Re: AMD's well may be running dry

Andrew wrote:
Of course most environmental scientists now think that Kyoto is to
little too late hence the EU's unilateral agreement to implement more
stringent targets than required by Kyoto.

Refusing to sign Kyoto today because you feel it isn't enough is like refusing to buy a PC today because you know that in a couple of months, they'll release a newer, faster PC.

Kyoto provides a framework that allows countries to start acting today. And *ANY* reduction (or slowed growth) delays the sigificantly negative impacts such as flooding of manhattan by many years.

It is a bit like a huge asteroid on a collision course with earth. The sooner you can start to change it course, the less you need to nudge ot so it will avoid earth.

Kyoto has also provided a focus/metric to measure performance. Canada's actual performance has been dismal for instance (mostly because of the oil sands processing in Alberta). And in Europe, they realised that they needed much stronger legistlation to get things really done.

Nevertheless, even in Canada (but especially in europe) there have been many positive improvements at the town or regional level. There have been many trials of various stuff that have proven effective. There have been many building systems and designs that have been tested, some proving very effective, others not so effective. And this is providing a knowledge base to help in reaching the goals.

There isn't going to be a magic bullet that solves the issue. It will be a large number of small initiatives that each make their small contribution which will end up providing a large enough reduction.


What is really needed is a per capita CO2 emission target adjusted for latitude (to take into account heating costs for survival in winter). And you also need a "fossil fuel added tax" similar to a VAT to help for fair accounting.

When you drill for oil, you sell the oil with a fossil fuel tax on it.
The refiner buys oil to be refined and buys oil to fuel the refining process. The refined product is sold with a tax that combines both.

The steel maker buys refined oil and pays that fossil fuel tax. When it sells the steel to the car manufacturer, it includes that fossil fuel tax. The car manufacturer then also buys oil to fuel its car assembly plants and the fossil fuel taxes from all the products that go into the car are combined.

When the car is sold, the owner ends up paying for the total carbon footprint that was used to manufacture the car. The beauty of this is that if that car is exported to another country, it is the person in the other country that inherits the responsability for the car's carbon footprint and it affects that country's per capita carbon footprint. (just discussing manufacture it, not use).

Similarly, when someone buys fuel at a petrol station to power his/her car, they pay the end carbon tax on the refined fuel (just like the steel maker did). But being the end user, they can't deduct it and it goes against that country's per capita CO2 consumption.

Lets assume for a minute that the USA had a positive trade balance, and generated 25% of the world's pollution. Americans citizens should not be penalised for the carbon emissions generated when producing widgets that are exported to canada, mexico or anywhere else. It is the importers that should be penalised.

But a company that is highly inefficient and which consumes a lot of oil to produce a widget will not be as competitive as one which is far more efficient since the more efficient one will have a smaller carbon tax attached to the product.

There would have to be some exceptions such as companies that sequester oil products (plastics, vaseline, lubricants etc). Those do not get burned so they should get a refund on the carbon tax for the amount of fuel they sequester (but still pay the carbon tax generated when the raw oil was refined before being delivered to them).
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