The Scientific Alliance is a non-profit membership-based organisation bringing together both scientists and non-scientists committed to rational discussion and debate on the challenges facing the environment today.

To read about our current campaigns, please use the navigation to the left. This will lead you to our campaign information, articles, news, press releases and comments areas.

TO SUBSIDISE OR NOT? Launching a product or a service which is not initially economically viable is something which businesses do all the time. In some cases, such as the now-ubiquitous Amazon, sales ramped up rapidly but it was many years before the company began to turn a profit. The business model was new and no-one really knew how long this would take, but investors had enough confidence (or courage) to back it until that point. For more conventional new products, market projections are made, prices are set and there is an expectation that all the development, regulatory and capital costs necessary for the launch will be paid back in a relatively short time before the real profits begin to roll in. If not, the product will be withdrawn. This is the way that business works. Bets are made, and some are lost, but if the ones which work bring in enough money, the business is successful. Governments are different. They rarely make a 'profit' and their income is from a captive ma... Read More >>