Proposal

position: As a society, we need to anticipate and accelerate change

To reduce energy demands and create good jobs through conservation and efficiency measures, so that an energy-efficient economy? exists before a climate crisis, is now urgent.

• Develop sustainable trades within this economy
• Develop renewable and alternative energy sources to phase out fossil fuel and nuclear power within fifty years.
• Focus on future energy and soft energy technologies.

argument against: energy conservation is the base creativity of life, it simply can't be planned at all Such programs may do more harm than good. Only narrow measures to reflect regret? in prices can work, as there is no generality to the problem of conservation. It requires many small and localized changes, and the larger programs simply result in wasted overall energy - which unlike potential energy, is calculable?. argument against: we can't accelerate the market To avoid a crisis requires expending energy to change the infrastructural capital (tools, devices) and instructional capital (training, habit?s). Since food production and incomes by which most buy food and shelter depend on fossil fuels, and since their use must be limited and at least become expensive, the market will take care of the problem. Canada is far behind. In Europe as of 2006-03, over 3 million households were using solar water heater?s. In Canada that is less than 1% as many but rising fast. argument for: governments often accelerate price changes It's government's job to accelerate and alter pricing. 1. Promote investments in energy conservation and the more efficient use of energy. We need to iron out the market imperfections which have impeded this, and spread the information which markets need to function properly, about the profitable opportunities in these fields. 2. Impose high and rising taxes on fossil fuels. Imagine a family whose house is soon to be condemnned, and to make matters worse, this family survives on a home based business. If the family is homeless they have no way to make money. - ergo they must save now, and buy a better house before their old one fails. It is much better for society if government forces society to "prepay" and "save" for the coming energy crunch before actual energy prices shoot to high. Bonus: If we can raise the price of fossil fuels through taxes we can reduce other taxes to compensate. 3. Require better urban planning: public transit?, anti-sprawl etc., are part of this. See eco-city, ICLEI, CEG and ECG.

Proposal

Response to open question criticism:

This is not an open question. This 'question' is an experiment. Please give it special rules and do not force the question to be open.

The idea is to take some text produced by another e-democracy system (the I/P/A + wiki model) and see if we can take it further. A great thing about I/P/A + wiki is that it does a great job of mapping out the proposals/positions and the arguments for and against, allowing a 'judge' to make a really good decision. The problem is that it needs a 'judge', whereas Vilfredo has a really good democratic alternative to having a single human judge.

So this question is a quick experiment to see if the two systems can work together. If they can, then it will be a very powerful way of mapping out and deciding on policy positions. So please join me in the experiment. If it doesn't work, we haven't lost much.