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51 comments on Oil and the future - the commuter shift to public transport
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51 comments on Oil and the future - the commuter shift to public transport
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We do?!
The political reality is we'll be extremely lucky if the emissions trading scheme includes the transport sector. We have zero chance of more radical measures such as TEQs and Heinberg's protocol thing being implemented. I don't think it serves the Peak Oil community well to push such controversial measures, which basically amount to rationing. I think its far better to push for a gradual introduction of 'green taxes' compensated by income tax cuts and increased welfare.
There has to be some 'carrot' it can't be all 'stick'.
I pretty much agree. Our political leaders took a week of Parliament time to come to no conclusion on 5c a litre fuel tax. How can they come to grips with an emissions trading scheme? Which by the way I believe should be up and running in 18 months. TEQs and depletion protocols aren't even on the political radar. I think Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Metals agree with carrot and stick so long as the carrots are large and the sticks are small.
If the ETS doesn't get up or is pathetic perhaps Kev should consider resigning for failing to keep his promises.
Personally I'm very much against the idea of TEQs and I'm totally unenthused about the ODP.
How ever neither will ever happen so there is no point flogging either dead horse - though seem British MPs seem determined to try.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021983/Every-adult-Britain-forc...
I agree that we should go carbon taxes (compensated for with income tax cuts) and start increasing funding for public transport and the MRET target - in all cases ratcheting them up as each year passes.
With regards to the interview with Adam, has anyone got a pointer to a "gated car park" (with people living in cars).
This seems kind of out there, but the sheer weirdness of it has a certain appeal...
Here you are Gav,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/19/homeless.mom/
...Gee, The Future is never as good as it was!
Thanks - what a terrible story.
2 things spring to mind:
1. Why doesn't she move to a cheaper city.
2. Given that there are so many unoccupied houses in the US, how do things get to the point where there are so many homeless. Surely a functioning housing market adjusts prices so that supply meets demand ?
There are unoccupied houses, but even in the crashed market a single mother can't afford to buy one, she has to rent.
Health and safety regulations mean that if you lease a place to someone, you must keep it in good repair. Given that many of these houses are being stripped of their copper and so on, it's actually more expensive to lease a place out to someone and keep it in repair than just to not lease it out and let it rot. Tax laws about depreciation and so on favour boarding it up.
The US does not have a functioning housing market, overall. For example, many foreclosed houses are sold... with the unpaid debt. The bank doesn't just sell the house for as much as it can get and write off the bad debt, it tries to sell the debt with it. Amazingly, people already getting into debt to buy a house don't want the extra old one, too.
Banks want to sell the old debt because the debts they're owed they count as an "asset." In the crazy financial system we have, a rotting house and its unpaid debt attached to it is an "asset" worth more than simply selling the house.
They're allowed to lend money of so many multiples of their "assets", so that they have an incentive to maximise them. They lend out money, generating more "assets" which lets them lend out more, and so on.
Simply writing a heap of these bad debts off would make the whole house of cards collapse. Which is why the US Federal Reserve now accepts all these bad debts from the banks as "assets". They'll accept anything except an IOU on a beer coaster.
Wow - that is bizarre (bundling remaining debt with the house purchase).
I was wondering why people could buy houses in outer Atlanta for $10,000 - I read an article at Mish Shedlock's site talking about property taxes (based on old values) making people reluctant to spend much (as well as loans being hard to come by) - but if you also have the shortfall left by the last owner then it makes a lot more sense...
I'm surprised they won't "pay" you to take on some houses that really got over-inflated prices during the boom :-)
The other aspect is taxes.
If you can't make the mortgage payments and the market is down, the bank may go for what in the US they call a "short sale" - where the selling price is less than what's owed on the mortgage. This is meant to be better than a foreclosure because you don't have the nasty smear on your credit record. However, the amount short is forgiven debt, and the IRS counts forgiven debt as "income" and wants to charge you tax on it. So you get out of mortgage debt, are now homeless, and owe the IRS money... awesome.
So instead people just let the bank foreclose on them as the market crashes. And despite the crashing market the bank doesn't want to lose money. Which means yes, the place is offered for $10,000 - but plus $100,000 for the debt.
Now this is where else the taxes come in. We've got property taxes, what here Down Under we call council rates. And those are in proportion to the council-assessed value of your property. So while the market says the place is worth $10,000, the council claims it's worth $100,000... and keeps charging rates to the abandoned property, if you want to move in you have to pay them.
And of course if the place has been abandoned for a year, it's been trashed and looted, walls torn open for the copper... So now as well as the property taxes and a possible old debt you've got the cost of fixing the damn thing up. And there are few neighbours around, and those squatters and drug dealers.
The sane thing to do would be to write off all the bad debts, wipe the slate clean and start again. But that'll never happen. Only billionaires get that kind of help :)