Oil Giant BP to Give $500 Million to UC Berkeley for Biofuels Research

2»

Comments

  • polaris
    polaris Posts: 3,527
    surferdude wrote:
    This is not directed at you but i always hear this "they should do more". I fail to see people taking responibility and saying we should do more. As in we should pay more taxes and force the government to dedicate the additional tax revenue to research and improvements. Or I should donate more to university research facilities. But no, we always take the easy route and say they should do more.

    We fail to understand the way they will do more is to charge more at the pump in order to have more money to donate. It's not going to come out of their bottom line. We fail to understand that a higher pump price hurts those who can least afford it in society. But heaven forbid that we ever actually take responsibility for our actions and do things like demand that we pay more taxes or demand that we give more to university research endowment funds.
    surferdude wrote:
    Here they are doing something towards finding a solution and someone like you who supposedly supports the environment goes "this sucks".

    sure seems it was directed at me ...

    would taking responsibility for our own actions entail the oil industry pay for their pollution and toxic waste?
  • surferdude
    surferdude Posts: 2,057
    polaris wrote:
    would taking responsibility for our own actions entail the oil industry pay for their pollution and toxic waste?
    If the government comes up with a way to tax all industry based on this I'd be all for it, but it has to be all industry. And just like with the GST there would need to be flow through credits so that it is the end consumer paying this cost. This idea provides all industry with competitive advantage for being the best corporate citizen possible as it relates to the environment. The more your product pollutes in production the more it will cost consumers.

    This was the type initiative I was looking for Kyoto to result in and not the one sided trade agreement they came up with.

    I think we need to stop holding up the oil industry as the bogie man. The bogie man is you and and I, the consumers who use these products and demand the lowest price possible. I don't give a fuck if that means we pay $5.00 a litre for gas, but just make sure that we provide dedicated tax dollars funding solutions. Bring on a country (and hopefully all countries in Kyoto or taking part in IPPC discussions) wide enviro levee based on true cost of production, distribution and selling costs to the environment. But it has to hit the consumer. It will hurt but it is the only solution I've ever seen that stands a hope in hell of doing anything.

    One oddity and I'm not sure if you caught it was that Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions went down by 0.3% last year. I'll see if I can still find an active link.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
  • surferdude
    surferdude Posts: 2,057
    Canada's actually doing not bad the last few years in greenhouse gas emmissions, see link http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2005/2005summary_e.cfm

    Our output has held steady for a couple years and even gone down slightly in 2006 and output per GDP$ has gone down.
    http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=2beed7af-c44d-48ef-b96b-97c0342e7430&k=9855

    Funny what makes the headline news versus reality versus government doubletalk versus enviro group doubletalk.
    “One good thing about music,
    when it hits you, you feel to pain.
    So brutalize me with music.”
    ~ Bob Marley
  • polaris
    polaris Posts: 3,527
    surferdude wrote:
    Canada's actually doing not bad the last few years in greenhouse gas emmissions, see link http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2005/2005summary_e.cfm

    Our output has held steady for a couple years and even gone down slightly in 2006 and output per GDP$ has gone down.
    http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=2beed7af-c44d-48ef-b96b-97c0342e7430&k=9855

    Funny what makes the headline news versus reality versus government doubletalk versus enviro group doubletalk.

    sorry ... i don't see any reductions ... simply that some industries indicated reductions ...

    as you can see - alberta continues to lead all the growth in emissions which is why this particular gov't isn't going to do anything about it ... any comparison relative to GDP is delusional ... we need an overall reduction of greenhouse gases - not relative to GDP ...

    and as much as i agree with your proposal for taxation and relative competitive policies - we will never agree on your beliefs about kyoto ... like i've said previously - that watered down treaty at least aimed to give us benchmarks to do something ... the continued haggling over wording has accomplished nothing for us ... our trend is still on the rise and we have no plan in place nor will we ever have one with this gov't ...

Categories