I share your libertarian preferences except in one respect: for me the biggest single oppression by far, the one which makes me wake every morning rigid with fury, besides coughing and spluttering with the unpleasant side effects of pollution-damaged lungs, is that of the motorists. That oppression by motorists is there all the time, day and night, whereas the government and council oppression is intermittent. In this provincial city which has done nothing to balance the weight of motorists against other users of the roads and pavements, even they are beginning to notice the bad effects of their being in so large and oppressive a majority. If we were to pay a little more attention to the quality of life in our cities, we might not need to argue so much over carbon. Just get rid of the pollution, the noise, and the danger from the untrammelled motor traffic. That is not to say ban cars, just put them in their place. Don’t make them any bigger, noisier, dirtier, or more numerous than they need to be (yesterday I was quietly and unaggressively overtaken on my bike by an electric TNT van and thought what an improvement on the diesel-powered PO vans); and don’t let them clog the sides of the roads with senseless parking. This is supposed to be illegal but as with so many laws nowadays is no longer enforced by the police – who are enthusiastic breakers of the law themselves. If we were to revert to no obstructive parking in the street, we would have no need of bureaucracy – no congestion charging, no parking services, no expensive legal dealing with their disputes – just private car parks for dedicatd motorists like you. The (much too big) majority would see sense and take to public transport, feet, or bikes, and we would all be the healthier for it, including those in wheelchairs who would then be able to get along the pavements instead of being trapped at home unable to get out because of the traffic and the cars parked on pavements.

I think there is great scope for Conservatives to lead on green taxation / economic instruments, but it can only be part of a contract with the public about the total burden of taxation – which I guess you would like to be quite a bit lower. That Labour shows no willingness to make this contract at any level (in fact it is doing the opposite) has meant that any new economic instruments are, quite reasonably, greeted with cynicism as a net increase or stealth tax rather than a redistribution of the tax burden. If there was clear commitment to a cap in total tax take, it might just be possible to hold an interesting conversation about where that tax should come from. Even at a lower overall tax take, I think there is a strong case for taking more tax in total from bad things like congestion and pollution than from good productive things like work or investment. I can’t believe you’d disagree with that…

On your points:

“Yet you have already paid for the use of the road”
You may have paid for the road, but not for taking everyone else’s time while using it. The idea with pricing externalities is that the price should be applied at the margin (ie. when using the road, releasing the carbon, entering a congested area) if you hope to achieve an more efficient outcome as only pricing at the margin affects behaviour and reduces ‘over-use’ of road space that is free at the margin.

“…road tax, vehicle VAT on your initial purchase,Fuel duty, Excise on fuel”
The mixture of taxes you list covers cost recovery, many different possible externalities and general revenue raising. I think your position would be stronger if you had in mind a well designed economic instrument for congestion, with a flanking position covering whatever restructuring of transport taxation you think appropriate. You are free to argue that more of the tax base for general spending should come from income taxes and less from fuel excise duty, I just wouldn’t expect you to!

“you will very often find that the road is not congested at other times of the day”
This is an argument for a time-sensitive congestion charge to create the extra incentive to shift journey times as well as to reduce total traffic. Remember, if you want efficiency, it’s about allocating road space according to willingness to pay, not according to willingness to wait. Time sensitivity is increasingly used in charging – most obviously peak fares, airline seat pricing, Stelios’ Easy internet cafes increase charges according to how busy the cafe is) and new time-sensitive smart meters reflect the higher cost of electricity when the grid is busy. It isn’t that different to these. The reason that second or third best options, not time sensitive, are chosen is to avoid technical risk and possibly high transaction costs.

Other developments are already happening and there are apparently great strides being made in the development of hydrogen fuel cells for cars which then only emit water vapour. However as water vapour produces 95% of the greenhouse effect and has more effect on climate than CO2 can ever have because of the Laws of Physics, then who knows where that will end…….

Hay can only be grown each year if the climate remains hospitable enough to do so and that means having sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere for abundant plant growth and sufficient warmth to utilise it. This has not always been the case:

1879: (Summer/early Autumn) Notably wet period. The five months May to September, 1879 accounted for 580mm of rain by the EWP series; circa 190%. The three 'high-summer' months of June, July & August each had nearly double average (1961-90) rainfall amounts and (up to 1999) was the second wettest summer in the EWP record. Lamb writes: " the summer was the wettest and one of the .. coldest in the long instrument records for England. The cold, wet weather delayed the ripening of the harvest, so that even in East Anglia in some places the corn had not been gathered in by Christmas. The decline of English agriculture, which lasted for fifty years, dated from this time."(Lamb, a notable UK climate historian, now deceased)

Will fossil fuels run out? Who knows, but not in our lifetime and technology will come up with new discoveries such as this recent role for bacteria.

http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002743.html

Geobioreactors are sites where microbial conversion of underground hydrocarbon deposits (oil, oil shales, and coal) to methane is ongoing. Such Geobioreactors may offer the potential of turning currently finite energy reserves into methane “farms” capable of long-term, sustainable energy generation.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

Yes it does. Yet you have already paid for the use of the road (road tax, vehicle VAT on your initial purchase,Fuel duty, Excise on fuel) you will very often find that the road is not congested at other times of the day. So instead of a congestion charge, if you find the congestion intolerable, drive to your destination at another time.

Clive Bates: “and uses scarce resources (road space).”

Which you have already paid for in total.

Clive Bates: “Normally, you would expect Conservatives to see the merit of creating a market ”

I do, but first you should remove all the other taxations that currently exist, before you start to levy an additional one under false pretense.

No. That law merely encoded an existing freedom. We are *free*. By default we can do anything. There have to be reasons to restrict freedom. An act which codifies a *freedom* is not an act which encourages or discourages birth control. That particular acts exist, which we are free to perform – abortion, taking the pill, sex itself! – does not mean that explicitly permitting those acts is the State working to modify our reproduction behaviour. The State is merely defending our freedom to act as we wish.

An encouragement would for example be placing a tax upon women who are not pregnant, such as happened in Romania prior to the fall of communism.

Sorry, my error, I think the figure is more like 5million. Amend the other figure accordingly.

Each country should set a notional CO2 cost of having a child, based on the expected lifetime emissions it will generate directly & indirectly during its life, minus some discounting factor.

It is then up to the potential parents whether they choose to allocate part of their CO2 allowance towards having a child, or having more flights / using more heating / driving.

If people overspend their CO2 allowance, say because of having too many children, they get their passports or driving licences revoked until they have earned more.

Obviously you’d need a range of sensible exemptions (twins, for example).

The other option is to make “child permits” tradeable, so those wanting to remain child-free could sell them to “breeders”.

They never talk about asteroids for example. One day in the future they will and some politicians will exploit it, one will make a film about the asteroid threat and win a nobel prize and the world will come together to build an asteroid defense system etc etc.
The threat then wont be any different from today.

Right now all concern is gobbled up by one issue.