It would be, if that would be the entirety of the road tax. You can be sure that a mileage tax would be boosted by some fixed rate charge, where the total tax grab would not be significantly less for low mileage drivers.
Isnât fuel duty on fossil fuels effectively pay per mile, with the added bonus of an efficiency element?
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That is true. However, it would be more egalitarian to factor in weight & size via a variable distance charge which would clearly be less for light, small & efficient vehicles but would not penalise a classic car enthusiast or a one-trip-a-week-to the-market-in the-the big-town driver who do not clock up many miles in a vehicle that might be very poor in terms of emissions.
Knowing governments as we do you are probably right, but not in my utopia 
You are totally correct about the CO2 generated by rare earth extraction & transportation from distant geographies, and your point on exploitative labour; the âGreenâ lobby fail to recognise or even consider this. The end of life disposal embodied energy for EVs is also ignored. Iâve read that the true CO2 generation from âcradle to graveâ of EVs is no better, or is even worse, than that of a well designed, manufactured & maintained ICE vehicle.
The environmental debate is one that interests me, having undertaken university postgraduate studies in renewable energies over a decade ago. What is apparent is that the claims on the effect of CO2 and even on climate are not based on any true scientific facts. You only need to look at climate and CO2 atmospheric concentrations over a meaningful time series, say 600 million years, not the 250 years that is main period of focus. Then there is the flipping of the climate scare predictions from the early 1950s until now. It is very clear that motivations and influences have been at play here for some decades. From an engineering standpoint, I would argue that it would have been much better to have invested in R&D to further improve ICE efficiency and real emissions (Nitrous oxides, Sulphur dioxide etc).
Moving transport energy needs onto the electrical grid is simply not achievable, from both perspectives of the grid infrastructure and energy generation. Renewable energy capture should continue to be carefully pursued, subject to consideration of their opportunity costs and e.g. visual impacts; but the pursuit of a 100% renewable energy policy is simply unachievable and wasteful of sources. I understand that I am deviating a little here off the thread subject.
Donât worry about âdeviationâ - or âthread driftâ - I term it âdinner party conversationâ!!
You are so right about the con of ârenewablesâ - as far as Iâm concerned itâs a case of âfollow the moneyâ. The climate change papers from that lobby which are always quoted as being supported by more than 100 scientists included few climate scientists - some of them were nothing to do with climate science. CO2 is essential for mankind - for animal life - and for food production. Going back over the millennia high concentrations of CO2 led, I understand - to increased greening of the planet in the forms of vegetation, trees etc - all of which produced food and habitation for animals, and increased oxygen supply. The mere idea that 250 years of âsince records beganâ can even be considered representative is a joke.
The âclimate doom and disasterâ is a con - but thereâs too much money to be made from the con, and too many who have - or wanted - to challenge this con have found theyâve lost their funding at universities, or their professional lives have been put on hold.
Follow the money - itâs the biggest transfer of money from people who have very little - to those rich âelitesâ - the 1 per cent - who are on the gravy train.
And the environmental impact on human lives in producing the rare earth metals are totally ignored - and it is obscene that the human cost in child slave labour is âignoredâ - never mentioned - by those who should know better - but the cult of net zero is the new religion and not to be questioned.
There, fixed that for you.
Red herring. Everyone knows that CO2 level have been higher in the past but that will have been on a planet this was very different from the one that now supports the human race.
It is the sudden speed of change that is the current problem (the 250 years you mention).
But why? Why would one not want to get away from the reliance on single use fossil fuels, especially when their supply is controlled by greedy corporations?
I disagree. Humans are very good at engineering when they are determined. Look at the vast amount of bizarre infrastructure that has been perfected (e.g. long pipelines, fracking) & installed in hostile environments (e.g. drilling rigs out at sea) in order to extract & transport coal, oil & gas.
Such has been said of many things that then turned out to be achievable. The sun delivers a vast amount of energy to our planet, we just have to harness it properly.
Thereâs no need to exploit a finite resource from increasingly difficult places in order to fulfil pour energy needs.
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Again, I fixed that for you.
Indeed; follow the vast sums of money that are paid to the fossil fuel industry. That gravy train is very long.
Iâve said it before - have you checked out how fossil fuels have blighted so many lives? Have you ever seen the effect of an oil spill at sea?
It isnât ignored, else we wouldnât all know about it. I in no way condone it but in overall terms the amount of rare earth mining carried out by exploited children is miniscule. Such labour could never supply the amount of rare earth metals that the current battery industry requires (you probably have a 'phone with such things in), let alone in the future.
P.S. For the avoidance of doubt, they are not actually rare, but are hard to extract.
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'âRare earth metalsâ is the term used, isnât it ? So stop nit-picking; and the difficulty in extracting - using what labour ? Given very, very little publicity.
Correct, but a lot of online commentators try to declare that they are a rare resource, but they are not.
Sorry, facts matter.
âŚis due to them being in compounds (see article).
No one is denying that there are issues with the labour used for extraction in some parts of the world, but it is clearly known about/publicised.
Again, see article, but do remember that the employment practices of many industries that we rely on are also questionable (such as who has assembled your smart 'phone for poor wages & lack of human rights).
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Along with the clothes we wear, thereâs a lot of exploitation out there.
Iâm aware of the arguments put forward by the climate alarmists. Dig deeper and you will find that much of this is not supported by scientific facts. With regards to the time frames of hundreds of millions of years and 250 years, why would CO2 generated during the existence of human life create any differences to that of other mammals that have existed over at least hundreds of millions of years? Atmospheric CO2 has been 4, 6, 10 times more than it is today, and life on earth has flourished. There are periods even in the last 2.000 years when there were centuries of colder and warmer climate over global mean temperatures when CO2 concentrations were constant at 280ppm, until around 1760, when CO2 concentration started to rise. How can this be explained?
Renewable energies cannot and will not ever replace fossil fuels, unless the worldâs population is decimated. The sun can provide abundant energy, but the main issues are (a) its capture, transmission and distribution to where it is needed, (b) the energy density of production and storage is too low, (c) the opportunity cost of land and water areas, and (d) the unsurmountable challenge of generation intermittency.
A renewal energy utopia would mean virtual paralysis of commercial manufacture & transport; human life would be forced to greatly curtail travel (including work commuting), buying new clothes, replacing everyday items etc. Nuclear energy holds the only hope, but that is an anathema to the green lobby.
There are too many things to comment on here, but I donât now have time to address them.
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I think NHS is about the only final salary scheme left.
OHâs teacherâs pension is split between final salary and career average.
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I think MPs pensions are final salary, plus local authority schemes, although they may have tweaked the definition of final salary.
Actually I should have said âdefined benefitâ, not âfinal salaryâ.
But DB schemes are as rare as hensâ teeth these days - itâs all defined contribution/money purchase.
The Teacherâs Pension is a DB scheme using a career average or final salary model depending on when the teacher started, because my OH paused her career when we moved to France she has a mix of the two. Have to say her pension benefits are really good and due to starting as a teacher before the pension scheme changed in 2015 sheâs able to take her pension at 60 rather than 67.
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Oh, now Iâm jealous :).
Itâs really rather pleasant 
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Returning to the original subject if I may, I reckon that the real reason that ordinary people have to pay a little bit more is basically because the non-ordinary people, (the 1%), donât wish to pay more, and at the end of the day they are the people who write the rules which is why taxes on Capital Gains and Dividend income are lower than those on wages..
However, sometimes the lack of understanding by the rule makers of exactly how those rules affect the little guy is quite surprising due to them being preoccupied with how those rules will benefit themselves.
For example, my son benefits from a company car that he can use for personal purposes. For a number of years he was using a very economical Skoda estate, but as it was a diesel, he was heavily penalised on his income tax coding for the privilege. However, all good things come to an end, and now his boss has given him a Hyundai plug-in hybrid, 4 wheel drive, semi SUV. Now my son has nowhere to plug it in (no driveway or garage) so it never gets plugged in. The fuel consumption (petrol) is nowhere near as good as the Skoda was, and of course becomes even worse when the car is put into self-charging mode. The boss pays for the fuel so my son just drives it on the petrol engine while hauling the battery and electric motors around as unused weight, and sometimes puts it into self charging mode to stop the nuisance reminders that the battery is low. The excess fuel consumption over that which the Skoda used is something my son views as the Bossâs problem rather than his own. The net result of all this is that because the personal use company car is now a hybrid, my sonâs tax code has been changed so that he is now ÂŁ100 per month better off.
So all in all, more fossil fuel is being used than previously by this âeco-friendlyâ car, and my son is better off because of it. Itâs a funny old world sometimes.
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Iâm often left scratching my head as to where things are going wrong, tax receipts are at a record high yet public services are in a mess and the country has a large debt. How can this be fixed?
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