Reuters reports that the UN Environment Programme wants to levy an oil tax on developed nations of $5 per barrel to fund a “Global Green New Deal.”
According to Reuters,
“[The tax] would be almost, if not totally, unnoticed by the consumer,” [UNEP head Achim Steiner] said, especially since oil prices have fallen from more than $140 a barrel at mid-2008 peaks to about $40.
A barrel of oil contains 158 liters and OECD consumption is about 20 billion barrels a year, he said. “This is just one example, there may be many others,” of funding, he said.
“I am concerned about the prospect of a meaningful deal in Copenhagen if there is not a significant financial package on the table,” he said. Cash would encourage poor nations to step up actions to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.”
Remember how the UN’s oil-for-food program worked out — for Saddam Hussein?
Imagine the UN klepto-crats with $750 billion (of our money) to spend.
This is a global Raw Deal. If the countries of the world wanted to unite for the greater good, we would have an international space program, that is more than just a thinly disguised ballistic weapons program. Some 75 years ago Einstein gave us a road map for time and space travel. In the time since we have developed more than adequate capability to explore beyond the moon, but instead have wasted this technology on making really small phones that play shitty music to lull underachievers into a deeper state of worthlessness.
Want to get rid of CO2? Blast it into space. Want to get rid of nonrenewable trash and goods? Blast them into the asteroid belt. Running out of ore? Uranium?Aluminum feedstock? Guess what, giant chunks of these materials the size of the moon are freely floating through space. Space is a near infinite trash dump and shopping mall, where everything is free, and all the junk we could make in a million lifetimes would constitute tiny speck in the endless expanse.
We’ve had rocket technology since the 60’s to launch an explorer into orbit. And since the 70’s we’ve had the nuclear propulsion technology to propel it to speeds close to .1C. WE COULD BE TRAVELING TO THE FAR REACHES OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM BY NOW. Yet we won’t even use nuclear power to keep the lights on.
Instead we’ve been trapped in a two party politicial system that has filtered all available possibility into two, near identical soundbite philosophies that pander to our stupidity rather than cater to our capabilities. We live in a puppet world where what is claimed to be good or right, is actually just a tactic to control you. While all the real opportunities to really make things right have been crushed by those who know that the infinite supply of things that space has to offer us, will kill the demand for their businesses and governance.
Our leaders have corralled us into a regressed, no-alternative, way of living and like the cable company, continue to raise their rates knowing you’ll pay for lack of another option. The space program will create jobs. It’s been proven. The space program will produce space age super efficient renewable technologies, that will enrich our lives, just like the technologies from the first go round did.
But instead we choose to be bound to the same system, told the same lies, and held under the control of narrow minded, power hungry liars. And it is there that we will stagnate indefinitely while our true potential, and the world we all wish for, are never realized. All because we’ve allowed progress fearing hippies, and technology fearing fundamentalists to fearmonger us. What we should really fear is the current trajectory our intellectual advancement. A fear well personnified by overtaxed $5 a gallon fossil fuels. Where will we be when our tax liabilities exceed our abilities to produce or when there is no more crap to cram into cellphones? What a disgraceful existence…