7 Deadly Sins, but wait there’s more! 7 new Sins!

The NZ Herald had an interesting front page story this morning. The Headling went 14 Deadly Sins – we haven’t a prayer. The interesting thing was that when I went to link it for you, I couldn’t find it on their digital section. I thought they were hiding and decided it shouldn’t be on their net page in case they had too many complaints or perhaps a lightning bolt or some other form of devine pestilence. The interesting thing was that they did have a story about catholic priests who steal other people’s sermons off the Internet.

Anyway, did you know that The 7 Deadly Sins as we know them were drawn up by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. I guess that gives Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti who is a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI the right to come up with 7 more Deadly Sins. I wonder if they will be going into the next bible version. His 7 additional Deadly Sins are:

• Genetic modification
• Carrying out experiments on humans
• Polluting the environment
• Causing social injustice
• Causing poverty
• Becoming obscenely wealthy
• Taking Drugs

Now I don’t want to be irreverent here, but you have to wonder about this. I don’t know if he made the list exactly like this, or whether it has been abbreviated by the media, but here are some thoughts:

GM. We have been doing this for years. At what point is it a bad thing. For example we have been growing wilt resistant trees for many years and a very large percentage of our crops have minor genetic modifications. I suspect that the survival of some parts of the world will depend on GM.

Experiments on humans. If you are talking Hitler style, then I am in total agreement, but if you are talking about lifesaving drugs, body implants and even my contact lenses after they have tried everything else, hey its improved my standard of living.

Polluting the environment. Well yes, I don’t have a problem with that, but where do you draw the line. Will you suffer “eternal death” because you tossed a cigarette butt out of your window? Don’t get me wrong I hate it when people throw things out of their car windows and I’m forever picking up other people’s McDonalds wrappers from my front lawn, but who decides where you draw the line?

Causing social injustice. Again no problem in principle, but does the Vatican draw the line for us?

Causing poverty. Who causes poverty? Are the droughts in Africa man made? Do I cause poverty if I unknowingly buy cheap manufactured product where the workers are underpaid and poorly treated? If I don’t donate to charities for the poor, am I causing their environment?

Becoming obscenely wealthy. I’ll bet Bill Gates is pleased that he is no longer the wealthiest man on the planet! At what line are the wealthy obscenely wealthy. Now hang on, what about the Vatican, what could they do to help the situation with their riches?

Taking Drugs. I’m not even going to get into that one. Let’s start with the holy wine, isn’t alcohol a mind altering substance that the Vatican not only condones but in certain situations requires. Don’t they have ‘holy vineyards’?

So the final point? After all this sinning, there is always absolution. All you need to do is go to confession, confess your sins and beg forgiveness before you die and you will be able to happily go on your way.

Amen.

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

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Carbon Tax on petrol, yet another great idea?

The New Zealand Government has once again raised the prospect of a Carbon Tax on Petrol, rated as 7 cents in the litre. The concept I gues is based on a user pays scenario, so the more you drive, the more carbon you burn. Given that in most parts of New Zealand our public transport systems are pretty substandard, it looks like most of us will pay the price.

They have talked for a long time about measuring exhaust emissions and setting levels below which you can’t pass your Warrant of Fitness tests, but that still hasn’t come in. Of course that doesn’t generate significant revenue and the NZ Government has just announced a significant budget deficit, not that these 2 things are in any way related. I’ve also noticed that many of the ‘greenies’ drive diesel cars that blow black smoke and are often covered with soot, as are many of the buses I follow on the motorways. I suspect that the black soot on the bus I saw recently covering an advertisement on the back of a bus which said “we are drivers too” is a carbon waste product.

Currently, according to Caltex NZ, 41.6% of the price we pay for petrol in NZ is tax, so why not just round it up to an even 50%? The story was good though and I was impressed with Caltex’s excellent suggestions on how to use less fuel, some of them are very good. I suspect though that most people will continue their normal lifestyle. It’s like the old story of putting a frog in a pot of warm water and bringing it to boil slowly. We still love our big cars and we want to enjoy the great outdoors which is why many of us love in New Zealand.

The thing that amazes me is that we are still so slow with introducing alternative fuel engines. Toyota and Honda have done very well with Hybrid engines and they can’t seem to get enough to meet demand. Maybe the government should do something to encourage these vehicles and lower the import taxes on them. It’s yet another example of why the things that are good for you cost so much more. Give businesses in the cities an incetive to buy Smart Cars, but of course we have a problem with renewable energy as well, especially after a long dry summer. But wait, what about solar power? This is another tangent, but I read a couple of years ago about people in the USA getting major rebates for installing solar energy in their homes, plus the ability to sell their surplus power into the grid. We have certainly had more than enough sun this year, well actually I wouldn’t mind if it lasted all year round, but the point is we aren’t harnessing it and we aren’t offering people an incentive to help with the cost of making it happen.

So, we continue to encourage the use of fossil fuels (yes I know we are starting to include small amounts of biofuel into the mix, but all that will do at this stage is allow the oil to last a little longer. We know oil is a finite resource and once we have run out and the Middle East has caved in, what then? My prediction based on current consumption is that fuel will become incredibally scarce, travel and tourism will become incredibly expensive and this could have a disastrous effect on economies like ours.

So lets see what happens. Petrol prices go up because of oil scarcity, whether through resource depletion or through wars and terrorism. Oil prices also go up because of carbon taxes as oil companies have to buy carbon credits to meet their obligations. Taxes go up because they are based on a percentage of the price, whether through excise, GST, carbon, road user and others. The cost of living goes up because this impacts on everything we do, all goods and services involve transport. Domestic tourism and entertainment will suffer as people decide it costs to much to go anywhere. We all become a nation of obese couch potatoes because it’s cheaper to sit at home to watch sport or cable TV instead of going out and getting some exercise.

One day it will be too prohibitive to go anywhere except for special occassions and we will we end up living virtual lives, never leaving our homes at all.

Actually I wouldn’t mind the carbon tax if it was used on R & D for alteratives, for incentives for people to develop and commercialise alternative fuels and engines to run on them. The whole concept of carbon taxes seems to be punitive instead of constructive. What happened to Kiwi innovation? We’re still patting ourselves on the backs for inventing number 8 fencing wire, Hamilton jets and bungee jumping. Let’s pay people for coming up with new renewable energy resources instead of punishing people for using the only resources they have available to them, there’s a novel idea? There might even be international carbon credits in it.