EUROPE MOOTS GREEN PROTECTIONISM TO OFFSET KYOTO COSTS

No mention of the economic and moral imbecility of putting up barriers against the products of poor countries. And if barriers are put up against American products, the market for French wines and German cars could very easily be sent into a tailspin

Commission advisors are considering slapping a tax on imported goods from countries which do not impose a CO2 cap on their industry, according to a draft paper seen by European Voice (5-11 October). The paper will be presented to a top group of industrialists, member-state and civil- society experts who help the Commission shape policies in the field of environment and energy - the high-level group on competitiveness, energy and the environment. The idea, known in academic circles as a "border tax adjustment", is understood to have emerged from expert discussions on long-term energy scenarios at a September meeting of the competitiveness sub-group. According to the Voice, cement is cited in the paper as "a good product to trial this approach".

The ETS has attracted criticism from power-intensive industries including cement, metals and heavy chemicals for driving electricity prices up. Industrialists argue that the scheme is putting EU companies at a disadvantage compared with global competitors, who do not have equivalent constraint. One of the objectives of the high-level group is to find a solution to the increase in power-prices that come with carbon trading in the EU.

Cembureau President Paul Vanfrachem welcomes the idea, saying that the tax would help offset the competitive disadvantage that the ETS forces on the European cement industry. "What we are seeing today is [cement] imports increasing a lot, especially imports from China where there is no carbon constraint," says Vanfrachem. He believes that "a worldwide effort" on cutting CO2 would be fairer to European businesses. But before such a system is in place, he thinks Europeans "have to take some measures to try to find fair conditions for the competitiveness of the industry". "On a temporary basis, and as long as we do not have a worldwide [carbon-trading scheme in place], we are in favour of these kind of taxes," says Vanfrachem.

Although supported by the cement sector, the idea is generally not welcomed by EU businesses. Climate-change expert Daniel Cloquet at UNICE, the European employers' association, expressed the "highest reserves" over the idea, saying that it holds the potential to launch "a commercial war" with the US or China, which do not have cap-and-trade systems.

John Hontelez, secretary-general of the European Environment Bureau, a federation of 143 environmental organisations, says that he supports the idea of a border tax adjustment. "The Commission has picked this up and found it interesting enough to include it in discussions" in the High-level group, he says. But not everyone at the Commission is supportive. One senior source, who preferred not to be named, said it would not be a good idea "politically".

According to Cembureau, the way forward would be to launch specific emissions- trading schemes at a global level for each industrial sector, instead of following the European model where all industries are treated under the same scheme. To support this argument, Vanfrachem points to "large discrepancies in terms of the capabilities of different industries to afford" CO2 costs. He cites aviation as a sector which can afford "much higher [CO2 prices] than we could ever afford". "There is no point having them in the same scheme".

But here too the idea runs into opposition from the Commission which believes the European system should form "a nucleus" that other countries could join at a later stage. "Let's keep it as one single system," the source said.

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THAT WICKED, DANGEROUS NANOTECHNOLOGY!

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, have created a liquid that stops bleeding in any tissue in a matter of seconds. It is a discovery that they claim has the potential to revolutionise surgery and emergency medicine and could even make it easier to reattach severed limbs. Rutledge Ellis-Behnke and colleagues worked from the nanoscale, using individual amino acids to create a self-assembling peptide. It looks exactly like water but when applied directly onto injured tissue it halts bleeding. This is the first time nanotechnology has been used to control bleeding, claims Rutledge.

The remarkable discovery was made by accident during an experiment in which the liquid was used to stimulate nerve repair in the brains of rats. Ellis-Behnke's group, whose work is focussed on central nervous system repair, found that the liquid mended the nerve cells as predicted, but caused a strange side effect. `When we used the liquid during the surgery we thought that the animals had died. The bleeding in the brain stopped and that normally indicates that the heart has stopped beating,' Ellis-Behnke told Chemistry World. `When we realised what had happened, we made a note of it and then went back to the drawing board to test it.'

In tests on skin, liver, lung, blood vessels and a variety of other tissue, Ellis-Behnke and his colleagues were able to use the liquid to halt bleeds in less than 15 seconds. The mechanism for this ability remains something of a mystery. `It isn't clotting that we're seeing. We tested for all of the things you find in all blood clots; fibrin, thrombin and platelets and none of them were there,' said Ellis-Behnke. `Either this is acting as some kind of molecular band aid or we are stopping bleeding via a completely new direction that we have never seen before.'

Once the liquid touches an internal organ, it forms a gel; the amino acids assemble into fibres and stop the bleed. The degradable peptide then breaks down into non-toxic products as the tissue heals. These products can even be used by cells to rebuild damaged tissue, according to the researchers. During the study, the liquid was used successfully internally and externally, before breaking down to be incorporated into the healed tissue or excreted in the urine.

Surgeons currently spend up to 50 per cent of their time during surgery packing wounds in order to reduce or control bleeding, so if Ellis-Behnke's liquid works it would make a profound difference. Promising results in an animal model mean that human trials could begin in as little as three years, he said. `This could even be used on the battlefield,' added Ellis-Behnke. `If a limb is removed, this could be applied to the severed limb as well as the wound on the body. It would stop the drying out and decay of the tissue and keep it clean so it would be easier to reattach.'

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Leftist State governments are to blame for Australia's urban water shortages, not nature

They haven't built dams for years, despite big population growth

Justified concern about the severity of the drought now facing Australia should not be allowed to obscure the abject failure of governments around the nation to secure adequate supplies of an essential resource. The failure is a lack of foresight rooted in political pork-barrelling to rural irrigators and greed at the expense of city water users. The result has been environmental degradation requiring billions of dollars to address, a crisis in agriculture during periods of low rainfall and the absurd situation of water rationing in a country at the peak of its prosperity. The problem for urban consumers has arisen because water has been traded through state monopolies that, when faced with a squeeze of their own making, have simply turned off the tap.

As reported in The Australian yesterday, the first national audit of water resources conducted by the National Water Commission has found the states continued to fail in water management. And the blame-shifting continued at yesterday's inaugural meeting of the Council for the Australian Federation, where yet another promise was made for a national focus on water. But there has been little progress on the long-promised national water market and the most pressing task: the buyback of water rights that have been over-allocated for decades by state governments keen to curry political support. Such a buyback has been identified as the most sensible - and cheapest - way to save rivers in the Murray-Darling system. The drought has made the task urgent but there is a reluctance for political and economic reasons. Buying back only water saved through covering open channels, and introducing drip irrigation and better water management has proved too slow and not enough. But new technology must be adopted. Among the predictions in The Australian's groundbreaking 2026 series starting next Saturday is that current irrigation methods will have disappeared in 20 years' time. Without these advances, it is hard to see how we can continue to justify growing water-hungry crops such as cotton and rice.

None of this addresses the issue of long-term underfunding in urban water resources. By 2026, water consumption in Brisbane will have increased more than 60 per cent. In Sydney, it will be up 35 per cent, with a similar figure in Melbourne. As the present restrictions demonstrate, water authorities have been negligent in planning for the future, both in terms of storage and interstate co-operation. Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Water Malcolm Turnbull has clearly outlined how greed has sponsored the short-term planning. It has done so because delivering "old" water from existing dams is very cheap, but delivering "new" water from new infrastructure is very high. This means that when government-owned water utilities have been faced with an excess of demand over supply they have protected cash flow and dividends by introducing water restrictions. The drought has brought the house of cards tumbling down, however, because restrictions are causing political pain. It is a classic tale of how state monopolies fail consumers. In the absence of market forces and competition, governments have treated water as a cash cow and run their businesses into the ground. The drought has forced a reappraisal that must ultimately bring proper price signals to the water market. This will both deal with uneconomic farm practices and stop the absurd situation whereby elderly residents are forced to water their garden using a bucket.

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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

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