What’s with these badly worded titles and articles from no-name websites?
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Everything is AI generated and websites made to exploit SEO as much as possible.
At least this is what I'm thinking.
The people paying to deny client change already used all the standard news sources so now they must make new ones.
And clearly AI-generated image.
That is true as well.
Enough for the bottom quintile to be turning the thermostat down in all but one room and worrying about frostbite in the bathroom, but not for everybody else.
And here is where the author makes a crucial mistake in my opinion. When the poorest are forced to turn down their heating, then the middle class gets spooked they might have to as well in the future. They will vote for scaremongers and climate change deniers, and in the end your noble project of pricing oil out of the daily lifes of people will fail.
He should have added the caveat that global price instability is causing most of that pain. The carbon tax is only a small component.
But also, the middle class can afford heat pumps. So they will never be in such a situation.
And also also, turning the thermostat down one or two degrees saves a lot of money and is healthier and more natural.
Sure, some people get spooked, but that's mostly due to fear and uncertainty, not due to facts.
Anyway, the author does make two mistakes: ignorance about nuclear and unrealistic expectations about the future revenue of carbon pricing.
As the price goes up, revenue will go down, as less people emit carbon.
Sure, some people get spooked, but that’s mostly due to fear and uncertainty, not due to facts.
But we see this exact thing happening in Germany right this moment. The Greens got into power as the party with the second most votes, and they get made the boogieman by everyone for everything. Why? Because they moved a ban on new oil and gas heating systems forward, as well as subsidizing carbon-neutral heating systems. They didn't even introduce the ban, they just moved it forward by two years. They were getting sabotaged from the get-go and are facing constant attacks from all sides. The Greens most likely won't make it into power the next election cycle. The conservative bootlicker party CDU will get the most votes and the near-to-full Nazi party AfD will get 30% of all votes. And all that backlash, because the Greens dared to do anything about reducing green house gas emissions.
I'm Dutch, and German energy policy is truly brain dead.
The Canadian policy is much better and more effective.
What's the fundamental distinction if you don't mind?
For one, Canada isn't closing perfectly good nuclear plants prematurely. Germany could have saved a billion tons of CO2 emissions and billions of euros by just letting the last six plants run to their end of life.
Second, Canada didn't risk their whole industry on Russian pipeline gas, which everyone warned Germany against and now the worst case materialized with the Ukraine war.
Third, Germany is pumping in a huge amount of free carbon credits into the EU ETS. And Europeans don't get any benefit of the ETS fees.
The Canadian scheme directly kicks back part of the benefit to citizens, which makes it much more palatable
And fourth, the amount of subsidies that Germany is pouring into wind and solar energy just isn't sustainable. It's better to have carbon pricing and letting markets transition to low carbon energy, paid for by private capital.
Seriously, like how is German energy policy so Hündscheissy? The whole things seems so poorly thought and implemented? I just don't get it
Edit: who's the Einstein who decided to trust Germany's domestic energy policy and future on fucking Russia?
ignorance about nuclear
Nuclear is not going to happen. Not without governments deciding to fund plants 100% up front. The economics just don’t make sense.
Not anymore.
You must be living in a different reality.
Even Japan is restarting their nuclear plants, while Fukushima is still in living memory.
Restarting is fast and cheap.
Building takes a decade and another one before you break even. How positive are you that you will be able to operate that plant until the end of its economic life?
Are you willing to bet a few billions on it?
But they have the preexisting infrastructure and support network for it.
global price ~~instability~~ gouging
Fixed that for you
turning the thermostat down one or two degrees saves a lot of money and is healthier and more natural.
You know what saves even MORE money, is even HEALTHIER and even MORE natural? Instituting price ceilings to stop corporations from using global instability as an excuse for blatant price gouging rather than make it the responsibility of the powerless to compensate for the abuses of the powerful.
As the price goes up, revenue will go down
Your link is not about Canada's carbon pricing revenue.
And the rest of your comment is just as inspiring.
My link is about the worldwide trend of corporate price gouging being the main cause of both inflation and record profits. That includes Canadian corporations.
I'm so hurt that my refutation of your nonsense failed to lift you up to the utmost of enlightened rapture. CRUSHED, I say! 🙄
I’m too active on stable diffusion to not get ai triggers from that image.
It's becoming commonplace for online news. For articles that do not have a specific "event" that photos are sourced from, they would normally either commission an artist to provide some sort of illustration of the concept or cobble together a Photoshop collage. Generative AI provides another alternative to those options and allows the news outlet to get very specific with what they're looking to depict.
And in turn, ever gradually are artists losing more jobs.
Like it or not, generative AI is already replacing jobs, and we as a society aren't ready for it, even though automation should be a good thing.
Jobs are bad. People should have income, not jobs. Labor should never be used to gatekeep income when labor is not actually needed.
I don't know if I'm middle class anymore. But I pay taxes on everything. I get none of the grants. I work as much overtime as I can and every bill keeps going up. I'm not saying carbon tax won't work but fucking pause it for a bit so I can afford to fucking eat.
You were never middle class. None of us are. If you need to work or receive pension payments to maintain your lifestyle you're working class. Convincing the working class that they're middle class is one of the biggest cons of the last century.
I'm a bit scared to find out what you think is actually middle class.
If you're in a province where the carbon price is federally run, you get the rebate. The average person should break even with the rebate.
You need to make less then 60 grand to get rebates. I make more so no rebates
Edit 50 grand . In my case I make enough that I get nothing back. This whole family income deal sucks.
Then you are in a province where the carbon price is not run by the fed. The fed says every province has to have a carbon price, but has minimal opinion on where the revenue goes. If a province does not implement their own system, then they get the federal carbon tax-and-rebate system.
The federal tax-and-rebate system has no income rules. You can be broke or a billionaire you still get your cut. The amount is based on province (the ctax money does not leave the province), family size, and urban vs rural (rural folks get a bigger chunk of the pie).
You must be thinking of a different grant, or you're in a province where the carbon price is not federally run. The federal Climate Action Incentive payment is disbursed to everyone.
The carbon tax rebate is given regardless of income. Stop spreading bullshit
How the fuck do you figure that. It specifically gives a income amount and threshold. I make over a certain amount so no return. They adjust it to family income. How is that spreading bullshit?
Because the federal carbon tax rebate has no income threshold, I would know since I get it and my income is double your theoretical threshold.
Jesus fuck that's a long article
Canada’s federal government currently provides rebates of up to $5,000 off the sale price.
Can we stop saying this is an incentive? It's a cherry on the top of a e-car purchase but it's not gonna be the thing that seals the deal. There's a very good chance that $5000 will just barely pay half the tax on a new-car purchase. It's embarrassing to keep trotting it out as significant.
Also, build more fucking public transit so less people need to buy cars. It's not a population/population density issue, places in Europe with similar population densities as places in Canada have universes better public transit than we do, not to mention the major Canadian cities actually have very high population densities and raw population numbers in general, on par with US and European cities, so at least improve the local public transit so people living in a major metro area (which makes up a majority of Canadians) don't have to drive.
I live in a very rural place (not in Canada) with very limited public transportation. I can get a ride to work if I’m willing to be there 5 hours early. I can’t get a ride back, so I’m stuck 40 miles away from home unless someone is willing to come and get me.
I would gladly ditch my car for a reliable bus ride. I’d schedule everything around it.
I imagine it could be an awesome experience where you get to know the people on your route as they come and go.
I don’t know. I hate driving. I hate paying for gas.
This highlights an ugly truth about climate change:
Unless you're an off-grid person who eats your own produce and generates power on-site, being rural isn't green at all. There's a reason Canada gives rural people a larger carbon-rebate and discounts the carbon taxes off of farm fuels, and still rural people scream bloody murder about carbon taxes.
Fundamentally, if you're rural for funsies and your life involves heavy interactions with the urban world (shopping, working, etc) then you're living an unustainably carbon-intensive life. But since we valorize rural people as the Salt of the Earth (and give them disproportionate representation in electoral bodies) nobody can say that out loud.
At least there used to be a time when rural towns were built around rail infrastructure. Canada was built by trains, so originally small towns were dense, one-main-street affairs abutting a train station. But now it's all about highways. And those are bad for the Earth.
Transit depends on density. That can even be tight pockets of density, like a small town with a dense low-rise street-wall and no driveways and parking-lots. But you can't feasibly run transit down rural roads, or suburban keyholes.
There are indeed rural places in the world with decent public transit, and rural places get the same benefits of efficient transportation as cities. We just don't want to build non-car centric rural places in North America for whatever reason, in fact we got rid of long distance passenger rail here, which used to serve tons of rural areas and was seen as a standard mode of transportation even in rural places until the rise of cars and highways, so public transit has actually gotten much worse in rural areas and the transportation barrier has genuinely been shown to be a major contributor to the higher rates of poverty in rural areas.
Oh absolutely. I’ve seen it firsthand. In 2001 the neighborhood I grew up in flooded. Houses that were worth 200k suddenly started selling for 5-10k (even less in some situations). 5-6 bedrooms, 2 story houses.
Poor people seen an opportunity and took it.
Even the smartest of their children were stuck. No cars, grocery store 30 miles away. They were fucked.
So where did they get their food? The gas station/convenience store, that’s where.
Children were raised on slim Jim’s and Mountain Dew.
What they could have purchased for one dollar they pay 3.
It’s a sad and ugly reality.