Seriously, it’s that darned easy! (via Climate Depot)
Senator Whitehouse: “…I don’t want to leave the impression that mankind must suffer in order to make these changes. The changes in consumption can actually be enjoyable and beneficial. If you trade in your Mercedes for a Tesla, your quality of life just went up.â€
This was from the Munich Security Conference, on Feb 13, 2016, in which he surely took a long, fossil fueled flight. One has to wonder if Whitehouse has purchased a Tesla himself. A base model Tesla S will cost you $70000 to $75000, putting it well in the range of the upper end luxury car buyer, rather than your average middle class consumer. Whitehouse’s comment surely tells you this is all about your betters telling you what to do. The “rich kids” won’t worry about suffering.
You can ask Senator Whitehouse if he’s traded in whatever type of fossil fueled vehicle he owns for a Tesla on Twitter.
Tesla is outselling any comparable class Mercedes Bmw Lexus
Within 1 or 2 years the next model Tesla will be available this will be priced about the same as a mid cost fossil fueled car
The nouveau riche have somehow forgotten what it was like to be longtemps pauvres.
I am reminded of the ‘cash for clunkers’ program, which was s’posed to help the environment by getting some older cars off the road, replacing them with newer, more fuel efficient ones. Alas! our nouveau riche President didn’t really consider just what this meant as far as the less-well-off were concerned.
C4C was a program in the depths of the recession, and that meant that the only people who could take advantage of it were those who had weathered the recession in good financial shape, having the good credit and steady income which enabled them to buy a new car. Those people who had lost some income or were having trouble making their mortgage payments were locked out of the program.
The longtemps pauvres don’t buy new cars; they simply cannot afford them, and are thus stuck with the used car market. But C4C required that the ‘clunkers’ being traded in, which were usually in fairly decent condition, having been previously owned by new car market people, have their engines destroyed. C4C wanted to get more fuel efficient cars on the road — not a terrible idea — but also to get less fuel efficient ones off the road. The result was that the ‘best’ used cars were taken out of the market completely, leaving the used car market a bit overbalanced with older used cars. That meant that the poor were left with older cars, those which were less fuel efficient than the ones which had their engines destroyed.
I pointed out the problems with C4C here and here and here.
Wish I had a tweeter account to read your twits!
Anyway, Senator Whitehouse was talking to a lot a rich guys and was using language they understood.
But it does hit at a deeper message, and a false one at that, pushed by the deni-o-sphere – that the transition to alternative/renewable energy sources will destroy economies, change our way of life and force us to move into caves.
There is no “evidence” (there’s that dreaded term that is to a Denier what a cross is to a vampire) to support the Denier contention. But then, Deniers don’t “do” evidence.
Which has almost nothing to do with the post. Typical deflection. However, if John is saying that Tesla is a big money car for the moneyed class, OK.
You’re right, Jeff, pushing climate change solutions (taxation, restrictions on our lives) doesn’t affect the moneyed class. It just hurts the middle and lower classes. Those who can easily afford a Tesla? Not so much.
It also shows that even with billions in government subsidies, Tesla is hemorrhaging cash. Without the $2.391 billion from the government, Tesla doesn’t exist.
It is a beautiful vehicle. I’ve been in one, got to drive it. Love that dashboard. But, it cannot survive without government.
Buy a Tesla and you’re getting a $30K subsidy from the taxpayers.
Last night I had a date with a lady who is strongly considering trading in her Audi and for a Tesla. She wants to save money on gas. I could of told her that she won’t be saving money on that deal but I knew that would be putting my chances of getting a kiss at risk. Social reasoning at it’s finest.
And then there is this:
https://youtu.be/17xh_VRrnMU
Might not burn gasoline but it sure burns cash.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/10/tesla-burns-cash-loses-more-than-4000-on-every-car-sold.html
Lomborg is not trained as an economist, but as a political scientist.
But still, this from him last year:
He itemizes by nation, and these are just the DIRECT subsidies! Recall too that the fossil fuel industry is not held responsible for the millions of deaths per year from air pollution or the 10s of millions of exacerbations of asthma/COPD or the damages from global warming. How do you assign values to a melting Arctic, rising seas, floods, droughts and heat waves? How do we hold our reliance on fossil fuels responsible?
At the current price of crude, adding a $10/barrel tax would increase gas prices from $1.59 to $1.84. That’s still significantly less than the $4.00 gas when “oil men” Bush and Cheney ran the world. Better to have 30 cents of revenue than $2.30 profit to “oil men”.
Here’s the deal that even a fake “environmental economist” like Lomborg must reconcile: regardless of the pump price the “negative externality” cost of gasoline remains largely the same. You burn a gallon of gas and 18 pounds of CO2 leave the tailpipe. Whether you pay $1 a gallon or $5 a gallon, the environmental damages are the same per gallon oxidized. That cost is not currently being captured in the price of gas, oil or coal. You can ignore this simple economic fact (and you do) but your ignorance doesn’t make it less real.
William, why do you not complain about the trillions in direct and indirect subsidies of fossil fuels?
Yes, no, maybe…
It depends on who does the counting.
Another item leftward conveniently overlook in their big bad fossil fuel subsidy argument:
• For every dollar the government spends administering the federal onshore oil and natural gas program, companies return $54.12 in royalties and leasing revenue to the American taxpayer.
http://www.westernenergyalliance.org/knowledge-center/tax-royalty-revenue
Wonder what the return to taxpayers is on alternative energy subsidies- Solyndra, First Solar, Tesla, etc..,
Yes, no, maybe…
It depends on who does the counting.
And whose counting here is the industry. The fossil fuels industry pays taxes and it’s a lot compared to what the government spends to administer the leases. So? They pay less than 0.001 cent for every dollar of damage they do to the environment.
Yes, no, maybe…
It depends on who does the counting.
Yes, no, maybe…
It depends on who does the counting.
J-“no evidence that change to renewable energy sources will destroy economies…” No evidence that it will help economies, either. Also, no evidence that warming will be dangerous to life on the planet, only speculation. “How do assign values to a melting Arctic, rising seas, floods , droughts and heatwaves… (Caused by fossil fuels) . J turns to desperation, again. There is absolutely no proof gw causes more of any those items listed. And add the fact that our climate evidence of such events doesn’t go back very far, it’s ludicrous to say there are more of them. So J, how would you assign values to them, seeing as they’re no worse than before, and that they all happened before we drove our SUVs? Even for you, a totally lame argument.
Denier Extraordinaire,
No evidence that warming causes ice to melt? No evidence that water expands when warmed? No evidence that melted ice turns to water?
The difference in fossil fuels and “alternative” source subsidies is that fossil fuels would still be here without the subsidy; not so much for the “alternatives.” And what does the federal (plus state, local) pull out of a gallon of a gas, it’s probably two or three times what the people who pull it out of the ground, refine, and sell it do. You lefties have a slavish hatred for anything that’s practical.
So now fossil fuels are a perpetual money machine???
They receive billions in direct government subsidies, then pay billions in taxes (“two or three times what the people who pull it out of the ground”), then afford billions to the people who pull it out of the ground! And they don’t have to pay for the damages they cause. All for your $1.49 a gallon!! Sounds like burning MORE will solve the debt AND make everyone rich.