Meat Tax ?

[Observer II]

With half those living in poverty are using food banks, some idiots are now talking about a meat tax on carbon emissions -  beam me up Scottie.    

[Evil Sid]

care to expand on that obs, seems a little vague.....🤔

[Latchford Locks]

[Observer II]

Think perhaps HMG was testing the water Sid, but I'm betting they won't go near this one.   😉

[asperity]

It's being pushed by the "Global Warming" fanatics.

Is it just me or has it been a bit warm recently?

[Evil Sid]

Must be you asp,23 degrees below in places this week. not what i would call warm even by arctic standards.....🐧🐧

[Bill]

It wasn’t so cold this morning compared to the last few days. I’ve been checking the temperature each morning and today it was just about zero so maybe this global warming could do with hurrying up a bit.

As for meat taxes, hmm, I’m not sure that’d achieve much. I’ve heard the arguments about methane from farting cows and rainforests being cut down to graze cattle to make more burgers. Taxing a basic food though doesn’t seem right to me as it would impact the poorer people most. It’s not quite the same as the sugar tax thing though because that was aimed at the health of everyone rather than trying to change the climate.

I’m normally quite optimistic when it comes to solving problems but most of what’s happening in the world today stems from over population and an obsession with economic growth. I say so what if we’re not in the top ten, it’s what we do and how we live that’s more important than any comparison with others. If everyone could think this way, it wouldn't stop global warming but it would make the world a better place to live.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Think your right on the button there Bill;  overpopulation and economic growth, so maybe the Planet is trying to do something about it with the pandemic ?     😷    💀

[asperity]

24 minutes ago, Observer II said:

Think your right on the button there Bill;  overpopulation and economic growth, so maybe the Planet is trying to do something about it with the pandemic ?     😷    💀

That's verging on either insanity or religious derangement, the planet not being a sentient being.

[Observer II]

Any change to the Planet's biosphere will and does have knock on effects - it's called climate change.    

[Bill]

I’ve always thought of religion as being a set of basic rules to help us to live our life better. I’m no church goer, but I’d like to think that religion taught as a child, helped to somehow mold me into the person I am today. I don’t remember anything about not eating meat but there was something about making do with what you’ve got and being able to share it amongst many. Anyway, religion is another debate but in the context of this discussion it’s fair to say that it could possibly have prevented us getting into the mess we’re currently in.

Just don't bring up that bit about coveting the neighbours wife

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Nothing to do with religion Bill; unless you count the wars they've started as contributing to population stability !    It's about science, and here's an example -  some have come up with the idea of filling our deserts with solar panels to absorb all that energy from the sun and provide it to the world. At first sight a laudable intent; however, further research has noted that sand is a good sun reflector and the darker solar panels will suck in more heat, which climate models suggest will interfere with global climate norms, causing knock on effects around the world.   So even best intentions can prove ruinous.      

[Bill]

Well that’s the way life goes. You roll a six and end up going down a bloody snake or so it seems sometimes. No doubt science holds a lot of the answers, but it also relies on how we use the technology, whether it’s better for mankind or just the pockets of the investors.

The solar panels you’re on about will get hot because they’re dark but equally there’s a massif increase in the use of white plastic poly-tunnels covering an even larger area to grow food in the deserts so things should tend to balance out.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-20/the-mosaic-you-can-see-from-space-spain-s-massive-greenhouse-complex

Also an increasing amount of large scale industrial solar plants these days uses mirrors rather than photovoltaic so these shouldn’t add to the problem. I saw a couple of these plants on my last visit to the states and they’re so impressive even if they do fry birds in flight. Compare how dark the normal panels are compared to the three solar furnaces on the left in this image.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#/media/File:Ivanpah,_USA.jpg

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

2 hours ago, Observer II said:

Any change to the Planet's biosphere will and does have knock on effects - it's called climate change.    

True, except the way it works is that the planet's biosphere and geology and oceans are constantly changing which drives climate change. This doesn't make the planet a sentient being capable of summoning pandemics to somehow fight against overpopulation. To think that it is is insane. 🙄

[Bill]

I get what Obs was saying Asp without seeing the planet as being somehow sentient. Civilisations rise and fall for a variety of reasons be it natural or man made but you can’t deny the fact that when things get pushed too far something tends to break and restore the equilibrium. Call it evolution, science or even divine intervention! It happens.

When it comes to viruses, probability theory tells us that a virus is more likely to mutate in a larger population, so just like the oceans, this could be argued as a self-regulating mechanism that comes into play only when populations get too big. If the population were to continue to grow unabated then we’d reach a point where there wouldn’t be enough food or water to sustain it. Famine would eventually break out that would kill people off or there’d be riots or war that’d do the same until we return to a level of stability. Where the trigger point is for anything like this is anyone’s guess, some would argue we’re already well past it as we see the influx of people from the third world.

 

Bill 😊

[Davy51]

Surely we have the technology in the world to turn comparatively barren lands into crop providers & therefore contributors to the world economy. We are told that global warming will provide rising sea levels...with proper desalination this could be piped to deserts to provide fertile farming conglomerates, especially with use of crop tunnels to provide perpetual irrigation. We seem to find it easy enough to pump oil ,so why not water ?

As for the bible ,as Bill said it is more of a moral code than anything to be taken seriously .

[Observer II]

I'm no tree hugger, but I the insanity rests with the deniers imo.   Dave, there's a plan to plant accasia trees in a huge belt, just below the Sahara;  in an effort to stop the encroachement of the desert, thus protecting agricultural land in Africa.  Now this is something we should be funding, together with the pill; as it will eradicate the need for migration into Europe.    

[Davy51]

I would have thought food production would be better initiated than planting just trees.

[Bill]

I saw that program too. It’s an attempt to stop the desert encroaching on the agricultural land by planting drought resistant trees. They do a similar thing here by planting marram grass on sand dunes to stabilise them and prevent the sand from moving where it’s not needed.

 

Bill 😊

[asperity]

34 minutes ago, Observer II said:

I'm no tree hugger, but I the insanity rests with the deniers imo.  

Who do you class as a denier? Someone who has a different theory or opinion to the people who shout loudest? Someone who doesn't conform to "the science"? Like Galileo? Was he insane for not going along with the opinion of the day?

[Observer II]

18 hours ago, Davy51 said:

I would have thought food production would be better initiated than planting just trees.

But if the desert sand encroaches into fertile areas, they won't be producing anything.    

[Davy51]

But surely there are massive areas of land in the world that could be irrigated by all this extra water from rising sea levels with a bit of effort from  international aid. Unexpected places could join the international food chain as producers instead of being basket case economies. Using someone else's sponge could save other parts of the world from flooding by using the rising sea levels to irrigate barren land & the resulting crops would help to regulate the land erosion & create healthy economies.

[Observer II]

Sea water contains salt - it would require desalination plants.   Think we need a better understanding of the interaction between various types of global feature, to discover the impact of removing them.      

[Bill]

Your right Davy it’s all doable, but for us here in the developed world it’s just someone else’s problem so why should we worry unless it affects the cost of our shopping basket? If we could provide them with assistance to grow more food, their population would increase, and then we’d need to grow even more. Do nothing though and let them starve and the problem simply goes away. Harsh, but that’s how it’s always been there for ever until technology brought their plight into our living rooms and made us feel a bit guilty.

I’ve always said that technology will evolve to solve problems, but it can’t help to save the world unless we start thinking in planetary terms, a concept that’s completely alien to all governments.

 

Bill 😊

[Latchford Locks]

22 hours ago, Davy51 said:

Surely we have the technology in the world to turn comparatively barren lands into crop providers & therefore contributors to the world economy. We are told that global warming will provide rising sea levels...with proper desalination this could be piped to deserts to provide fertile farming conglomerates, especially with use of crop tunnels to provide perpetual irrigation. We seem to find it easy enough to pump oil ,so why not water ?

 

We should take a look how successful The Canary Islands have used this technology.

Faced with the challenge of meeting high water and energy demands with no conventional energy resources and a lack of potable water, the Canary Islands have been using desalination plants for nearly 50 years. The first desalination plant in Europe was installed in 1964 in Lanzarote. Today, desalination capacity in the islands stands at over 600,000 m³/d (covering 55% of water demand).