A German uncle shares his perspective on Carbon

My uncle is visiting from Germany and we had a chance to discuss The Green Riders and our focus on sustainability. I mentioned some of the issues surrounding carbon emissions, including subsidies to the mining and other extractive industries. My uncle is a retired executive from a large multinational manufacturing firm and understands a lot about regulation, subsidies, etc. His attitude about charging for carbon reminded me how obvious it is for there to be subsidies for the clean renewable energy sources and no subsidies for the polluting energy sources. Europe has a price on carbon that has been in place for a number of years and my uncle's acceptance of that as normal struck me as an indication of how the European community is much further down the road towards getting carbon out of their waste stream. It's expensive to spew carbon so they are finding other ways of getting products manufactured, people transported, energy produced, etc.

My uncle again repeated his amazement at what a bad job our houses do at conserving energy. He is constantly amazed at how drafty our houses are. Lots of green job potential there!!