Also, not many people realize this, but the problem isn't caused by the war. If you don't believe me then open an inflation chart of your country of choice and try to spot any change to the shape of the curve around Feb 2022.
This perspective just externalizes side effects of all sorts of unequal societal resource allotments and paints the problem contributor as the average person. It's akin to blaming climate change on your average person when the biggest contributors aren't your typical person whose biggest crimes might be driving to work, taking an occasional mass shared flight, or ordering something on Amazon. Or plastic waste on consumers not recycling. There's lots of these blame deflecting trends from industry.
In the long term, you might be correct that we need to reduce energy expenditure (although birth rates could change this picture), but I'd say we have a lot of other low hanging wasteful consumption fruit that we should fix before having people shiver to stay warm in their homes.
I can turn my thermostat and flow temps down a few degrees and expect companies to reduce unused lighting in their offices on nights and weekends.
Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
And that last part doesn't just mean to make things more expensive, which causes inflation and doesn't really make things more expensive. It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Asking who is to blame is -- suprise! -- not solving anything.
But at the end of the day, the buyer is always right. It's easy to abdicate responsibility of production based carbon emissions to the producers, but if your buying choices actively disadvantage producers with lower carbon emissions (eg. because they cost more and you only care about costs) why would you expect producers to do anything about it?
>It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Isn't there already an incentive to save energy? It's a cost, so businesses are already incentivized to save energy wherever they can. Higher prices incentivizes that even more.
The prices are how you, as an individual, gain knowledge about the energy market. Prices are high and demand out straps supply. Prices are low and supply is higher than demand.
Subsidies distort this information.
This isnt to say it's good that people can't heat their homes but it's the only way to balance these markets.
Any solution that focuses on the consumer side relief rather than improving supply will only exacerbate the situation.
That said, environmental scrupulosity is a thing. Would it be better for the environment if I didn't buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe just bought locally made goods and food? And maybe I shouldn't buy new clothes, but just continually repair what I have? And maybe I shouldn't use computers or smartphones because the raw materials are damaging to extract from the Earth?
But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items. Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices. Yet, instead of asking us, as consumers, to reexamine our habits of consumption, we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
[Edit: formatting]
This feels like a non-issue to me. If you're the kind of person who's "scrupulously examining whether reusable shopping bags are better for the environment", I doubt you're going to forget that ordering stuff from amazon involves a ship traveling half way across the world.
>But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items.
But is the economic system actually incentivizing disposable stuff in particular, or is it incentivizing producing what consumers want? The fact that amazon is strewn with "reusable" variants of everything imaginable (eg. reusable straws, reusable bags, reusable k-cups) makes me think it's the latter.
> Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices.
Maybe the prices are indication of something? For something like straws, it might actually be better to manufacture 1 gram worth of plastic and ship it across the world, than it is to wash/sanitize a reusable straw which also involve labor and resources (eg. hot water).
>we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. If you don't own a car, then presumably you're not driving to work. If you don't driving to work, that's one less thing that's contributing to environmental impact. Of course, if you're ordering stuff from amazon rather than going to a store, that loss might be offset by your amazon deliveries, but I suspect that you're still coming out ahead. The fact that the alternatives have environmental impact as well shouldn't come as a surprise either. After all, maintaining a first world standard of living is going to have some environmental impact associated with it, and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
> Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations?
> Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
It's even a harder question than that. Sure, Amazon is the one responsible for scheduling the emissions... but when you take into account the overall emissions of a purchase then it gets more interesting.
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https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/default/files/library/public/Dimit...
> Results are shown for the buying process of a toy, for customers living in an urban area. Figure 1 shows the carbon footprint of online and traditional shopping, when only the purchase step and the appropriate return rate are considered. The Cybernaut tends to have a lower environmental impact than the Traditional Shopper, as long as he does not use speed delivery.
> ...
> The Cybernaut’s carbon footprint is almost two times smaller than a Traditional Shopper. In fact the main component of the Traditional shopper is the customer transportation, whereas Cybernaut‘s emissions are linked to a parcel carrier, who uses an optimized delivery process. The freight transportation has a bigger impact for the Cybernaut since the item is packaged individually, which increases packaging weight and volume, and the linehaul distance of online warehouse is bigger than a traditional one. The packaging is the main component of the Cybernaut’s carbon footprint.
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The box that you get from Amazon is the largest part of the carbon footprint for the online shopper, but it is still much less than the traditional shopper driving to buy an item in a store. The difference between an individual driving to the store and parcel delivery is akin to similar arguments for solo commuters vs taking public transportation - the bulk transportation of items or people is better.
I'm confused, it's not?
In Germany, inflation did hike up in March [1]. The Russo-Ukrainian war started on February 24th, so February's inflation is not that much impacted.
Sure, inflation was already high before that. But I'm pretty sure the war increased the problem.
That's not how it works. It takes time for price increases to propagate through the supply chain. Utilities usually contract their gas months ahead, so if the prices for natural gas increased in February due to the war, the increase in consumer prices wouldn't have happened until months later.
Again, I recommend just opening it and looking at it.
Because every chart I’ve looked at shows both a big jump in heating oil future prices, and more importantly, volatility starting at the end of February.
That is completely consistent with what you would expect, the war roiled energy markets and consumers are now paying the price.
Front month fuel certainly shot up around February.
People are freezing and you consider this good? Why?
> You may hate this post but the reality is that it's the only way forward, subsides will only increase the price without doing anything about the problem.
Which one?
Only one firm in the area could even quote me on one, tried to talk me out of it at every step, and gave me a quote that reinforced their sales pitch. It was literally never going to payback over a combi, which dozens of companies would be happy to install and service.
So, a fresh combi boiler sits on my wall (which is a good improvement over the old), but it also means that I don’t entertain the question again for another 15 years.
I was among the top 0.1% aware, educated, and motivated potential customers of a heat pump and it couldn’t happen.
Anything-to-air wasn’t going to work visually or for occupant comfort. I don’t want refrigeration linesets strung all over the outside, warts on a wall in each room, and after all that having less comfortable heat than hydronic. (On the plus side, it would give AC “for free” [in capital costs].)
Ground source (to water) was my first preference. I’m on a pretty small city lot and the well cost meant for an even longer payback period than an air-to-water heat pump.
Use an electric blanket, and wear an extra layer. This will use far less energy, than trying to warm up all of the air inside the home.
Food, shelter, education and other basic needs are supposed to be taken care of in developed countries (by definition) in the 21st century. Just leaving it up to the market means that poorer people won't have these needs fulfilled, and we can't pretend that it's just fine and so be it.
Maybe energy prices should be proportional to your wealth, like fines in some countries.
Public education in particular sees very bad outcomes for poor students. It is time to privatize.
The idea to make energy cost proportional to wealth is also bizarre. The first problem with it is how will you determine wealth? The second problem is how will you determine need? The goal is to provide according to need while taking according to ability, right?
This has been tried many times in many ways and inevitably results in more inequality and a lower standard of living than allowing market forces to balance supply and demand based on economic signals.
You're conflating markets with inequalities and implilying a causal relationship when the market is simply the scale in the middle attempting to balance consumption with economic contribution.
It's almost ironic that markets are the way in which you can achieve this Marxist ideal.
What does then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country mentions quality of life, aren't basic needs part of that?
> how will you determine wealth?
Some countries have wealth-based taxes and so have apparently answered this question, so that can be a starting point.
I don't understand your point about markets solving inequalities on their own. If energy is expensive, poor people don't have heating, rich people do. Are you saying that's just fine?
Also not sure what the Marxist ideal is, is wanting poor people to have heating a Marxist ideal? I'm honestly confused by your comment.