If it were only £200 million, that might be an acceptable price for keeping our freedoms.

But given the history of UK government IT procurement, a few billion is more likely.

Not if you're using a Commodore Pet....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KERNAL

OK - I'll take a stab at answering your non-hypothetical question. Bear in mind that my grandfather was a coal miner, so I'm well aware that coal dust is pretty nasty stuff, but there really wasn't much of an alternative back in the 1920s when he started.

Put very simply, if people are exposed to toxic pollution from a coal-fired power station, they should be allowed to sue for the damage caused by that pollution, and make it obvious to others wishing to operate such plants that not cleaning up their output will incur costs when they in turn are sued. Not as instant a solution as regulating the hell out of them, but since it hasn't been tried, there's no evidence that it's a less useful solution.

The reason this has not happened is (in my neck of the woods) that the power producers were at one stage nationalised and immune from legal sanction, and are now heavy donors to both main parties so are still immune to legal sanction for all practical purposes.

Another, massive reason why nothing has been done about coal here in the UK is that energy production has moved away from coal, in a short sighted rush to burn all our natural gas, while our nuclear industry has been neglected and allowed to wither away because of the noisy greens who fail to see that the alternatives are unsuitable (coal because it pollutes, natural gas because it will soon run out, wind because it is useless as a base load supply, tidal because some sea birds might move a few miles, and so on).

Oh, and a proper libertarian is only willing to accept artificial scarcity in the form of "intellectual property" if that is strictly limited both in scope and time - I think you'll find that most libertarians tend to agree with Stallman rather than the RIAA or the patent trolls on this matter.

We can start with tax breaks for clean energy research, mini-hydro, solar and the like (not the ridiculous subsidy schemes we have now, which are great creators of bureacracy and merely shift the cost to consumers).

We can make it clear that *if* sea levels are rising and flood plains are likely to be less safe places to live, no subsidies for building on low lying land prone to flooding can be expected, and recommend that those likely to be affected either move or make their own provisions for dealing with effects that are at least partly within their own control.

We can offer incentives for people to study science and engineering rather than the liberal arts or other non-productive subjects at university, so that we have more trained minds ready to build the solutions that we would need. It's pointless spending money educating PPE graduates and lawyers (let alone English / History / Media Studies) when what is needed is a technical and not a legislative solution.

It's not that far away from the current approach - it's just based on incentive rather than taxation, on building solutions rather than imposing preconceived (and ill conceived) dogma which serves only to strengthen bureaucracy at the expense of freedom.

Oh, and sack the IPCC, especially Chaudri.

Whoosh!

That, sir, was the sound of your post going so far over most Slashdotter's heads that they'd need a good toke just to spot it.

I salute you.

It's the way in which AGW has been used that leads one to that conclusion - the imposition of carbon taxes that impact both the householder and industry (while leaving international jet travel for the movers and shakers strangely unscathed), the subsidising of inefficient and costly wind power at the expense of clean, safe nuclear, the promotion (here in the UK) of the AGW agenda by the state broadcaster - the list goes on.

I'm as aware as the next man that we need to change our energy consumption patterns and move away from fossil fuels for the very good reason that they are a finite resource and unless we reduce our usage soon, we will have burnt everything in sight for little long tern benefit.

But I see the imposition of artificial measures by governments as a necessary evil to be used as a last resort, not as the default response to every percieved problem.

Yes - it is a political issue, and is being driven by statists of both the left and right, so those of us who distrust state action tend to look very critically at the evidence, and have a strong suspicion that what effect there is is being overplayed by politicians for their own purposes - the building of new bureaucracies, the introduction of new and ill thought out legislation, the setting and pursuit of unreasonable targets and so on.

I make no apologies for my position, and wish only that the hyperbole from both sides would die down so that a proper assessment and a general agreement on sensible measures could be made.

The philosophical problem with Cap and Trade is that it is an artificial creation of scarcity, and every such regulation is anathema to the libertarian mind (and I speak as a libertarian).

The practical problems are much greater - they begin with the fact that Cap and Trade is susceptible to "subsidy farming" by those who produce nothing, continue with the abuse of the system by arbitrageurs and other forms of rent seeker (Al Gore - I'm looking at you), and end with the fact that such provisions are not and are unlikely to ever be universal.

I'm a AGW doubter, but I come from a maths / physics backgrouhd, and distrust modelling based on short time series of data, while accepting that CO2 does have an effect (even I can see that the greenhouse effect is real - it's just not the whole story by any stretch).

Looking back just shy of 2,000 years to when the Romans grew grapes in Yorkshire, I can see that the climate in the part of the world that I inhabit has been much warmer than today, with no dramatic ill effects on other parts of the world, so doubt that a couple of degrees rise from current temperatures would result in the disasters that the doomsayers would have us believe.

I see no good reason to regulate for an effect that may or may not be real, based on the models made by a bunch of geography lecturers whose judgement I do not trust and the prejudices of a whole lot of statist politicians who I definitely do not trust.

It's still a lot less energy than would be used making the glass from scratch, and using recycled plastic to make garbage bags makes economic and energy use sense too.

Same with aluminium cans - making alunimium from bauxite is horribly energy intensive compared to melting aluminium that has already been refined.

I'm with you on the reuse of cases and power supplies, but how many people feel confident building a PC from scratch? You know it's easy, I know it's easy, but most folk would rather buy new than have to think and learn.

The "alloy" mentioned in TFA reminds me of the lacquered papier-mache that was used extensively in the 19th century for making jewellery boxes etc. - the world turns, and nothing is exactly new.

Add to that RIPA and the Digital Economy Act in the UK - battles we've already lost to the statist scum that inhabit all 3 of our major political parties.

The only thing our current coalition has done for freedom is to scrap the identity card scheme that Labour proposed, but considering the 3,000 new laws passed between 1997 and 2010 that effectively require identity checks for everything, that's small beer.

Er... no you don't.

Another victory for the forces of evil dressed up as protecting the vulnerable / minority / whatever.

If you saw the damage that the Left have done in the UK to our rights and freedoms, you might not have such a jaded view.

All politicians distrust the people - it is, after all, the people who made them and the people who (theoretically) can break them. It is the State itself that is the greatest threat to our freedoms, and if you think that conservatives are worse in that respect than socialists then I suggest you read some history.

They are all as bad as each other - remember that no matter who you vote for the Government always wins. I'll take a small state libertarian over any of the statists any day.