President Obama often correctly anchor his policy declarations by declaring that "the pursuit of perfect should not get in the way of what is achievable". "President Obama’s budget represents a huge break from policy trends. If he can get it through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course." declares Paul Krugman, and this seems to be a general opinion.
OK, but is that enough change? Or is the USA still in LA LA land? For years, and to this day, opinion makers said that the financial system was good enough, so no reform was done, and now we are told there can be no other, so no fundamental reform is being done.
Enough change to survive, that is what we are talking about.
If one wants real change, one cannot just tinker. The USA has to change radically the way it behaves, and fast: that means the population needs to change its priorities by learning to waste less and to care more. That means the population needs to reduce its blind consumption and its energy waste. Each and any single person needs to change the nature of her or his occupations. This means that the USA should augment the energy taxes on individuals and add an Added Value Tax.
Selling carbon credits may, or may not work, and seems to have been abused in Europe. Some very profitable corporations made fortunes on carbon credits by delocalizing to Vietnam (say the chemical giant Rhodia in France). It's one of these Franco-European ideas, too clever by half, that did not work too well (so far). Why would Obama push for what did not work too well, before pushing for what did work very well? Well, OK, let me give you a hint: carbon credits is like TARP for obsolete carbon industries (you wanted to know).
Besides the dubious carbon credit, European citizens pay directly enormous energy taxes and an AVT. The Added Value Tax is a mandatory minimal 15% in the European Union (yes, even in Great Britain). It should be viewed as mandatory national savings.
The very latest scientific study observes that, although the rise of temperatures has been small, so far, the non thermal effects around the planet have been unexpectedly dramatic and ominous. As I pointed out a few years back, this is to be expected. This is a consequence of the equipartition of energy theorem, that most of the supplementary energy from global warming will show up in non thermal ways (say by stopping, or starting great currents, or by modifying vast climatic zones, say from wet to desert, or with great storms, etc.). Moreover, the rise of temperatures puts us at the mercy of a methane burp anytime, that would turn the financial crisis into a pleasant joke, relatively speaking. It could happen in six months, and suddenly temperatures would rise dramatically. And so on. The least the USA could do is to make as much effort as the Europeans. The Obama plan comes very short, to put it mildly. It seems that the ocean will get to the White House first.
Raising the US war against the greenhouse heating to the same level of ardor as Europe already enjoys, would have two immediate effects: enormous employment, in extremely added value jobs, and no more budget deficits. So, for most people there is a serious upside. But the plutocrats, who confuse mastery of the universe and their enslavement of most of the world population, are in the way. And they will be as long as they manage the world's largest banks to enrich themselves while milking everybody else. All the major problems are entangled. It is no coincidence that the country with the most emissions of CO2 (a lot of China's emissions are delocalized USA emissions) is the country with the most plutocracy.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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