Hear hear,AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:34 pm If our govt were actually/really/genuinely committed to carbon reduction they would sieze this as an opportunity to move things forward (why let a crisis go to waste?)
I remember in December 1973 or 4 one of our friends failed to attend our wedding because of the fuel crisis. Everyone else managed to get there, including a lad from the N of Scotland.
Back then we got issued with rationing coupons (I think it was that "crisis") and several of us felt it was done wrong. Instead of coupons just for car-owners and a threat of prosecution if you used them to fill a different car, they should have been issued to all adults and been tradeable. Like farmers' milk quotas were a few decades later. (I don't think the petrol rationing was actually put into operation, the last time we came across our book I think it was unused.)
That way car-less people paying a premium to use public transport (and not increasing fuel demand / carbon emissions by much) or putting their own calories into commuting by bike wouldn't be shut out, but could be rewarded, i.e. gain, by selling their carbon vouchers on the open market to people who wanted to buy them. The same could apply now - it would be much easier in the modern electronic age - and EV owners could also cash in the premium they have paid by being early adopters by selling on what are in effect their their carbon credits.
A
the Green Party have been trying to sell this idea for quite a long time now, TEQs not just for road fuel but all energy. Something similar is going to have to be put into place sometime as resources get scarce, if we just leave it to the market which seems so popular in many quarters, the rich carry on as normal and the poor starve.
Desp