Category — Conservation

Creating a third world country

Conservation is good isn’t it! We can save the planet while joining hands skipping around a tree singing Kumbaya. Often we hear the enviros tell us how dire life for the “poor” is because we splurge on everything from toilet paper to gasoline. Conserve, conserve and more conservation, we are running out of everything. We are not running out of idiots though, that’s the embarrassment. We’re living in a PBS state.

Examination of how the poor really fare with the dreadfully emotional regulations of the barkheads is absolutely enlightening.

First, we must understand every business has a bottom line cost, for product, maintenance and repairs of infrastructure, salaries and then physical plant if different from infrastructure. Profits must figure into this, otherwise why bother producing anything. This is of course anathema to the Loony Left. For the examples, all numbers presume no increase is operating/repair costs, which really is ridiculous.

Let us start with your electrical provider. Generating power costs x (where x equals the bottom line). Determine billing by y (where y is the total class of purchasers). Individual cost of electricity then is x/y. (For the logic and math deficient I’ll apply figures where x=$100,000.00 and y=10,000, therefore power costs $10/customer)

If everyone conserves by reducing consumption by 10%, the electrical company pays only 90% of the monthly costs. To cover the bottom line, they increase billing to y+10% per billing period. So, 10% of $100,000= $10,000.00 divided by 10,000 customers= $1 each. Power now costs $11 per billing cycle.

This causes all who conserve to cut back again, another 9% leaving the monthly bill $10.01 per customer. The company then collects $100,100 to cover $110,000, a short fall of $9900.00. They raise rates by another 9% to cover the billing to $11.99 / customer/period. Conservation saved you how much? Will you conserve to pay the new cost? The next increase is 8%, which is a 24.65% increase over the entire period.

Prohibiting increases by legislative fiat produces a cutback of maintenance, upgrades and/or layoffs of personnel, which of course has many other ramifications; the maximum is living in the dark.

State mandated conservation on driving to cut down on air pollution, global warming or being the greenest fool enfolds the same stupidity.

Police, road and bridge repair, snow plowing etc. rely on sales taxes from fuel sales, vehicle sales tax, registration, fees, tickets and parking/tolls.

Suffice to say fewer gallons vended, cheaper cars purchased, less driving in general cuts into the tax base very quickly. Vermont is a perfect example of the simplemindedness of the conserve to save mentality.

A short numerical example augments discernment: Give an average of 15,000 driven miles per annum divided by a very generous 30MPG =500 gallons of gas x $0.20/gal sales tax=$100.00 to the state. There are approximately 516,631 cars, light trucks and motorcycles registered in the state. (Year 2000 figures) of which about half are trucks excluding farm vehicles. Gas sales tax revenues are about $51.7M/year. Cutting back driving by 25%, the state takes a $12.9M hit to the treasury. I’m leaving out the tourists, diesel fuel sales for trucks and farm machinery, sales tax on oil changes, and other maintenance.

What new taxes or maintenance diminutions transpire to make up the arrears? Charges go up to fill in the revenue insufficiency or things start breaking. Who is going to patrol the byways, fill potholes or repair bridges? The state could make the Big Dig look good!

Try these examples with water, telephone or public transportation.

Who pays the cost?

The poor downtrodden proles for whom the Left professes to care wind up paying for the increases. When taxes on top of self-induced rising costs become onerous, the middle class and well to do move, leaving the “least fortunate” footing the bill. Moreover, pay they will for the basic infrastructure has to exist or the state goes away. I cannot picture the elected elite taking responsibility for the debacle. It must be the poor not paying their fair share. Who’s left?

Far be it from me to advocate excess consumption, I cannot afford it. However, belief in conservation as the road to Xanadu, has to be the product of a drug addled mind. The Teletubbies make more sense.

I feel good for days when I see greenie good intentions bite the good intender dead center of the tukis.

The first is a K-Y moment occurring as you read; the second will make great reading shortly. One may apply this lesson to all eco-idiot ideas. The reader may be sure that no examination of consequences ever took place.

Municipalities discover inconvenient truth: Lower consumption means less revenue

For years the message drummed into Bud Harris, 78, and his grandson David Moreira, 27, was conserve, conserve.

And conserve they did, along with thousands of others across the GTA, watering their lawn less, replacing old toilets and installing water-efficient showerheads. [snip]

But that win-win sentiment belies an inconvenient truth – one that came out in a recent unguarded comment from Durham Region’s works czar, Cliff Curtis. Asked about declining water consumption, he told the Star: “Conservation is killing us.”
[snip]

Tougher post-Walkerton regulations, growing communities and a rising backlog of crumbling pipes needing to be fixed are driving up costs even while diligent consumers are lowering their consumption and the size of their bills.

Toronto alone is facing about $800 million worth of repair and replacement work, since half of the city’s water mains and 30 per cent of its sewer pipes are more than 50 years old. But last year, total revenue was only $604 million.

Other regions are hurting, too.

But in the short term, municipalities are forced to look for other solutions, including revising the water rate structure to reflect that, while conservation is good, there’s a price to be paid for it. [snip]

“The alternative is to tell them to use more water so we can get more money,” he said with a big smile. “But that’s not our goal.”

Now to Vermont for something completely diffe…check that!

Efficiency program gains new life

MONTPELIER — A House committee is poised to vote on a bill designed to boost energy efficiency in Vermont homes and businesses without calling for the new taxes that killed a similar measure last year.
“We now have more information about funding sources, and they’re going to yield enough money to get the program running,” said Rep. Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, chairman of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
The program would begin with about $3.4 million in 2009 that comes from two regional energy conservation funds and from increased revenues generated by the increase in fuel prices.
[snip]

That could win the support of Gov. Jim Douglas, who vetoed a bill last year that would have funded energy-efficiency efforts with an increased tax of $25 million over four years on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

What we have here is a politician problem, not a water problem.