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For me audit institutions are here to provide to citizens a measurement of the effective policies in place vs what politicians are saying they're doing. For ex
by guerby 5y ago
For me audit institutions are here to provide to citizens a measurement of the effective policies in place vs what politicians are saying they're doing.
For example page 10 of the report shows that environment taxes have decreased in the past few years (as a share of all taxes) and labour taxes have increased, which is probably not what we want.
- goatsneez 5y agoI would concede your logic is fine, however, and for a sake of discussion as well, one cannot view such "data" outside of the broader context of how nation-states interact and compete for power (ie. geopolitics). Sure, audit does serve the said function and it is valuable effort, however, understanding the data does have several levels of context -(some of them including costs other than environmental). Is it necessary or valuable to consider things in this broader context? Let me know what you think, but I would submit that ignoring it is to remove oneself from reality of the issue and the position in which those making/drafting policies and decisions (strategic - on energy, security, etc) are. In analogy, people of Germany support "green ideas" but in another news they people drive to Poland to tank their car to save 30 eur when the prices are too high. I hope the point is not lost in this analogy.
- guerby 5y agoYes energy is of course the poster child of a geopolitical subject :). I don't think ECA mission includes geopolitics reviews, but that doesn't mean ECA reports are useless to me. For example the EUR/MWh and EUR/tCO2 figures comparing various sectors tax are a nice way to get through the discourses and to the facts.