climate, nzpol
So it’s interesting that New Zeeland is gonna tax bovine methane. We do need to start taking externalities into account but I fear a similar collapse/backlash as happened in Śrī Laṅkā.
Market capitalism is so heavily reliant on profiting from unaccounted externalities and when farmers are suddenly asked to shoulder those externalities, it’s a huge shock to the system. That’s not to say that I’m defending cattle or tea, it’s more me kvetching about this classist & flimsy house of cards we call modern living.
I’m not saying don’t tax it—I’ve been advocating for that for 20 years!—but I saw what happened in Śrī Laṅkā and how they then tried to undo the decision. We might need sweeping economic reform in a way that sustains the working class 🤷🏻♀️
climate, pol
@Sandra look at what happened in germany when they tried to decrease the price of gas for people: it was a week long tax break for giant companies, and after that the rising oil price swallowed that.
whenever politicians try to fix capitalism within the framework of neoliberalism, it backfires almost immediately. taxing bovine methane will be rolled down to farmers and the consumers. it'll cause more farmers to go bankrupt and more big middlecorps to grow larger
re: climate, pol
@Sandra heck, even trying to figure out a destructive way is tricky
we've built extremely complex intervined houses of cards and we have multiple storms coming, and two or three already raging.
re: climate, pol