There are ways to deal with rubbishy activities like PR, but as you say, the first job is preventing climate catastrophe, which surely means dealing with rubbishy uses of aluminum. So yes, you're making good sense.
Also here:
Doug Henwood wrote:
> I'm thinking there should be some
> progressivity in electricity bills, so that a poor family in a small
> apartment pays less per kwh than does John Edwards in his 28,000 ft2
> house. But as for Patrick's idea, I really don't know how to
> translate the concept into practice. Maybe someone else does.
No, you're doing fine. Keep this line of argument going, and add the merit goods issue so as to justify a massive increase in electricity consumption by poor people. (In SA, of roughly 17% of electricity used by households - most of the rest by big industry - only about 2% is the vast majority of black households, of which 30% remain off grid... so lots can be done with very little additional stress on the grid, were there political will.)
> Our first job is to prevent climate catastrophe. I can't imagine any
> configuration of the U.S. Congress over the next decade that would
> pass the kind of tax you're talking about.
>
Comrade, first establish what it is you want to get done - i.e., radical energy tariff progressivity to encourage more electricity consumption by the world's poor and less energy use (especially unnecessary transport involved in trade including shipping) by corporations and the wealthy - and then figure out what political alliances are necessary. Your Nation article leapfrogged the first step and suffered, as a result, I'd say.
Pardon me, because I spent a couple of hours tonight poring over Durban's water/electricity tariffs so we can make a submission on the budget tomorrow. The assholes running city hall have this year levied a flat 15% increase on every drop of water, for instance (with inflation around 4.5%). The impact of their earlier 100% real increase from 1997-2004 cut water consumption by poor people - 1/3 of bill-paying residents - by 33% (from 22kl/hh/month to 15), while the 1/3 richest people only dropped 10% (35 kl/hh/m to 32). That's a massively unfair price elasticity distinction, you'd have to agree. I bet a similar figure can be derived for energy.
SO, again, I apologise for this fetish on microeconomic processes in basic service provision, but damn, it's really really important in places like this, to get as much free water/electricity to as many people as possible, and to ramp up a very concave tariff curve to milk the rich so as to cross-subsidise the price. That's our little strategy for defeating energy and water apartheid here in SA (coming to you from grassroots activists who punish city hall by illegally reconnecting once they've been disconnected). So why not use this principle to fight global apartheid?