If Arnie has got just half of a political brain, this idea will die a death
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate advisers issued ambitious recommendations Thursday for reducing gases linked to global warming, including a new fee on gasoline and diesel. The draft proposals fill in the blanks of an executive order Schwarzenegger issued in June, giving California the most aggressive goals in the world for fighting global warming. He commanded the state to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The state Climate Action Team's proposals reflect the growing commitment of California's leaders to control greenhouse gases despite opposition within the federal government to mandatory limits on the heat-trapping pollutants. In a speech in June, Schwarzenegger declared: "I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat. And we know the time for action is now."
The draft plan will give ideas to the Legislature and governor for meeting the targets, said Michael Wintemute, spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency. "What it does (is) it shows in detail that the targets can be met." Besides offering ideas for cutting emissions - ranging from planting trees to finding alternative refrigerants - the plan urges the governor and lawmakers to:
* Establish a "public goods charge" on petroleum products, which probably would appear at the pump. The fee is modeled after a charge on utility bills introduced in 1998 in which consumers pay into a fund for alternative energy research and efficiency programs. A fee on petroleum to cut climate-changing emissions would be a first in the nation.....
Michael Hanemann, an environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who contributed to the report, said taxing petroleum is a bold idea, but not new. "The notion that using transportation fuels creates what are considered harmful effects is well-established in economics," Hanemann said. "So is the notion of introducing that into the cost of gasoline." However, he said he knows of no such fees or taxes in any other states. The climate team did not say how much the fee should be, but noted that a charge of 2.57 cents per gallon would be comparable to the existing public-goods charge on electricity....
Members knew it was sensitive. One member, Energy Commissioner James Boyd, spoke passionately of the need for a petroleum surcharge during a climate-change conference in September. When asked for details, he said, "I have to be careful how I talk about it. The campaign will begin against it before it's proposed."
More here
Kyoto very close to being buried, Australian representative says
The Kyoto Protocol was "almost buried" and Australia's decision not to ratify it had been vindicated, said Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who is in Montreal observing the latest round of international negotiations to tackle greenhouse gases and climate change. Speaking at the United Nations summit on climate change, he said other countries had realised that Australia and the US were right not to ratify the protocol, and he predicted the system for setting targets and timetables for greenhouse gas reductions could be scrapped after 2012, when most industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their emissions. "A number of [countries] are saying 'Look, we made a mistake. We don't think that it's worth opening up a new negotiation about a future commitment when the commitments we have today are looking so unreasonable'," Senator Campbell said. "Trying to squeeze everyone into the Kyoto style approach is simply not going to work."
However, his comments were not supported by statements made by other parties to the international agreement and have been described by environmental groups at the Montreal negotiations as mischievous and nothing more than political spin.
Senator Campbell said that last year he had met a number of ministers from other countries who had told him: "Australia made the right decision. This thing is not going to work." He said that sentiment had become "like a chorus", at the Montreal meeting. "You have a number of countries inside the Kyoto Protocol who were resisting doing even what's required under the protocol which is to have a new negotiation." He predicted that those countries would nevertheless begin discussing what would happen beyond 2012, because they were obliged to do so under the Kyoto Protocol. "I think it shows that this style of agreement is very close to being buried. That's not a bad thing. It shows that there's a recognition that we need more flexibility; we need to recognise national circumstances."
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, who is also at the talks, said Senator Campbell's comments were "entirely inaccurate". "Wow. He is spinning it," Mr Henry said. "I think that he is just mischievously tipping a bucket over future negotiations," he said, adding that the Montreal meeting had already adopted the rules for the implementation of the protocol and was devising a global carbon trading mechanism. "Country after country [is] strongly supportive of the protocol, and they are urging that a Kyoto plus be developed for after 2012 to strengthen it."
Australia has agreed to take part in the next phase of talks on climate change - although not discussions that would lead to further targets and timetables for reductions in emission - diverging from the stance of the US, which has indicated it does not believe that it should even begin negotiations.
Source
Warm Homes Causing Arctic Ice Melt, Eskimo Charges
An Arctic Inuit representative said the lower 48 states have a mild climate, and therefore Americans should have no problem turning down their thermostats in the winter to stop Arctic ice from melting. "I don't know what [Americans are] doing to create all of this [greenhouse] gas emissions," said Meeka Mike of the Inuit Tapirit Kanatami, the national organization representing the Inuit peoples of Canada at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal. "I know it's [emissions] from cars. I know it's fuel. But you (Americans) live in a very hot climate. You don't need as much heating like we do," Mike said when Cybercast News Service asked what she would like average Americans to do to curtail the alleged "global warming" that some people link to melting Arctic ice.
Mike is part of a group that filed a "global warming" legal petition against the United States. At this week's climate change conference, she took part in a panel discussion called "The Right to Be Cold: Inuit Defend Their Human Rights in the Face of Climate Change." The Canadian-based Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) has petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, demanding that the U.S. limit its greenhouse gas emissions or "Inuit hunting culture will be destroyed in the next 100 years" because of rising temperatures.
Even though Mike believes her way of life is being threatened by U.S. lifestyles and government policies, she said she wants Americans to act voluntarily to correct the problem. "I can't control you. It doesn't work that way, [it's] not in the spirit of the people and the earth," she said.
This is not the first time Americans have been told to turn down the heat in their homes. In a televised address during the energy crisis in 1979, then President Jimmy Carter implored Americans to turn down their thermostats and wear sweaters in order to conserve fuel.
Most of the Inuit peoples of the Arctic no longer live in Igloos, but rather in homes with running water and electricity. Some Arctic residents complain that their snowmobiles are more prone to break through Arctic ice, which is thinner, they say, because of human-caused "global warming." "If people don't start lobbying their political leaders or [start] taking action" it will be too late, Mike said, referring to the international battle to restrict greenhouse gases through agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. .
'A right to be warm'
The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, dismissed the notion that Americans are melting Arctic ice by enjoying overly warm homes. "Inuit representatives have asserted their right to be cold at the U.N. conference. They called it a human right. If so, there's a right to be warm, too. Americans owe no one an apology for exercising it," said David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center.
The group takes a skeptical view of the manmade catastrophic climate change. "Given that much of the U.S. is currently experiencing record cold temperatures which are believed to be responsible for at least one man's death, I find [Mike's] comments extremely ill-timed and insensitive," Ridenour said....
More here
MORE ON PATRICK MOORE
A founding member of Greenpeace, who left the organization because he viewed it as too radical, praised the United States for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. "At least the [United] States is honest. [The U.S.] said, 'No we are not going to sign that thing (Kyoto) because we can't do that,'" said Patrick Moore, who is attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal. Moore noted that many of the industrialized nations that ratified the treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions are now failing to comply with those emission limits. Moore, who currently heads the Canadian-based environmental advocacy group Greenspirit Strategies helped found both Greenpeace in 1971 and Greenpeace International in 1979.
"Canada signed [Kyoto] and said, 'Oh yeah, we can do that,' and then it merrily goes on its way to increase CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions by even more than the U.S.," Moore told Cybercast News Service. Other industrialized nations -- including Japan and at least 11 of the 15 European Union nations that ratified Kyoto -- are struggling to meet their emission targets.
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, many organizations attending the Climate Change Conference have declared the Kyoto Protocol "dead" because of the signatories' lack of compliance. The treaty establishes a 2012 goal of having top industrialized nations cut their industrial emissions 5.2 percent below the level that was produced in 1990. "I think this whole Kyoto process is a colossal waste of time and money," said Moore, who rejects alarmist predictions of human-caused 'global warming."
The U.N.'s 11th Annual Climate Change Conference in Montreal failed to impress Moore, who is there to promote nuclear energy. "There is nothing concrete going on here. There is nothing good happening here as far as I can see. [The participants at the U.N. conference are] just spending a whole pile of money and auguring and talking," he added. Moore also slammed the movement he helped found, accusing today's environmental groups of being co-opted by the political Left. "The Left figures it owns the environmental movement and that has corrupted the movement greatly," Moore said. "The [left-wing] influence has brought great dysfunction into the environmental movement. [It's turned it into] an elitist movement."
Moore said he decided to leave Greenpeace in 1986 after the group became too radical and he could "no longer agree with the policies that were being espoused." The final straw, according to Moore, came when he failed to persuade Greenpeace to abandon its campaign to ban chlorine worldwide. "I pointed out that chlorine was the main element used in our medicine and adding it to drinking water was the biggest advance in public health in human history," Moore said. "[My argument] just fell on deaf ears. [Greenpeace] didn't care about any of that because a global chlorine ban was a good campaign [for them]."
More here
***************************************
Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment