I feel the best way is not to rely on market forces to change things.
The reliance on a 'price for carbon' to deliver change is an illusion of
neoliberal economics. Good old-fashioned regulation is far better.
Let's renationalise the energy industry, close those coal fired power
stations and build those wind farms (in alliance with the people -
community cooperatives owning wind farms seems a good model to me)
Chris
On 05/01/2011 14:12, Oliver Tickell wrote:
> As a rule, subsidies are a very ineffective and inefficient way of
> delivering social benefits.
>
> By experience, they end up ballooning in cost and delivering little
> benefit that could not be achieved at far lower cost by other means.
>
> Consider the effectively 'subsidised' 5% VAT rate we have on fuel in
> UK. We have it ostensibly to combat fuel poverty. But the greatest
> benefit goes to the richest people, who use most fuel.
>
> According to the first (I think) law of welfare economics, it is much
> more efficient to simply give the money away on a per capita basis.
> That way it costs the same, but people get the choice of how to spend
> the money - like a reverse poll tax. Even better is to target the
> funds to the people who need it most - like child support. Provided
> you can do that - actually it is often harder than you think.
>
> So I have to say, Morales is absolutely right to end the subsidies on
> fuel. Like here in UK, the biggest beneficiaries are surely rich
> people with cars, big houses to heat, etc. But to mitigate their
> impact on the poor, he should target additional aid to help them - for
> example, supporting bus companies to keep fares down. That way the
> change can become socially progressive, while costing considerably less.
>
> For all the same reasons, here in UK VAT on fuel should go up to 20%
> and the money gained put back into additional social expenditures /
> reducing the scale of cuts / supporting energy efficiency and
> conservation measures. Even just distributing the money to the
> population on a per capita basis would be a great improvement.
>
> Oliver Tickell.
> www.kyoto2.org/
>
>
> On 05/01/2011 05:28, Chris Keene wrote:
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: [climate09-int] Fwd: Open Letter from Oscar and other
>> former
>> companeros of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera
>> Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 12:45:17 -0800
>> From: david solnit <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>> FYI: Passing this along at the request of Bolivian friends. It was
>> written in the midst of Bolivia's national protests at the sudden
>> doubling of gas and diesel prices by the Morales Government and includes
>> internal criticism of the Morales Government around climate/fossil fuel
>> and neoliberal policies. It seems valuable for climate justice movements
>> to have a full and complicated view.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: *Marcela Olivera*
>> Date: Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:05 AM
>> Subject: Open Letter from Oscar and other former companeros of Evo
>> Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera
>>
>> Companeros,
>>
>> The leftist press is not saying anything about what is happening here
>> after the Gasolinazo couple of days ago. We ask you your help spreading
>> this letter from Oscar and other former companeros from Evo and Alvaro.
>> We need to start to look seriously at the contradictions in Bolivia
>> under Morales government,
>> Thanks!
>> Marcela
>>
>> Para la carta en Espanol: http://narconews.com/Issue67/articulo4292.html
>>
>>
>> Open Letter to Evo Morales and Álvaro García Against the Gasolinazo
>> and for the Self Governance of Our People
>>
>>
>> The People Come First, not Numbers nor Statistics
>>
>>
>> By Oscar Olivera Foronda, Marcelo Rojas, Abraham Grandydier,
>> Aniceto Hinojosa Vásquez and Carlos Oropeza
>> Bolivia
>>
>> December 30, 2010
>>
>> Cochabamba, (La Llajta) December 30, 2010
>>
>> Sirs;
>> Evo Morales Ayma and
>> Alvaro García Linera
>> La Paz.-
>>
>> We speak to you through this open letter although it probably wont be
>> read because you dont hear of it or because it doesnt interest you.
>> However, although you may ignore it, although it may not exist, we want
>> to tell you how we, like many of our people, feel today. We tell you,
>> Sirs, because years ago you ceased being our brothers and compañeros,
>> you distanced yourselves from the people, and thus you dont know what
>> happens down here, below. Your defects and not your virtues that we
>> know have multiplied ten times in a worrisome, indignant and sad manner.
>>
>>
>> Oscar Olivera (wearing baseball cap, interviewed by reporters) with Evo
>> Morales (in the green shirt, to the right of Oscar) during the 2000
>> Water War in Cochabamba.
>>
>> We still remember when we marched, together with you, Evo, for our
>> people, when we campaigned to get Alvaro out of prison; when the ancient
>> textile workers building in Cochabamba became our headquarters to
>> conspire against the bad governments that today look a lot like
>> yours:BAD GOVERNMENT.
>>
>> You quickly forgot that we sent you into the government not to
>> administrate, but, rather, to transform and change the lives of the
>> people. Today we see all of you transformed and the lives of the people
>> have changed, but badly so, from bad to worse.
>>
>> Since that December 22 of 2005, when you cried, Evo and Alvaro, you have
>> only busied yourselves making traditional and privileged politics,
>> subordinating and coopting social and union leaders, military and police
>> officials, with money, with positions, disqualifying and stigmatizing
>> everything that has criticized you, everything we said we wanted to do
>> away with. Some of us had the luxury to reject your offers and you
>> converted us into your enemies or simply behaved as if we did not exist.
>> We asked you: *Change the economy*, worry about the people more than
>> your political enemies, create jobs, industry, work, *build solidarity,
>> brotherhood and generosity.*
>>
>> Where is your obedience leads slogan that was invented by the
>
>> Zapatistas? Did the people send you there to pact with the right in the
>> Constituent Assembly? Did the people send you there to fill your cabinet
>> with neoliberals, opportunists, incompetents and advisors for
>> international organizations that we never saw in the struggles of the
>> people, in the streets, the highways, the communities, the hunger
>> strikes and factories? Where were most of the members of your cabinet in
>> 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005? Did the people send you there to
>> invite your mayors, governors, beauty pageant contestants, and
>> neoliberal technicians into the government? Who decides in this
>> government? The people? Or the llunkus (a Quecha indigenous word for
>> lackeys and adulators) that surround you in order to not lose the
>> privileges that gives them power?
>>
>>
>> Álvaro García Linera (vice president of Bolivia) in a 2002 press
>> conference with Oscar Olivera and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, when Olivera
>> joined the hunger strike to demand that the Bolivian government withdraw
>> charges against them.
>>
>> Who continues controlling the economy of our country? The indigenous
>> and social movements? Or the multinational oil and mining companies
>> and large bankers who today have made more money than during any
>> previous government to yours, those which you affectionately call
>> partners? They are partners in the conditions of anguish and poor
>> living to which we have been subjected during these last five years.
>> Where are the billions of dollars in fiscal reserves that you constantly
>> tell us are there?
>>
>> What about the nationalizations that have been a trick against the
>> population, indemnifying the multinational looters with the peoples
>
>> money? These businesses are being administrated by the old neoliberal
>> and corrupt bureaucracy.
>>
>> Where is the industrialization of gas in the country? Where is the new
>> economy based on respect for Mother Earth and the balance and harmonious
>> relation with Pachamama that you always proclaim? Havent you delivered
>> thousands of acres to the multinational oil and mining companies so they
>> can keep exploiting Mother Earth? Have you given the New Political
>> Constitution of the State to the plantation owners of the Eastern
>> region?
>
>>
>> The economic model continues being extractionary, neoliberal,
>> capitalist, all of it contrary to your speeches.
>>
>> Was it the people who sent you to buy a private airplane for $40 million
>> when millions of your people do not have housing nor basic services?
>> Did the people send you to tolerate narcotrafficking like never before
>> and that, sooner or later, will turn our city into a Ciudad Juárez or a
>> Medellín? Maybe the same coca leaf that you promoted so that you could
>> be president will be the same leaf that takes that privilege away
>> from you.
>>
>> Do you know what its like to have to wait on line overnight to sign
>
>> your sons and daughters into school or to receive inadequate medical
>> attention in the public hospitals? The people dont have private and
>
>> privileged insurance for the clinics of the rich.
>>
>>
>> Felipe Quispe, Evo Morales and Oscar Olivera, in 2003, when they joined
>> forces as the popular chiefs of staff in opposition to the government
>> of Gonzalo Goni Sánchez de Lozada.
>>
>> Are you familiar with what it is to get on a public bus or taxi and
>> listen to the sentiments of our people? Have you gone to the markets to
>> bargain the prices of basic foods that each day are harder to obtain to
>> calm the hunger of our families?
>>
>> Did the people send you there to have so many privileges, bodyguards,
>> assistants, cabinet chiefs who make it impossible to speak directly to
>> both of you? Who pays you? Who pays your food, your transportation, your
>> health insurance, your security, your planes, your costs? We do: the
>> people which you were once part of.
>>
>> Did the people send you to impose such a brutal, irrational, arrogant
>> and neoliberal gasolinazo (an 82 percent hike in gasoline prices) that
>> will make the people, who barely survive if they have the luck to have a
>> stall in the market or a job, even poorer?
>>
>> You always said that neoliberalism has failed. Is the gasolinazo a
>> revolutionary and popular measure? Or is it that your economic model has
>> failed?
>>
>> Why must you like all the governments previous to yours have done
>> carry out your failures behind the backs of the population, notably over
>> those making minimum wage whose median income is fifty times less than
>> yours and whose needs are one hundred times greater than yours?
>>
>>
>> Álvaro García Linera at the home of Oscar Olivera.
>>
>> What a pain that you always say that power is in the hands of the
>> people, that this is an indigenous-popular government, what a pain that
>> all of this is a lie:LLULLAS! (A very strong indigenous Quechua word
>> for liars.)
>>
>> Luckily, thanks to the struggles in which we have been together, we
>> learned something very important. We learned to think and act for
>> ourselves so that never again would anyone tell us what we must do, so
>> that nobody ever again would be able to trick us so that the popular
>> vote, trust and hope that has come in recent times from the most
>> impoverished and humble sectors would be converted into a party for the
>> rich, the well-off, the neoliberals in sheeps clothing, the beauty
>> pageant contestants. The process is not propaganda, it is not a speech,
>> it is not about marketing: the process is to change the lives of the
>> people. And read this well, because we wont allow ourselves to be
>> tricked again by anybody. Thats the way that people who come, like
>> you, from the breast of The People are.
>>
>> *We would like to finish by saying something that an Aymara elder said:
>> The indigenous are not defined by physical traits, nor language, nor
>> last name, nor culture. The indigenous come from an attitude of
>> generosity, of respect, of reciprocity, transparency, of listening to
>> others.*
>>
>> We ask you: Do you have that? From below and to the left, as the
>> Zapatistas say, we see arrogants who decide everything, who dont listen
>> to anyone, who discriminate, who insult, who disqualify, who defame. Is
>> that how you want to remain in power for many years?
>>
>>
>> Oscar Olivera and Evo Morales after Morales 2005 election to the
>> presidency.
>>
>> The problem is that you dont understand the enormous responsibility
>
>> that you assumed as part of this process with our people and other
>> peoples of the world: of demonstrating that it is possible to govern
>> ourselves, that it is possible to lead by obeying, that it is possible
>> to construct another model of development, of good living, that
>> another world is possible. This was a process that delivered itself to
>> you with hope and joy. The legitimate owner of this process is the
>> Bolivian people, the girls and boys, men and women, youths, elders, from
>> the country and from the city, whose effort cannot be worn down,
>> diverted, usurped, expropriated, betrayed or subordinated by anyone,
>> even less by you and those who equivocally decide for us.
>>
>> We dont care about governments. We care about the people and this
>> process is losing the social base that it cost us so much to construct
>> while returning it to the right against which we fought and will fight.
>>
>> *To make you understand that we exist we must mobilize and this we will
>> do, do not forget it.*
>>
>> But we will not mobilize to fight among brothers and sisters in the way
>> that youve been encouraging in these years in your incapacity, and the
>> result is in Huanuni, Cochabamba, Pando, Yungas, Sucre
where so many
>> brothers and sisters, all children of Mother Earth, have hated and died.
>>
>> *Alvaro, we already told you: The people come first, and later the
>> numbers and statistics.*
>>
>> Do not confront us. Do not provoke us. Do not divide us or ignore us. We
>> exist. We are dignified. We will struggle against everything that harms
>> our daily lives. We seek:
>>
>> *
>> -The repeal of your anti-popular and nefarious Decree 748
>>
>> -The decolonization of the Plurinational State
>>
>> -That no political party, not of the left, the center or the right,
>> can benefit from or involve itself in our actions and decisions
>>
>> *
>>
>> *-Like in 2000, like in 2003, Cochabama and El Alto defeated the
>> anti-popular policies.*
>>
>> Oscar Olivera Foronda
>>
>> Marcelo Rojas
>>
>> Abraham Grandydier
>>
>> Aniceto Hinojosa Vasquez
>>
>> Carlos Oropeza
>>
>>
>
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