lol@morbo&chris

The Russians should not be underestimated. They have HUGE resources and many nations in Europe depend on it as well as many other countries. This is where their power lies. Any time soon oil/gas prices may go up again.

psychiatrists are not capable of judging someones mental health i.m.o.

lol

or because inflation in developing countries is often very high or at least higher as our currencies.
...but that is off topic.

"What you'd have is an NGO (Non-governmental organization) that implements the tax on 'nearly every product' on behalf of the member state.
  That is, the member state invites the NGO to implement the tax on their nation's behalf.  The member state would not be required to have the centralization necessary to control over its resource production.  All it would have to have is the level of centralization necessary to enforce fines on non-compliant businesses (those businesses which are caught withholding or misreporting tax income or those which don't charge the tax at all)."
The western worlds leaders would never allow an other organization to have this much power. The amount of power and money would soon corrupt any organization anyway. Next to that it is nearly impossible to calculate the energy cost of a product and leaves room for much speculation about it. Note how 2 products who are exactly the same could have very different energy costs. Every factory has his own production methods and production costs. As a lot of factories produce a great variety of products, its hard to calculate the energy cost.  Every product has its own history of shipment. Note how a products energy cost increases over time when it for instance needs to be stored in a cool area. Its insanely expensive to count every product energy's cost and it can only be remotely accurate.

It is far easier to count the barrels via an international organization composed of members of different countries.

I disagree!

Still, what do you have against my proposition xeno?

lol@simon

@xeno:
I agree with your second post except for the solution. Better to limit oil resources directly. It is far easier to control and will achieve its goal better. But if you choose a tax system to limit it, other taxes in Europe should go down first.

If you limit it indirectly there are a lot of problems in calculating the energy cost. You need to oversee the entire chain from start to costumer and that is very very difficult if not impossible. Another problem: Most renewable energy installations use conventional energy when they are build. Some to the extend that they are consuming more then they use. Not all of course but all care should be taken not to promote these. The producers of these not-so-renewable energy sources often have a lot of influence on leaders and institutions. A lot of money will be wasted then while it could have been used for good renewable energy sources.

@xeno:
The past has shown that it leaves room for a lot of corruption. Better go to the energy source directly then instead of doing it indirect.

Hey Gurney, how are you? Must have been ages. I became old in meanwhile so don't ask how I am.

@morbo:
thx pall, love you too!

I hit him but they took the wrong one

"we might as well live in Cuba"
at least you have cigars.

on a more serious note, this president is quit dangerous. He manages to get away with everything. This is again an example of how easily the public can be fooled.