by Arthur75 » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 06:36:02
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('argyle', 'I')'ve always believed we need a new 'green' labelling system, and tax it accordingly..
It should take into account the entire "life-cycle" the product will go through and the impact it has on the environment. A sort of points system which by action of the producer, consumer, .. can go up and down.. Such system could be used for example across the EU.
The label would need to take into account how much energy, resources (water, land, ..) are used to produce a certain product.
More energy, resources, you get a lower rate of the label (when the producer uses renewable energy, treats his sewage,recycles the by-products) he gets a higher score for the label. If the product or it's packing is bio-degradable, reusable or re-cycleable then you get a higher score.. If the product needs to be shipped, transported long distances,.. you get a lower score.. In the end you get a "green-label" which determines the rate of the 'green' tax/duties that has to be paid on it.
In an ideal world, the best system would really be to tax fossile fuel (and raw material in general if needed) at the source, as proposed by James Hansen, like that the tax gets transfered in the whole product lifecycle, is simple to implement, and does not require the huge overhead of analyzing each product (and associated discrepencies or "cheating" "negociations" that would be associated to this process). It would also push relocalization, for food or products, making the transport more expensive.
For raw material other than fuel, that would also favor recycling, as for instance the tax on some car iron carcass would already have been paid.
However the world is far from ideal ...
And in this context, for fossile fuel we should also start by looking at the overall figures, which are that for developed countries at least, individual consumption for transport fuel and housing heating/cooling represents more than 50%, then transport , commercial real estate, industrial use being in fact often not a major part .
So most "pressure" should probably be applied there (the fact that jet fuel for instance is taxed at zero especially on short haul, creates the absurdity that with low cost companies, it is cheaper for 2, 3 maybe even 4 to take the plane than a car or train trip, complete reverse relationship with energy consumption).
For products, there is the energy requirement for functioning and for building them (need computation on their "life" cycle)
In fact there are mainly three levers :
1) standards labels and regulation on products (incuding housing) especially for their energy consumption needs
2) tax on raw materials
3) tax credit and subventions for solution defined as "good"
A mix of the three probably necessary (more 1 and 2 as 3 can often lead to green washing)
And in the end the key being that the resulting money be indeed used to invest on the infrastructure towards less fossile dependancy.
And consuming less ...