Instead of quietly dropping his stupid evil idea for "Carbon Credits" it looks like David Miliband is coming up with the daft totalitarian rubbish that passes for NuLabour "strategic thinking", which was once the preserve of David "Mastermind" Blunkett.
Miliband plans carbon trading 'credit cards' for everyonePatrick Wintour
Monday December 11, 2006
The GuardianEvery citizen would be issued with a carbon "credit card" - to be swiped every time they bought petrol, paid an energy utility bill or booked an airline ticket - under a nationwide carbon rationing scheme that could come into operation within five years, according to a feasibility study commissioned by the environment secretary, David Miliband, and published today.
In an interview with the Guardian Mr Miliband said the idea of individual carbon allowances had "a simplicity and beauty that would reward carbon thrift".
He acknowledged the proposal faced technical difficulties, but said ministers needed to seek ways of overcoming them.
Who is going to pay for the army of Soviet GOSPLAN style bureacrats who will have to assign a "carbon ration" to every individual manufactured item and service, and to administer the individual means tested, intrusive personal carbon rationing system ?
Since nobody is willing to pay for this voluntarily, then it will require a Soviet style police state to try to enforce it
The idea was floated in a speech in the summer, but the detailed proposals show Mr Miliband is serious about trying to press ahead with the radical idea as a central part of his climate change strategy.Under the scheme, everybody would be given an annual allowance of the carbon they could expend on a range of products, probably food, energy and travel. If they wanted to use more carbon, they would be able to buy it from somebody else. And they could sell any surplus.
The inevitable audit trail of all of these transactions would destroy any chance of the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life
This would be another fundamental shift in the favour of the centralised state bureaucracy over the rights and freedoms of individual citizens.
The study was prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Energy for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It argues that firms like Tesco have shown that complex computer schemes logging billions of transactions are feasible. "Tesco Clubcard is collecting, storing and analysing some 50bn pieces of data a year," it says.
Blunkett also misleadingly tried to claim that his Entitlement Card /ID Card scheme was somehow akin to a Tesco Clubcard, deliberately hiding the fact that a supermarket loyalty card is voluntary and subject to commercial competition, whilst the ID Card or a "carbon ration credit card" is a compulsory Government monopoly, where the consumer or citizen is given no choice at all, and is inherently liable to bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption.
The study also claims that individual carbon trading is less regressive than carbon taxes, as the poor emit less than the rich. Instead of flat "green" taxes it proposes a hybrid system using permits and taxes, with the permits possibly issued, tracked and traded through the existing banking system using pin and chip technology. Carbon allowances could be treated as bank accounts.
The detail of the report must be studied carefully when it is published, but if this article is accurate, then the scheme appears to be untainted by practicality.
Why try to create a parallel currency ? Why not just use real money and a real pricing mechanism ?
Why duplicate the complexity and expense of the financial and taxation systems ?
Where the detailed Regulatory Impact Assessment of the extra costs and delays involved in using a credit card system in place of cash transactions, or of having to use a carbon credit card as welll as a normal money credit card for the same transaction ?
It seems to have escaped the notice of this "think tank" and of Miliband, that the poorest people and most disadvantaged people in society, and even many richer people in rural areas, do not actually have access to the existing banking system "pin and chip technology", so it is an inherently unfair scheme.
They conveniently ignore the fact that the "pin and chip" system only covers a small fraction of the physical locations where "carbon rationing transactions" would have to take place, and that the technology cannot work securely over the internet or mobile phones, which again, large numbers of poor and disadvantaged people do not have access to.
The report admits huge questions would have to be resolved, including the risk of fraud, the relationship to ID cards, and costs.
Where is the detailed Privacy and Security Impact Assessment of this scheme ?
However Mr Miliband said "bold thinking is required because the world is in a dangerous place".
It certainly is a dangerous place with politicians like Miliband who are promoting such evil totalitarian policies.
He said: "It is a way of pricing carbon emissions into individual behaviour and it would recognise carbon thrift, as well as economic thrift. Twenty years ago if I had said 8 million people would have a Tesco loyalty card, no one would have believed me."
Since Miliband did not make any accurate predictions about the future in 20 years time, why should we believe him now ?
This is not the way to "save the environment" !
The scheme will be discussed at a special cabinet committee on the future role of the state convened for today.
What other evil plans is the current NuLabour regime planning to inflict on us, almost certainly having deluded themselves that they are doing so for the greater good.
"He acknowledged the proposal faced technical difficulties, but said ministers needed to seek ways of overcoming them."
Cant imagine anybody more badly placed to overcome
technical difficulties.