Carbon Tax Evasion 101.

[Ahmabeliever]

I'm starting an article on TP. It is aimed at press and anyone but has references specific to NZ's carbon tax, hence the title.

I hope to raise awareness and even action around TP and carbon sequestration with this in local press. I wanted to make it appealing to read too. So it's not science, it's a journo approach to it.

Opinions and corrections gratefully accepted.

Part one...


Carbon Tax Evasion 101.


The problem with green meets business has always been the bottom line. The purpose of business is to make a profit, generally using resources. The purpose of greens is to preserve those resources. With animosity in both camps, reasoning and cooperation required to press forward are restricted.

Bio-fuel from crops look set to be a worse ecological threat than oil itself. Yet Government’s recent steps are the implementing of bio-fuel usage and drawing up a carbon tax. I’m not convinced of this particular ‘solution’.

What we need to promote both ecology and economy, are real green products, both clean and profitable.

First I would put it to business, there are further tax benefits to be derived from the pursuit of profit through research and development. Also, you might access grants in business development. The fact you are moving into green technology is an added bonus with public beginning to demand such measures. You need a goal, a product or service in mind, of course.

We spend money to make money, so where should we spend it?

First, we need clean fuel and power. We are not going to give up cars and appliances, but we also need to reduce carbon emissions.

Pyrolysis.

Pyrolysis is "the chemical decomposition of organic materials by heating in the absence of oxygen." Basically, making charcoal. In the process of making the charcoal, we also make gas.

Pyrolysis at temperatures of 400-450 degrees can reduce contaminants in the gases released by the process to 1 part per million. Mainly hydrogen, the gases emitted can fuel vehicles and run power generation.

The charcoal retains carbon and many other pollutants. Were it to be burned it would then pose a problem. But charcoal made at lower temperatures has many unique properties in itself.

Charcoal is a key component in what is said to be the most productive soil in the world, Terra Preta.

[Ahmabeliever]

Terra Preta is a man made soil found in the Amazon basin. Made up of charcoal, pottery fragments, bones, and stable organic matter. The carbon (charcoal) put into the soil was placed there between 700 and several thousand years ago. It remains stable in the soil today.

Many findings related to charcoal and Terra Preta experiments can be viewed on the web. Pastures that emit less greenhouse gases, trees that grow and produce more, crops with yield increased. Experiments continue with many pyrolised wastes of manure and other organic materials providing bio-char, a soil amendment showing great promise.

Benefits to be derived from its use include:

Increased soil water retention
Increased aeration
Increased bacterial and fungal development
Increased carbon exchange capacity
Decreased erosion
Decreased pollution

The production of char provides energy, and will provide many other chemicals for industry according to the source of the wastes used.

Farmers, orchardists, nurseries, forestry, landscapers, rejuvenation projects, home gardeners and more can all directly benefit from the use of pyrolised charcoal.

Everyone can benefit from the extensive use of pyrolised charcoal. Sequestering carbon while using clean energy is what we've been waiting for.

A cleaner planet is not only desirable, to many people who have studied Terra Preta extensively, it is doable.

The knowledge of us creating excessive CO2 creates demand for a solution. Running out of oil and exorbitant prices creates demand for an alternative. The knowledge that we can sequester carbon and simultaneously improve our gardens/farms creates demand for charcoal pyrolised at the right temperature. There is the initial demand. Now all business needs to do is step up and provide a supply.

[erich]

Great public piece..........

a new guy on the TP list,Paul Elmore, has titled his TP talk in the PNW USA:

" Convient Solution and I will be showing, for the first time publicly my small farm biochar production system. There is $50 million available in the next farm bill specificly for research into this system. You and all your friends are invited to come. Please give me a call 503 668-6507 Attached is a flyer with more information. Thanks Paul Elmore"

[Terrapreta] charcoal in agriculture

" Convient Solution "......... Maybe you could steal it for your OZ article, or Take one of mine;

"Burning" for a Stable Climate
"Burning" Our way back to a Stable Climate
Dirt First
Carbon to the Soil

I just don't like the negative connotations of Evasion


Benefits to be derived from its use include:

1/3 of Carbon Sequestered every Biofuel Cycle
10 X Reduction of GHG Soil Emissions
3 X Soil Fertility

Cheers,

Erich J. Knight
1047 Dave Berry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA. 22840
540-289-9750
shengar@aol.

[Ahmabeliever]

Thanks erich

I like the evasion part as it immediately makes businessmen laugh. Well, the one's I've said "what do you think of this for a heading - all smile and or laugh.

The chat/feedback columns are typical of twisting the headline to pull in readers. Provided all facts past that point are true, I'm happy with the 'evasive' manner in which I try to attract businessmen to read it.

I've actually thought of doing an hour long comedy show called Tax Evasion 101. With a humorous presentation of tax history and law and methods by which the little guy might protect himself from debilitating taxes (if you don't know what you are doing the Govt can take over 60% off you).

When you read between the lines I am indeed telling people or business how to avoid the up-coming carbon tax.

[Michaelangelica]

I agree with erich, I like your TP summary Ahmabeliever

• The purpose of business is to make a profit, generally using resources.
• The purpose of greens is to preserve those resources.

With animosity in both camps, reasoning and cooperation required to press forward are restricted.

Perhaps these definitions (assumptions?) need to be challenged?
Should we all have a "Big Think" (-Pooh Bear) about that?

[Ahmabeliever]

Well, I'm not sure that mediation will do anything anyway. What will work, is business getting on with making techs so green the greens will have to find something to do other than finger point.

Our Green party point fingers bones and sticks, I've never seen them with any solutions though, only complaints. They are the boy who cried wolf.

And for years, I have tried to test the capabilities of these people to learn and/or adjust and/or act. Nothing. A common response to hey - check out this clean hydroponics I made is - we only deal with politics. Word for word, that is the reply.

Nothing but complaints, complaints at a rate of about a dozen a week, I'm on the mailing list. They belonging in parliament where talk is the order of the day, out here on the planet, we need action.

[Philip Small]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Perhaps these definitions (assumptions?) need to be challenged?
Should we all have a "Big Think" (-Pooh Bear) about that?

My hero of inductive reasoning, Jane Jacobs, would observe:
Greens=Guardianship Syndrome
Business=Commercial Syndrome

Interestingly, Jane Jacobs observes that Science (as in hypography is science for everyone) historically prospers under a Commercial Syndrome, yet Academia is definitely Guardianship Syndrome. Ivory towers and all that. Observing meager participation of academics in public forums supports Jane Jacobs' inductive reasoning.


From Jane Jacobs Meme: on the Ethics of Politics and Business

“Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics” (1994). 214 pp. ISBN 0-679-74816-4

In Systems, Jacobs describes the ethics of commerce as a moral syndrome equal, antagonistic and complementary to the ethics of politics, or guardianship. Neither commerce nor guardianship sectors do well in the absence of the other. Government protects commerce, provides stability, administers justice and enforces uniform standards. Commerce provides the economic engine and the ethical framework for trade, technological advance and individual rights that combine to make governments worth living under. Yet these two ethical systems are mutually exclusive and cannot be rashly integrated without the risk of moral confusion.

Jacobs is careful to limit Survival to the ethics of how we eke out a living. Greater questions of good and evil are wisely set aside.

Commerce=evil (except for traitors like me, of course)?
Greens=good?
For all those who can answer Yes to both, your ethical syndrome is one of guardianship. Thanks to Jane Jacobs, I can embrace you, I can admire you, I can exhort you to keep doing your good work. V Zen.