about carbon emissions, and sell themselves as 'tax cutting' to the electroate.

TESTING

Why is Brian's link live? Is he using the Force?

www.barriesingleton.co.uk

There may be some value in using taxation to influence an individual's future choice of car and also to drive car manufacturers to produce low emission vehicles.

High taxes should not be retrospectively applied to older cars. These may emit more CO2, but consideration should also be given to the amount of CO2 associated with manufacture of a new car.

This corrupt and morally bankrupt government has hocked everything we ever had of value to keep itself afloat. It's now just a cash junkie. It will use any excuse to tax us. They couldn't care less about making token and miniscule reductions in the 1% of the planet's ecosystem we may have a limited effect upon. They just need our cash to feed their habit and any source will do.

I think it would be good if the country simply refused to tax all road vehicles in protest. What would the so-called government do then? Lock up 30 million motorists for non-payment of road tax. I don't think so.

This government is guilty of disobeying the will of the people. Now the people should go for some straightforward civil disobedience just see how long the rubbish in downing street lasts.

Any sound green taxation policy should consider penalty and rewards equally, if the government does not want to be seen as tax orientated, it should not only address the environmental awareness issue to the public,- train as much people as traffic wardens to tell the public about the benefit of reducing our energy foot prints and other ways of reducing the level of pollution in the environment- and, at the same time the government should consider a compensative tax to encourage members of the public to be appealed towards contributing to a greater environmental management; this could be in form of discount on council tax ( for local recycling), road car tax reduction(for car energy efficiency), stamp duty discount( for energy efficient houses), company discount tax(on companies ability to improve their contribution in energy efficiency management), and others.
The real problem seems to be that, once any government start taxing, it can't think of ways of reducing taxation by encouraging rather than penalizing. People can't be reluctant to pay taxes on their income, but can be in an area where they could have a choices.

Green tax is a good idea providing the revenue generated is used to develope alternative technology that will help the carbon footprint stuff. I would like to know exactly how much money is being taken by HM Revenue regards this tax, and where its going?

Green Taxes are just another excuse to tax us.
A 'Global Warming' industry has been created and its momentum will be difficult to stop. When we look back in a few years time and realise that we have been conned ... will we get our money back? Of course not.
Global Warming is an unproven religion; we should not be made to feel guilty if we don't believe it.

Are green taxes dead?

Probably not, but they have been damaged, possibly beyond repair, because there is zilch evidence of Gordon Brown's green credentials.

What has died recently, though no one has seen this particularly elephant in the room with them, is a whole series of national levers which no longer function.

Interest rates, taxing the mega-rich, green taxes; all need to be moved to a European level. Needless to say, the democratic deficit at the heart of Europe makes this idea too utopian to be taken seriously yet.

But if you think about, were there to be a European wide tax on petrol and diesel, there would be a level economic playing field, which would be a whole lot fairer.

And, yes, I do think we should now join the euro.

Green taxes have no impact what-so-ever on the way we conduct our lives, I like most people view then as a form of taxation to meet the exchequers cash requirements and not to fund development of fuel and technology to reduce the impact our lives have on the environment.

If the government is serious about green issues ministers must lead by example. They should only be allowed to have a second home in or around the capital if their main residence is more than 100 miles from the capital, and even then there should be a transfere of capital gain back to the exchequer when their term in office ends, thereby the public would feel that their taxes have been put to good use.

Im sure we have all witnessed the size and style of the vehicles that our ministers travel in, surely if they are determined to control polution this would be a good place to start and set an example that we can all follow...... Dont hold your breath and wait for our members of parliament to get their feet out of the trough....

I'm at an age I suppose where I have seen UK Governments come and go. They all have an agenda to hit the softest target for taxation first. Its invariably the motorist. With transportation fuel at an all time high mainly due to the very large percentage due to multiple taxes, duty and VAT. We now have the vehicle tax increases, pay as you go taxes, congestion taxes, huge parking fines...In London you have good public transport, buses, trains, underground, taxis etc - thee may be issues concerning the state of these services, however at least you have them. When you go 30 or 100 miles outside of London - you could be excused in believing your in a different country. Yes there's buses - but how frequent and at what price, and that's really it. So to hit the poor car/van/lorry drives with these taxes is only asking for one thing - anarchy - If I was in the position of some of these small road haulers who see more costs which they cannot pass onto their customers - I would be doing something about it - blocking roads would be tame compared to what I would do and I'm hearing the same. Serious unrest - anarchy if you like is being considered. When you look at the mess this Government has got us into and to be honest the Conservative Party wouldn't have done any better, house prices falling, interest rates up, mortgage problems, increases in food, heating and fuel - YOU CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH - before you take action. Mark my words - you haven't seen angry people yet - but you will if nothing is done - oh and to top it all - we are now seeing how these MP's are milking the tax payer for anything and everything they can - well guess who will be the first to see this pent up anger - I rest my case

DON'T GET MAD GET WISE

Politics need not be done the Wesminster way. When the next election comes round, refuse to vote 'rosette'. Send the message to MPs that they are to stand as themselves, with only one allegiance - the contituency. I stood for paliament in 2005 to try to arouse awareness of the party charade. At the next election I shall be out there bringing the message of MP disloyalty home to the voters. Take a look at this:

It is noticeable that after a few years of pushing the green agenda and suggesting that green taxes should replace some existing taxes, the Tories largely ignored the issue at the Crewe and Nantwich byelection. The focus was very much on household costs, including the burden of general taxation.

I suspect we won't hear much about green issues at the next election. Gordon Brown's government largely ignores the issue. The green tree symbol recently adopted by the Conservatives may also prove a hostage to fortune.

DON'T GET MAD GET WISE

Politics need not be done the Wesminster way. When the next election comes round, refuse to vote 'rosette'. Send the message to MPs that they are to stand as themselves, with only one allegiance - the contituency. I stood for paliament in 2005 to try to arouse awareness of the party charade. At the next election I shall be out there bringing the message of MP disloyalty home to the voters. Take a look at this:

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF YOUR MP
Your MP will generally do everything he or she can to help constituents, but will not feel able to support every cause, nor will he or she be able to get the desired solution to every individual problem. Members may not be able to support one constituent if in doing so they will deprive another. At times a constituent’s demands may conflict with party policy and your MP will have to decide where their first loyalty should lie. The Member may think that, in any case, a majority of constituents would support party policy – after all that is likely to be one of the reasons why they elected him or her.

While the global climate is indeed changing, this has nothing to do with human activity. It is just an excuse for thousands of "experts" and new companies that are springing up every day offering to "save the planet" to make money. It is also an opportunity for the government to raise more taxes.

As far as All Gore is concerned, I wonder how a failed politician has suddenly become a world authority on climate change, and in the process totally discrediting the Nobel Prize awards.

"Green Taxes" should be dead, because they are all based upon LIES.

Man made CO2 is INSIGNIFICANT compared to Naturally Released CO2 and there is NOTHING we can do about that. So crippling our economies and life style, for the sake of a 10 or 20% reduction in something that is already INSIGNIFICANT is a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

"Green Taxes" have only one function, to raise yet more revenue for the government to WASTE. By frightening people with all this talk about Global Warming, the government has SCARED us into paying YET ANOTHER TAX.

Gordon Brown (along with his scores of "hangers on") still flies around the world to scores of USELESS meetings when a five minute phone call would do just as well. He doesn't care about "Saving The Planet" because he knows that all the CRAP his government keeps telling us, is NOTHING but a PACK of LIES !

I don't think "green" taxes are dead, but I think there are two problems that any government must deal with before the voters will accept them.

Firstly, and most immediately, it does not seem reasonable to add further duty onto fuel at a time when the price is already far higher than it was even a year ago. The government is already raking in far more money than they would have done with oil and fuel at their old, lower, prices, so they could quite easily take a few pence OFF the duty (never mind just not going ahead with the 2p increase) without being any worse off.

Secondly, and I think this is a point already made by both the Tories and the LibDems, there is nothing inherently wrong with "green" taxes, so long as the overall tax-take is neutral. It is not acceptable to dress up yet another tax-grab as "green", and I have no doubt that is what this government has done and intends to continue doing. By all means slap money on vehicle excise duty or fuel, but make a corresponding reduction in income tax, VAT, Council Tax, etc. I'm not really bothered what taxes are reduced to balance it, so long as the reduction is there.

I think most of us are reasonable and fair people, but equally we are not fools and will not tolerate being treated like idiots and longer, particularly when so much of the tax that is taken is wasted on nonsense.

at some point the environment must come to the top of the pile of importance. Today lorry drivers are trying to de-rail taxes against pollution.
The point is that, up until now, the real costs of production and disposal of everything consumers want is not realistic -- it does not include the environmental cost. The invisible costs are met by those who breathe filthy air or have their homes flooded by rising sea levels.
If environmental taxes hit the poorest (are UK hauliers really the poorest people?) why not offer tax incentives to those with efficient vehicles?
Either way, it is essential for Government to create incentives to preserve the environment, as it is obvious that people's principles do not put the greater good of humanity (and the natural world) higher than personal wealth.

Just because the government and oppositon parties abuse the issue of the environment and climate change does not mean the issue isn't as hugely important and looming as it's deamed to be.

Labour and the Conservatives are the same people, out for the same interests. Of course they will do the bare minimum on environmental issues, as it's a way to win votes when it shouldn't be. Labour have pathetic policies on the environment so much so that they may as well do nothing. The 60% reduction in the climate change bill is nowhere near strong enough, and they have no policies to back it up, most of their policies, more roads, increased flights, investment in detrimenal power resources (funnily, someone above attacks people for opposing coal and nuclear and then attacks wind power for superficial reasons). The Tories have NO POLICIES on the environment.

When they roll out policies such as this, not only do they do it stupidly, they fail to back it up with sufficient reasoning, pissing off the general populace, and as many of the ignorant comments above, create a huge level of cynicism on the issue. The worst thing Gordon Brown and co. have done for the environment is do SOMETHING.

As for the issue, the evidence of Labour and Tory pandering and abuse of this issue is clear. In a short amount of time, cynicism of climate change being worsened by man has suddenly boomed. With nothing to support it coming out bar the same negligible information, false statistics and self interest. Even those companies who funded so much PR to try and debunk climate change are starting to change as they can make a quick buck by pretending to be environmentally friendly.

As it stands, there is no consensus (and there is no consensus on anything in science) that we are doing a lot of damage, but there is a much weightier some of evidence to suggest (90% of it) we are. Global warming is a natural process. We are accelerating it. This is where the confusion lies. We don't cause it. But very few scientists that aren't in the pockets of industries that are afraid deny that carbon dioxide and related gasses have a strong link to global average temperature. We are emitting huge levels of these gasses at an increasing rate.

Only a complete moron would deny we are having a major effect. Unfortunatly we have complete morons running this country too who don't understand that anything with the word 'tax' will make people sceptical of an issue. We need regulations on industry so people don't bear the brunt, but the huge profits of industry do. Carbon trading at an individual level would work as well, combined with this and an increased level of education and energy efficiency incentivisation (giving free insulation etc.).

Unfortunatly, the government is bringing the issue further and further into disrepute. Even worse still, the Tories would probably be worse.

We aren't doomed, in a long term sense, but we're doomed with these idiots in power.

The science says that unless significant changes are made immediately, the consequences of global warming risk being catastrophic.

If not green taxes, then what instead? What, if anything, are people actually prepared to change? Some people refuse to recycle and complain about reduced waste collections. Others complain about wind turbines. Sometimes it seems as if no-one much wants to do anything that impacts on them.

I guess that no-one wants to feel as though they are carrying a disproportionate burden. We probably require some decent leadership on the matter, not least to quell protests from the red-tops and rednecks

'Radical frothing greenies' like Nicholas Stern (ex World Bank) and Adair Turner (ex CBI, and no great friend of Gordon's) - when they start talking about environmental peril then get worried.

Green taxes? Will be hard to 'sell' without being clear about where the revenue will go, without clear evidence of impact or without a cushion for poor households. Smart moves: a rise in public transport spending pegged to extra revenue from private car taxes, a huge push against domestc fuel poverty and ultimately a tradeable carbon carbon allowance where every citzen starts from the same point. Not beyond the resources of this government if communicated with vision and leadership. There is a serious and popular vision that embraces well-being for all citizens with environmental security for the future.

An initial outlay for sure but as Stern points out - an investment against far worse harm and the sorts of economic woes that make this credit hiccup look like a toddlers' tea party.

And why the difference in police response to the truckers? London: the A40 blocked, Wales: truckers forced to meet Tories in a lay-by.

Going "Green" is a matter of culture metamorphosis NOT taxation. Wouldn't it be nice if the Government were to try to persuade us to go green rather than by wielding the "big stick" by imposing yet more taxation on those most likely to be unable to afford it.

It IS just another excuse to tax us more. Do the Government really want to insult our intelligence by suggesting we can't see this ? After all, this is the Government who tell us inflation is running at 2.1 % yet even the most dumb of us only have to open our eyes to see gas and electricity rising 30-40%, food 30-40% petrol 30-40%

Caring Government ? No - tax the poorest in society Government. Who can survive without gas, electricity, food, petrol. Where's the competition laws when you need them.

In my view, the public are green enough for swallowing escalating taxation that seems to require no accountability. It's time the government made savings. Apart from reducing quangos and public administrators the welfare state bill should be addressed. One example could be to reduce the burden on the state by making it harder for those who just 'expect' the rest of us to keep them. One suggestion would be to look at the millions of incomers happily claiming benefits without ever contributing, as do teenage mum's and single parent family's. It's just too easy for some, it's sad but our government would rather target short term unemployed, the ill and the elderly, the very people who have a legitimate right to receive help from the state seem let down, yet those who make benefits a lifestyle choice, generally succeed.
The consequences of reckless spending equals high taxation.
The motorist has became a chief financier prior to the new green dodge. How can they raid our pension funds yet they won't tax none dom's. Green taxes are just that. TAX!

What has this Gov done with the so called green taxes moneys ?

Have they invested in to research to find a greener engine ?

If so how much , I think the tax paying public has the right to know ?

Or are they still in denial about the fuel escalator , the road tax and car park tax ?

Do they really think this has helped the economy with its inflationary effects ?

I look forward to tonights program and some answers to these questions.

The first part is not actually that complicated- if you accept the science on climate change then the cost of taking the measures needed to halt it are far less than the costs if we do not. Therefore the government must put in place the mechanisms to help drive the changes necessary.

The second bit is much more difficult- green taxes alone cannot succeed especially against the backdrop of new coal fired power stations and extra runways. For this to be taken as seriously as it must be the government must show proper leadership but this must be consistant accross the board.

Voters will never believe green taxes are being proposed for the right reasons when coal fired power stations are being given the green light, its just inconsistant and undermines credability in the political process. By all means tax fuel but incentivise renewables, by all means tax aviation but make trains cheaper- its not green taxes thats the problem its the lack of joined up government.

So green taxes are starting to hurt. Isn't that exactly the point? You could argue there is no alternative so you have no choice, and I'd go so far as to say we need to ban all traffic from central urban areas.

Banning would have the benefit that it does not discriminate against income. The alternative I would propose would be to have regular, free public transport to provide a quick and efficient service.

It needs to be free so again it does not discriminate, and removes any opportunity from future administrations from raising charges. You could set up park-and-ride locations for people coming in from out of town.

Manchester has a free service that just cycles round the town centre -- what a good idea.

One final point. Phil Woolas was extremely impressive on tonight's program. IMHO he made Kirsty Wark look rather silly. He was very cool and collected. That man is a man to watch -- he will go far!

I'd just like to know how my father paying an extra £200 per year to tax his 2002 car is going to "save the planet"? I concede that there's merit in influencing people's buying decisions on new cars by the level of VED but all the retrospective VED increase is going to do is kill the second-hand car market.

I found tonight's discussion about the rising cost of fuel very interesting but was annoyed to see the film of the Green Party representative standing by the A40 manipulated to give the impression of faster moving and more congested traffic.

Your job is to report the news in an honest and unbiased way, it could be said that by altering the film, you as a program were trying to alter the viewers perception of a subject in a bias and unfair way.

Why are ministers constantly allowed to get away with stating that the proportion of tax on fuel has gone down with the fuel price rises? Yes, the proportion of tax has gone down; but due to VAT, the revenue the treasury realises has gone up.

The gain through VAT in the last year could be removed from the duty and therefore maintain a certain equilibrium or a measured rise. Even better the VAT could be on the price of the fuel rather than the fuel and the duty. (A tax on a tax)

Why, in the interview tonight, did Kirsty Wark not hammer this home to the smug environment minister Phil Woolas?

As usual Kirsty you've blown the interview. You are so intent on point scoring and trying to bully the minister like some sixth form Paxman that you let him completely of the hook. He remained calm and came across well even though he was lying through his teeth.

The whole point about the VED debate is that it is completely unfair because it is retrospective and he said it wasn't.

I own a 2002 4x4 that I bought in 2005. I guessed petrol prices would go up but I need a 4x4 and reckoned if I used it as little as I has too I would be able to run it. I could not have easily foreseen that in 2008 a tax increase from 210 to 470 pounds would be 'retrospectively' applied to cars registered since 2001.

Cars pollute the atmosphere if you use them. Hence the logic behind increasing fuel prices. Increasing the VED and hence the fixed cost of owning such a car just encourages me to use it more to get some value out if the tax I have to pay whether I use it or not.

Finally I would love to sell it but can't. Uncertainty about this and possible future punishment taxes has completely destroyed the second hand market for such cars. I can't afford to sell it because I have lost so much money on it I can't afford the new fuel efficient version I would love to buy.

P.S I regularly drive off road and tow trailers up slopes a horse would find it hard to climb. I never use my 4x4 to take the kids to school. For that and virtually all our family mileage I use my small diesel car that because it is pre 2001 will remain taxed at a higher rate than a similar car under the new regime. A real double whammy,

Thanks Gordon. Guess who I won't be voting for next time.

Why does the BBC consistently let the Government get away with so much tripe?. Over the past few days on TV and radio minister after minister has trotted out the party line 'no one could have foreseen these fuel price rises' and 'it is all the fault of other parts of the world outside our control'. For over thirty years thousands of environmentalists, energy experts, academics and even oil industry engineers have been warning that 'peak oil' would occur sometime in the first decade of the 21st century. Peak oil is when supply starts to decline and fails to meet the ever increasing demand. Economic result of demand exceeded supply is rapidly increasing prices (GCSE economics !!). Thirty years this has been predicted - How much warning did our Government need ???,

The whole idea about green taxes are dead for right now, some re-working it could be alive again.

Peter G Hughes (#57): "The science says that unless significant changes are made immediately, the consequences of global warming risk being catastrophic."

No no no. Not the science. The science says that we don't know much at all. Only people not properly grounded in the science say otherwise.

Based on such widespread fear-mongering, not on science, many of the governments of the world agreed at Kyoto to make some "significant changes" to their carbon emissions. But note this. In the global climate models that have given rise to such official alarm - vastly oversold software systems that are not science, as we'll come back to - such measures, if implemented (which barely anyone has in fact done) would delay the worse projected hundred year increase of "global mean temperature" by no more than five years.

Apocalypse slightly delayed, in other words, at immense cost. The biofuels disaster may already be proving to be even worse. Let's please have the humility to admit that we don't know what we're doing in such complex areas, before we inflict even worse harm on the world's poorest and indeed on the poor of our own land.

For climate models are not science. They are at best very intricate make-believe for trying to figure out the way real climate works. Even the best ones leave out masses of important details - not least realistic cloud cover and every kind of storm known to man - and they have never shown the slightest inclination to forecast accurately, even ten years into the future, let alone a hundred. So in 1998 none of them predicted that the dubious statistic in question (which is not, strictly, a temperature but a fudged running average over a limited, varying and not very well distributed set of hopefully reliable weather stations across the globe) would not increase at all through 2007. But that is exactly what has in fact happened - the big number on which all the alarm is based has flatlined. To the deafening silence of the world media, so addicted to ever-increasing scare stories that they can't highlight data in front of their nose that suggests that the whole issue may be a lot less than they themselves have cranked it up to be.

This is not science, not in the normal sense. Out of sight, many of the best people in their fields - in applied mathematics, physics, oceanography, experts in sea-level rise, geologists, geophysicists, astrophysicists, experts in the Artic and Antartic regions, in glaciers, in ice cores, meteorologists, climatologists, experts in storms, hurricanes and cyclones, biologists with expertise in land use, in the carbon cycle, in polar bears, in the spread of infectious diseases, and any number of other areas - have grave doubts about the rampant alarmism now at large in popular culture, in the name of a science they don't recognise.

Take the recent book "The Deniers" by Lawrence Solomon, an Canadian environmentalist of many years standing. As a bet with a close friend he set out in 2006 to find some real scientists who disagreed with the global warming "consensus". He expected to turn up a few odd-balls, at best. But as the dust-jacket has it, "What he found shocked him. Solomon discovered that on every 'headline' global warming issue, not only were there serious scientists who dissented, consistently the dissenters were by far the more accomplished scientists."

You wouldn't have picked that up browsing most of our most prestigious media brands now would you? The way quality science got so skewed by international bureaucrats, NGOs and politicians-on-the-make into telling relentless - and baseless - horror stories of global catastrophe is a fascinating future question for sociology. But, for now, Solomon's book, or the concise summary of the dissenter's case from a policy-maker's perspective, by Nigel Lawson, both just published, are inexpensive antidotes.

Those excellent scientists found by Solomon don't agree with each other on all points, by the way. What they do agree on is that other, less able people - environmentalists, politicians, journalists and yes, a number of mediocre but power-hungry scientists - have vastly overstated the certainty we can possibly have about future climate, especially based on the still unproven CO2 emission thesis for the very mild, and largely beneficial, warming various places in the world experienced during the 20th century.

There is immense uncertainty in this area - based on the fact that the world's climate is probably the most complex object mankind has ever tried to understand, let alone control. Being competent has to include admitting that we are nowhere near doing so. The funny thing is, the ordinary people of the UK, as they protest once more against fuel price rises, I think instinctively grasp this. It's the mediocre men in the middle, the self-appointed elite, the global warming preachers and money-makers, that don't yet realise the game is up.

AMParsons SPOT ON (#66)

The weasel minister even SIGNALLED the weasel word 'proportion'. Is Kirsty rubbish at maths? If the tax take had not gone up he would have not needed a modifier-word.
The nasty man needed nailing not flapping at.

Does Phil Woolas think he can fool everybody with smoke and mirrors. What was all that nonsence about "when the cost of fuel goes up the proportion we receive goes down". It's just a play on words that they think they can get away with time and time again. When the cost of fuel goes up the treasury earns more revenue as a result. He didn't say that did he!!

Its interesting that in all the blogs , no one has mentioned the fact that the government has brought in legislation enabling alll people over sixty to have free bus travel all over England. This is a tremendous help particularly as we tend to have more time rather than money. It has certainly meant that I never use my car within the town that I live in and am in the process of selling it. We have car clubs and I will be able to afford the odd taxi. I realise this will not be possible for everyone but several of my friends have given up their cars. So there have been carrots as well as sticks!

Green Taxes and petrol/car tax could prove to be this Government's Poll Tax equivalent.

As all the above have soon forgotten (the Crewe Election) we will have a Tory Governmnet in two years time, Brown in,out or wherever.

As we saw in last night's debate the Tories have no more idea than this lot.

it is obvious except to the most thick, that this Government will alter it's ideas on the above, if not in October but certainly in next year's budget, with one more after that to try to convince the electorate that they deserve another period in office.

I Keep going back to this theme---it's CHANGE that people want not policies.

Sorry to labour the point (excuse pun), but how could you allow the minister on last night's show to keep inferring that the government's tax take doesn't go up when oil prices rise. Is VAT now seen as an insignificant part of prices at the pump?

This is a good opportunity to make green taxation take a grip on modifying our behaviour. Increasing prices is the only tested way to reduce consumption.

Reducing fuel taxation will do nothing to stop future price rises in fuel, indeed it may well encourage it. The effects of reducing taxation on fuel will be seen either as increases in taxation elsewhere or as reduction in what taxes pay for.

However the vast majority of the population would welcome tax savings by withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq...but that is another story.

In my opinion the two issues are not (or should not be) incompatible.
Elio PENNISI

fincki,
Taxes up or down the point was lost on me because, as a statistician, such claims can mean anything. It depends on the "model" he is using and criteria. He was probably right and also probably wrong.

Beware of politicians quoting figures. Nobody has ever explained what "in real terms" means (another phrase that gets me shouting at the TV).

I just look at my money and find it not enough. Someone is raiding it somewhere.

Were they ever alive? It's another excuse for this rapacious government to relieve us of even more of what pittance we have left after direct taxation

Just a small point re the annie-g post 73.

I agree free bus travel for all over 60 is great BUT only if you live somewhere that has a bus that has been spared.

I once lived in a small Cheshire village and to get the bus to Chester would have had to walk a mile to the nearest bus stop, the bus left at 9:00am and did not get to Chester until 11:30 because it went round every little village, hamlet, cottage, farmhouse, dog house and outhouse en-route. It came back at 4:30 pm. Not a lot of use for commuters’. So everyone drove into town!!

Oh, by the way, did I mention it left only on a Tuesday and returned on a Thursday!

It was invariably empty and eventually scrapped. I wonder why?

Rdrake98 (post70) did you see the news from the Mar’s mission control just hitting the wire services?

It said - Proof of intelligent life on Mars has been found in a message found carved into a rock. The massage said that scientists on Mars had concluded there was no such thing as climate change and the rapid heating of the planet was just a normal phenomena - it was signed but the name was unclear, it looked something like – having eyes but refusing to see or it might have been ostrich.

Where is my comment?

Why should people bother to contribute, if comments are removed because they do not comply with the misguided BBC politically correct culture?

It is no good posting my complaint of 4:51, trying to pretend that I am wrong...

Post my original comment of today instead, which you have removed.

Green taxes have an obstacle to overcome.
It is generally felt that they are being used in some part, to just increase taxes.
The use of any green tax must be seen to have been used for the benefit of the environment we live in.
I am one who strongly feels that the use of taxes has been made a mockery. by our present government. Stealth taxes have caused a deep mistrust of the present government and its use of tax revenue.

Swampfrog (#81):

You seem to imply that the certainty of man-made global warming causing imminent extinction of the human race is about the same as we currently have for intelligent life, capable of advanced science, having existed on Mars. I agree. Good analogy.

What we don't know is if the Martians ever called the people that dissented from their highly politicized official science "deniers" and whether an investigative journalist from a Jewish-Martian background took that very loaded term as a shocking title for a book that shed tremendous light on the until-then very confused scene for the ordinary Martian. A surreal analogy for a surreal situation.

Whatever is going on elsewhere in the solar system - and I've loved the pictures from Phoenix - I advise every earthling to return to their planet with a bump, by taking in the full implications of the very timely and readable "The Deniers" by Mr Solomon.

What a mess!

I think it's a whole lot easier to figure out than it is made to appear.

Do we need to be careful with a finate resource? ..of course, yes.

Do the government have any idea about what they're doing or the destabalising effect it's having on the public today? ..quite obviously, no.

It's not a question of wether or not we need to make progress toward a sustainable future, it's a question of governmental incompetence on how to acheive it.

The sudden and unexpected rise in fuel in the barrel has only really done one thing, exposed an incompetent version of the labour party.

Labour does not equal green policy, labour equals lies, spin and incompetence.

Can you imagine the mess had Gordon called the election last year and by some fluke and a very small majority won it?, it's scarey to even think about.

lower income tax
and inforce green tax.
place the revenue created back into the industries that are better for the environment.
People who argue against green tax are extremely misguided, that, or they do not care that we could literally be wiped off the face of the planet.
green tax would be labours poll tax perhaps in the opposite way - tlabour would face anomisity from the rich with fuel guzzling cars.
But if it takes upsetting some to repair the damage we humans have done to the world then I think that is a price worth paying.
We cannot keep delaying these policies, we simply do not have time.

indiarose-t (#87): "People who argue against green tax are extremely misguided, that, or they do not care that we could literally be wiped off the face of the planet."

There is a third alternative. Some people who argue against "green taxes" that aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions do so because they recognize that CO2 is not a pollutant but a life force which enhances plant growth all across the world. Thus being wiped off the planet, happily, doesn't come into it.

The only downside is that we don't really understand what atmospheric CO2 does to temperatures. Probably not much, based on the very mild, and helpful, temperature increases in the 20th century, which seem to have come down to an average of nothing since 1998. All at a time that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are at record levels.

So good news all round. CO2 blessing the planet through enhancing plant life. And no global warming at all.

The only major man-made challenges on the horizon, that we can avoid turning into catastrophes, are the major increases in fuel and food prices and our reaction to them. To help with that we certainly need to back out one old green policy - biofuels - which to their credit many environmental groups have been arguing strongly against, just as I do.

And let's learn from the biofuels mess that not everything labeled green or intended to cut CO2 has no cost. How many more stupidities based on junk science, desperately hurting the world's poorest, do we need before we give up such simplistic thinking and start to navigate current fuel and food challenges with true wisdom?

So Gordon Brown's reaction to an increase in the price of oil is to call for an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere. His claims to be green are just the usual lies.

Rdrake98 (85)

I realise you have intentionally misinterpreted my sarcasm however my point is clear, there are far more heavyweight scientific minds warning us of the adverse impact increasing levels of co2 in the atmosphere is having than those denying the impact. To ignore the diminishing ice cap, the huge cracks found in Arctic Canada etc etc etc, is tantamount to sticking ones head in the sand or perhaps doing a Nelson with his telescope to his blind eye.

I do not suggest that the co2 increase is ALL due to man's activities but there is a very interesting correlation between the increase of co2 in the atmosphere and man's production of the same. Anyone who refuses to consider the possibilities the two are linked is living in a land populated by clouds and cuckoos.

Rdrake98 (88)

Oh boy!

Sorry I missed this post when I replied to your post 85.

Are you part of the petro-chemical industry or a lobbyist for some major polluter? It's a very nice argument to use, Ah co2 is NOT a pollutant, it’s natural. Well jolly good too, unfortunately too much of it will still kill you. Try living in a co2 atmosphere and see how long it takes you to die.

What you and all the nay sayers appear to be ignoring is that there needs to be a BALANCE in the environment, just as in everything else in life. We are told salt is bad for us, baloney, salt is essential to human life, it is TOO much salt that is bad for us. Ditto with animal fats, sugar and yes even with co2. What is happening, at an alarmingly increasing rate, is unbalancing the balance, if there actually is such an expression. Man is producing co2 at a frantic rate and poor old Mother Nature cannot cope with it, so the balance is upset. It might not be at critical levels yet but are you willing to take the risk of being wrong? I would rather we ere on the side of caution than take the blinkered view of, pish there’s nothing wrong. The thrust on my first, sarcastic comments re Mars.

In Canada, where for my sins I currently live, I recently had a conversation with a senior Government aid, he works with Cabinet producing briefs etc. Canada takes the same view as you, co2 is not a pollutant because it is a naturally occurring substance. Of course Canada has a huge vested interest in poo pooing global warming, it’s called the oil sands reserves in Alberta, the single largest producer of co2 in Canada and, by the way, the single largest earner of foreign currency. Go figure.

I hope and would pray, if I thought there was anything out there listening, that you are right and the majority of the scientific community is wrong but boy are your great great grandchildren going to curse you if it’s you that’s wrong – wait about, perhaps they won’t be able too, they might just not exist!

The problem is, hitting people with a fuel tax of +120% does not, of itself, acheive any kind of "green"effect. What does the Government expect us to do? Stop going to work? 70% of this country does not have any form of public transport, so the people living in these areas have no choice but to continue using their cars. That makes this charge just a tax, with no green element whatsoever. The "green" bit is just political spin, to try to make people think it is a good and justifiable thing.

If the Government were truly interested in getting cars off the roads, they would be doing practical things to allow it to happen, financed by the billions of pounds they have already raised with fuel taxes. How much of this increased tax have they spent on subsidising bus routes in rural areas, so that everyone has access to a bus? How much have they spent on encouraging train companies to run car trains, so that you can go on holiday in this country without having to drive to your destination? What encouragement have they given companies to get more of their staff working from home, so that they don't have to travel twice a day? After all, if the equivalent of every working person worked at home one day a week, that would reduce rush hour traffic by 20%. There are lots of practical steps that could have been taken, that would have had the desired green effect. Instead, all that we have seen is an ever-increasing demand for money, via the fuel pumps. This is not a green tax at all.

If people really appreciated the true level of tax they are paying, there would be more noise made about it. When petrol hit £1 a litre, the petrol companies all said that they were charging us 40p a litre. The rest was tax. That is 60p tax on a 40p base charge, which is a tax rate of 150%. Is that what all the Labour voters really signed up for at the last election?

Why doesn't Newsnight do a calculation that converts the fuel tax paid by the average family in a year into an income tax equivalent - the average family car does x miles per gallon (or litre), and averages x miles a year. This means they pay x amount of fuel tax. On an average salary, this would equate to an income tax charge of x%. The answer to that little sum would make the 10p tax thing pale into insignificance!

Come on, BBC - tell it like it is!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Swampfrog (#91):

I've never taken a penny - or a dime - from "big oil". No wait, come to think of it, Shell paid Objective, the software company I co-founded in 1983, around £200 in 1990 to send one of their software engineers on a day's seminar in central London on how to make the move to Object-Oriented Programming, an event I organized and co-presented with a guy called Steve Cook, who now works for IBM. That's it. That £200 - along with perhaps 35 other companies from other industry sectors helping to offset a loss-leader to market my company in the new decade - explains why I became a global warming denier. I see it all!

Meanwhile the $2 billion the US government has been pumping into global warming research every year since 1990, where no researcher who gets any of that money feels that they can come up with findings that suggest overtly that the whole thing may not be such a big a problem ... that piffling amount doesn't skew things at all?

This is AGW conspiracy theory, baby and toddler grade. Goebbels' big lie - endlessly blurt out exactly the opposite of the truth - tailored for the exceedingly dumb of the modern world.

I read recently for example that ExxonMobil gave $19 million in total to anti-warming-hype people over eight years from the late 90s. There are websites where you can learn all about this outrage (and probably have). Meantime the US government was spending more than $19 million every four days beefing up the other side of the argument. The UN has also been spending mountains and many other national governments, like our own, have been trying to follow suit since big, brave James Hansen issued his stern warning in 1988 and hey presto, turned on the funding taps from daddy Bush. And this massive torrent of essentially one-way money has never corrupted anyone?

Happily, true science is not affected by the amount of money coming out of the hose, in whatever direction. It's governed by controlled experimental verification, of the kind that anyone can understand if they put their mind to it. Computer models cannot provide such a thing. There is nothing of it, anywhere, for the AGW-as-disaster stories. Whole committees of bought techies and bureaucrats make no difference to that.

Read "The Deniers" to see that there are significant numbers of really great scientists who know this. They know that the emperor has no clothes and are prepared to say so publicly.

The world is otherwise than you think it is, swampfrog. Big money explains quite a lot of that. Just not in the way you think it does.

Re Rdrake98 post 94

How strange, you obfuscate my point yet again.

It is not money that adversely affects the world, hang on, yes it does but thats a subject for an entirely different forum. Also I guess I could be classed as a contributor to the investment in the - its all very safe and co2 is good for you – campaign, every time I fill the car I am making a contribution to their war chest.

The valid point, you used your telescope to the blind eye to miss, is that excessive amounts of co2 in the atmosphere is not GOOD for life, as you appear to suggest, too much of anything is BAD unless its money and mine has not made me any happier so even then I have my doubts. Balance is what is needed.

The increased level of co2, from whatever source it comes, IS having a marked effect on the planet, many many scientists agree and, sorry, but one book written by one man with, well what motivation and support, is not going to change the facts.

Believe me I know how the world is my friend and Im off to other climes to continue to try and save it. I think our interplay has just about run its course, next thing will be you accusing me of being a tree hugger - yuck.

Yes Swampy, I chose to answer the point about being funded by one of these evil companies, because there is a lot of that slur going about and I found it truly insulting that you, who know nothing about me, should suggest that my hard-won views on the subject were so easily corrupted, when that is utterly opposite of the truth. It was the first and main thing that bothered me so I answered on that. Which took a while. It was therapeutic I have to admit.

I didn't answer on CO2 because we clearly have a massive inability to agree on that. Of course there must be a concentration that is too much. All I'm saying is that we have no idea what that level is and we're doing great now. What is certain is the fertilization effect for all plant life (which would do good even if current concentrations are doubled) and the infrared absorption that leads to some level of logarithmic (ie decreasing) heating effect (which seems not to have been very large in the period for which we've got reasonably reliable measurements, 1900-2008). The warming we've had so far is also beneficial, on balance, I would say.

I would pick you up on Lawrence Solomon and "The Deniers". It really doesn't matter what his motivation is. Maybe he's pissed off as a Jew that such a phrase could now be so widely used of taking a minority view of a very debatable bit of science about 100 years hence, when it alludes to and gets its power from a hateful denial of the 100% reality of the mass murder of his own people 65 years in the past. I wouldn't blame him if that was the reason. The term is a disgrace and should be a warning sign to all that something truly evil is going on in the propaganda battle, whatever the true science may be.

But whatever his motivation, Solomon is a good journalist and lets the key scientists speak for themselves. I found his own commentary on the science lucid and balanced. He doesn't finally take a view on who's right. You would learn a lot from the book. I did. I still advise you and others to read it, rather than more from any of us here!