Under capitalism you have speculatively driven commodity price rises – as we’ve seen over the last year. In other words, price rises have not been linked to actual scarcity but rather perceived future scarcity. Or to put it bluntly, shameless profiteering…

Under socialism costs can be determed by counting labour in terms of hours and intensity, raw materials consumed in the production process, etc. Boom and bust can be avoided – unnatural economic crises would not occur because the economy would be planned in a democratic fashion.

Now imagine if we had to pay for more things ourselve – like healthcare (the propaganda in the US is that the NHS is “socialised medicine” which sounds a bit like socialist medicine, whatever that might be). So taxes could be cut – but there would be an illusion that we’d be better off. Are the American people happy with their free market healthcare system? Not those millions going without healthcare…

Incidentally, I’m not sure what you mean by communism. Do you mean it like in the technical sense – a classless stateless society existing far in the future, perhaps never – or as in one party state, planning by bureaucrats, as typified by the USSR? I certainly don’t want a system of planning by bureaucrats here in England, I’d like to see workplace democracy – which would unlock tacit knowledge and increase efficiency.

Remember, tyhe whole point anout HMIT is not to raise money for the government but to keep an otherwise unemployable miscreants off the street, I know, i was one.

So, how does the socialist state fund the state provision of everything the citizen needs if it’s not through nationalisation and extreme taxation? For the record, I don’t have a problem with nationalisation of essential industries but I don’t want to see the communist system of nationalisation which is where it will end up. The tax burden is much higher now than it’s been for a long time but the perception is often different because of tax credits and other benefits.

I take your point about the innovations in nuclear technology – but I still think it’d help an awful lot if all buildings were equiped with solar panels and were better insulated.

As for your definition of socialism, it’s not one myself or any of my comrades would recognise. Socialism is the extension of democracy into the economy – which is why parties around the world set up to represent the interests of working people have always called themselves socialist.

Recall that New Labour – which has governed for the last decade – was all about rejecting Labour’s socialist heritage.

Clause 4, famously scrapped by Blair because it commited the party to socialism entailed “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”.

Socialism is about collecting as much tax as possible from people to pay for the state provision of everything the populace needs. The ultimate aim is to have everyone working for nothing and the state provides everything – socialism is a stepping stone to communism. Tax Credits is a perfect example of that ethos – the British government took away pretty much every personal tax allowance there was and then set up a system to give it back. The tax burden increased and the state provided to make up the shortfall. I’m not saying that social security is wrong but it’s gone beyond simply helping those in need.

Nuclear power is cleaner than fossil fuels, cheaper to produce and in some respects is safer than traditional coal plants. If something goes really wrong with a nuclear plant then it’s a major disaster but coal plants have been pumping out fumes for decades and that has associated health risks – there’s a coal power station near me and the instances of cancer, asthma and other lung diseases are abnormally high. It’s never been proven to be the power station but people old enough to remember it say that it coincides with the power station being built. Nuclear waste can be disposed of very safely now by turning it into a type of inert glass. It’s an expensive process but would be cheaper if it was used more. Renewable energy is expensive, inefficient and can’t support our energy needs.

Socialism has nothing to do with high taxes on working class people – it’s high taxes on corporate profits that would be described as socialist. Federal Europe acts in the interests of big business, New Labour cuts corporate taxes and makes workers pay more tax…

My worry about nuclear power, by the way is that we end up with another dependency. I wouldn’t mind the nuclear option if it was being used in order to keep us going while a shift to renewables is taking place, but I fear the aim will be to provide more corporate welfare at the expense of working people.

Remamber, Nuclear Winter, Acid Rain, meteorite strikes, russian invasion, aids et al.

I think they are just variants of JUdgment day and using your world view, just encourage us to fuck like bunnies and buy presents for our girl.

But because most things are cheap, THEY need to get us to buy expensive things like fair trade coffee and eco friendly crap lke that

We also get so called ‘confirmation bias’ where by once you are convinced of your case, you only see evidence that supports you. The tempting narrative of brave heroes opposing global warming against evil (American) capitalists destroying the world for profit makes it easy for people to dismiss evidence against the MMGW theory as denial.

There is no denial in science, and there should be no sides. All evidence should be weighed up and looked at sceptically, but this issue has become so politicised it distorts that. And of course politicians are happy to have a morally justifiable tax rise. “Its for your own good, its not about making money I am saving the world!”.

Charlie is right though, regardless of the exact extent of man’s influence on the climate, oil and gas are running down, are becoming more expensive and we are reliant on the Middle East and Russia, hardly stable environments. There are plenty of good reasons for investing in local renewable (or coal and nuclear for now) energy resources whether you believe in MMGW or not.

And if the predicted catastrophes occur despite reduced carbon emissions, or if China for example puts so much in our efforts make no difference, we should be looking at how to cope, as well as how to prevent climate change. And the answer is probably not an above inflation rise on petrol duty.

On the issue of climate change as a whole, I’ve always thought it an irrelevant question to what degree industrial development has impacted environmental stability – the issue is surely what are we going to do when the fossil fuels are too expensive too buy or too scarce to be productively extracted from the ground.