THE NAUGHTY MR. BLAIR

Article from the deep Green "Independent", 2 April 2006

Tony Blair personally frustrated measures to cut Britain's emissions of the pollution that causes global warming, despite repeatedly calling for action, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. The Prime Minister did not back proposals from his Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, that aimed to get the Government's strategy to fight climate change back on track. As a result, ministers had to admit last week that they would not meet a target, which was set in three election manifestos, for cutting pollution.

The revelation comes as new official statistics show that Britain's carbon dioxide emissions - the main cause of global warming - have risen for the third year in a row. This means that emissions have risen, by 2 per cent, instead of falling since Mr Blair came to power nine years ago.

Labour has promised in its manifestos since 1997 to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent, from their 1990 level, by 2010. With just four years to go, the latest rise means that emissions are down only 5.3 per cent since 1990.

Mr Blair told a climate change conference in New Zealand last week that failure to take action on global warming would be "absolutely disastrous". He added: "I don't want it on the conscience of me, or my generation, that we were told what this problem was and did nothing about it."

The Government's new programme, announced on Tuesday, makes little progress, though. Work began in a panic after ministers realised that their previous plans would probably reduce emissions by only 14 per cent by the target date. This new policy review, however, contains almost no new measures and, even by ministers' estimates, may only increase the reduction to 15 per cent. Downing Street sources privately concede that even this may be optimistic.

Mr Blair chaired the committee that conducted the review and failed to back a 58-point plan put forward by Mrs Beckett. The plan included a measure that aimed to enforce speed limits to save fuel. Privately the Prime Minister shows little interest in measures to cut pollution, preferring international talks, where he increasingly mirrors the position of President George Bush.







GLOBAL WARMING AND ANTI-AMERICANISM ARE THE TWIN CREEDS OF THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS

This week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was interviewed in prime time on the BBC. The subject was the threat of global warming, which, as Dr. Williams explained, is "a vast moral question." "Unless there is a real change in attitude, we have to contemplate these very unwelcome possibilities [of governmental coercion] if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions of people to die."

The archbishop offered no evidence to support this apocalyptic vision, but he gave his sermon an anti-American twist. "I don't think it's compatible with a Christian ethic to ignore climate change," he said. For a Christian, President Bush had been "very slow" to recognize the "profoundly immoral" consequences of our lifestyle. The president, he implied, was not merely selfish but a hypocrite, too.

Why was the BBC so eager to hear an Oxford-trained theologian pronounce on an essentially scientific issue? The environment now occupies the place in public discourse once occupied by theology: Where you stand determines your moral status. Consumers are polluters, and polluters are sinners. Our lifestyles are killing the poor. Global warming is a fundamentalist faith, and its adherents believe in justification by faith alone. The fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury may emit more greenhouse gases on the subject than a Boeing 747 is beside the point.

How does a discussion of climatology turn into an excuse for anti-Americanism? As it happens, the archbishop was in the United States at the time, but this is not why he singled out Americans for criticism. He did so because anti-Americanism, too, has become an article of faith - the faith of the liberal intellectual. Dr. Williams was merely doing what is expected of any member of his class.

One of the few people to challenge this consensus is the prime minister. This week, Tony Blair flew to Australia to castigate anti-Americanism. Mr. Blair is not a global warming skeptic. Yet he also knows that climate change, like Islamist terrorism, cannot "be resolved or even contemplated without [the United States]." He continued: "The strain of anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in."

This message went down well in Australia. Nobody in Europe was listening, though. The "madness" is too ubiquitous. But Mr. Blair is right. The greatest threat to our civilization is not global warming. It is not even Islamist terrorism. It is anti-Americanism. For if the West is divided against itself, it cannot stand.

More here. (Rambling introduction omitted)







SHRIEK! AUSTRALIA TO SUPPLY CHINA WITH URANIUM FOR NUCLEAR POWER

Federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane has confirmed that Australia will sign a safeguard agreement with China which will clear the way for the sale of uranium potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr Macfarlane is confident the agreement to be signed tomorrow governing Australian uranium exports to China will ensure its peaceful use. "In terms of the arrangement and what will be signed tomorrow, it is definitely a safeguard agreement," he said. "It is the same agreement that has been signed, as I say, with 36 other countries around the world."

Mr Macfarlane is in Perth to provide a resources briefing to visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who spent today touring key West Australian industrial and energy research facilities. Premier Wen flies to Canberra this afternoon and will meet the Prime Minister John Howard on Monday.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) says it remains fundamentally opposed to any deal to export uranium to China. ACF president Ian Lowe says such a move would further regional insecurity and increase nuclear risks. "No matter how strong and how valid the assurances that China or any other country gives us, once we export uranium it's outside of our control, so we're making the world a dirtier and more dangerous place by exporting uranium," he said. Professor Lowe is also not convinced by the argument that it would be environmentally better for power-hungry China to seek nuclear, rather than coal-fired, energy. "Nuclear might be better than coal but it's not nearly as good as renewables," he said. "Renewables are our real economic opportunity and the real environmental opportunity. In fact China's planning to get 15 per cent of its energy from renewables and only 6 per cent from nuclear."

Source







Solar-thermal power touted as energy solution

Australian scientists have developed a new way of producing electricity, which could provide all of Australia's electricity needs in 2020. It has been developed by mixing solar energy, heat and natural gas.

In the search to find a cleaner, more efficient form of power, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have developed what is called solar-thermal energy. Two hundred mirrors track the sun, and focus the sun's rays towards a tower. The heat can reach temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius, producing 500 kilowatts of power. This is then mixed with natural gas and water to produce a renewable energy.

Wes Stein from the CSIRO says the new development could provide for Australia's future energy needs. "It would only require about 50 kilometres by 50 kilometres in the centre of Australia somewhere to provide all of Australia's electricity needs in 2020," he said. "That's not very much of Australia."

Source

***************************************

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.

*****************************************