Without it I don't find carbon tax to be that good idea at all - to continue the analogy, it is known that sometimes the pain itself can kill the patient.

The poor (the truly poor) will sell their permits, and be richer.  The well off will buy the permits they need.

Politically the dynamite will be in the middle classes because they will have to make tradeoffs.

This is all about the economic aspirations of the middle classes.  Say the 5th-80th deciles of the British population.

Thinking of China as autocracy is oversiplification. A good part of their reasons are similar to ours. Their party leaders  and people in charge are also humans, have kids, move within other people etc. They can not easily come up with some governing decision which is against the majority.

Hence that brings us right back to square one, where the best we can offer is an ARGUMENT and use that argument to win people to our view point...

I strongly disagree with this strategy. Humans are largely inert and egoistic animals. We will not accept changes, spare sacrifices voluntarily. If you expect to persuade people to make them and then to vote for people to implement them, then prepare for a huge wait. What we need is something in the middle - a autocrative leadership (think Winston Churchil, or maybe Putin from todays politics) coupled with a strong campaign (which we are more or less having already). It will not work without either one of these elements.

But back to the point that some of us have evolved differently. Just because we are emotional beings does not mean we can not use reason to figure out what the problems are and what needs to be done.

Tstreet, the word "we" covers a lot of territory. Just who are you talking about when you use the pronoun "we"? Do you mean yourself and perhaps a few academics that have studied the problem? If so, then you are correct. But do you mean the majority of humankind? If so, then your conclusions are entirely incorrect. We are emotional beings and our emotion, for most people anyway, determines which argument we accept and which we reject. Realizing of course that any good debater can often make the most absurd argument seem reasonable.

I don't believe what is necessarily desirable to believe unless you believe that I find it desirable to suffer. But why am I different and why are significant numbers of my fellow beings different.

T, we are all different. Any human characteristic is found in variable degrees in everyone. An example. (All figures in this example are not factual but used only to make a point.) Say the average height of the European male is five feet ten inches. And say the average difference in height between any two people picked at random is two inches. Then two inches would be what is called "one standard deviation"

There are other definitions for "standard deviation" but the one above is by far the most easy to understand. That is, it is the average difference between any two individuals, picked at random from the total population. And it can be applied to any characteristic.

From this we could form a bell curve of the height of all European males. Five feet ten would be the average and at the peak of the bell curve. Sixty eight percent of all European males would be within one standard deviation of five feet ten. That is, sixty eight percent of all European males would be between five feet eight and six feet tall, ninety six percent would fall within two standard deviations, either side of the mean and ninety nine percent would fall within three standard deviations of the mean. That would be between five feet four and six feet four, if two inches were truly one standard deviation in the height of European males. But don't count on that figures, two inches and five feet ten, as being correct because I just pulled those figures out of the air. But the point is made, whatever the true figure for height and whatever the true figure for one standard deviation, 99 percent would fall within three standard deviations of the mean.

Just as a bell curve and standard deviations can be applied to height, or any other characteristic, human or otherwise, it can also be applied to such things as "propensity to decide arguments on emotion." Most people, the mean, would use reason along with emotion to make decisions. There would be people on both side of the curve. Though the center of the curve, the mean, would give more weight to emotion than reason, more reason would come into play as you moved to one side of the curve and more emotion as you moved to the other. As you approched one extreme side of the bell curve, people would be extremely rational, in their decision making, and extremely emotional on the other.

And one more very important point. Since people generally seek as friends, others who think like they do, then it is likely that most of your close friends are more rational than emotional, provided of course that this is they you make decisions.

This natural variation, by the way, found in both plants and animals, is what makes evolution possible.

Ron Patterson

  If this was a more political and less serious thread, this is where I would point out that my ass's name is being taken in  vain, and that those rats be weasels. But PO and GW are serous subjects, so I won't.

Rat in a drain ditch
Caught on a limb
You know better but
I know him
Like I told you
What I said
Steal your face
right off you head

Rodney DangerRat