The "green fiscal commission" have advised taxing heating bills in order to double their current costs and to continuously increase the tax on new cars each year by £300 until it has reached £3,300 by 2020. Petrol and diesel would also to increase 10% a year so that they will have trebled in price by 2020.
I suspect someone has been reading my week 4 blog on practical measures!
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It's interesting to see the negative reaction that the trailing of this announcement created in parts of the press (Express this time I think plus business presenter on 5 Live breakfast show, plus no doubt others. The Daily Mail was busy nemoaning the fact that school kids were making their homes a green hell for parents!). No doubt that the true cost of carbon needs to be reflected, but until tangible benefits are sold and alternatives to the car are available, we're likely to hysteria every time tax rise are announced, and the danger that the government will have to back down (as it famously did in 2000?)
ReplyDeleteQuite so. This reaction is exactly what convinces me that despite the constant affirmation that "the message is out there re climate change" the vast majority of people do not in any realistic way relate to this information as relevant to them and their UK lifestyles. Its probably fair to say that any tax inspires a knee jerk reaction with many and it does seem ridiculous that we still dont have a readily available eco car to replace the current model which could reap the advantage of this kind of taxation to the benefit of all carbon emissions wise.
ReplyDeleteMaybe in a new economics world tho' we would all be reliant on public transport?
Radio 4 was very impartial in its reporting of the issue, and in a later programme there was an author who had been in Greenland with scientists checking ice core samples. She hammered home the message that massive changes were already taking place for all to see.
Since green issues seem to come up one way or another almost everydayso far without any moaning etc I have a theory that Radio 4 is perhaps the most environmentally aware broadcaster at present.
although I'm broadly sympathetic of measures like this, and the fuel tax escalator of 2000 that Kev mentions, they can't take place in a vacuum as you say Caroline. It's no good hitting people with taxes unless there are readily available, attractive and affordable alternatives for them to shift to - eg cheap clean cars, or public transport, or houses that are built in such a way as to not really need much energy input to keep them warm.
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