[Head of the Environment Agency] Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using.
If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.
Those who are frugal with their carbon usage will be able to sell their unused credits and make a profit.
Lord Smith will call for the scheme to be part of a “Green New Deal” to be introduced within 20 years when he addresses the agency’s annual conference on Monday.
But not to worry – it will only affect those evil rich people:
An Environment Agency spokesman … said: “A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out.”
If you still can’t see that left-wing governments push this carbon hysteria as a way to redistribute wealth from those who create it to those who form these governments’ voter base, then you probably believe Al Gore is in the lucrative Gaia business for something other than the cash, the Nobels and the Oscars.
A Japanese airline has started asking passengers to go to the toilet before boarding in a bid to reduce carbon emissions.
All Nippon Airways (ANA) claims that empty bladders mean lighter passengers, a lighter aircraft and thus lower fuel use.
Airline staff will be present at boarding gates in terminals to ask passengers waiting to fly to relieve themselves before boarding, The Independent reported.
ANA hopes the weight saved will lead to a five-tonne reduction in carbon emissions over the course of 30 days.
I am much more likely to do something if those who ask me to do it aren’t blatantly lying about their motives while assuming that I am an idiot. I’m sure most people are like me.
Unless, of course, by “ask” they really mean “require”. Or maybe that will be the next step.
Makes you wonder about the cost-to-benefit ratio of Obama’s green energy plan:
The Government’s plans to increase the proportion of Britain’s energy generated by “green” sources is set to cost between 11 and 17 times what the change brings in economic benefits.
The figures are buried deep in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy paper produced last month.
According to the document, while the expected cost will total around £4bn a year over the next 20 years, amounting to £57bn to £70bn, the eventual benefit in terms of the reduced carbon dioxide emissions will be only £4bn to £5bn over that entire period.
The figures make up part of the Government’s impact assessment of the policies, which include plans to raise the proportion of British electricity produced by renewable sources from 5.5pc today to 30pc.
And since when are reduced carbon dioxide emissions a measure – the principal one, even – of economic benefits of anything? When was the global warming religion adopted as part of economic science?
“Psychological barriers like uncertainty, mistrust and denial keep most Americans from acting to fight climate change, a task force of the American Psychological Association said on Wednesday.
Policymakers, scientists and marketers should look at these factors to figure out what might prod people [to] take action, the task force reported at the association’s annual convention in Toronto.”
Anybody else notice the American Psychological Association isn’t urging “policymakers, scientists and marketers” to show us conclusive evidence, earn our trust, or challenge their own group-think – but to “prod” the rest of us, like cattle, instead?
When you’ve been diagnosed as being in denial, there’s no need to show any evidence to you.
It’s Earth Day, which means we get to hear all kinds of kooky things about Gaia and the climate from all kinds of kooks – though usually not from heads of state:
Speaking on Earth Day, Bolivian President Evo Morales called Wednesday for the nations of the world to accept a set of principles that would protect the planet’s resources and “right to life.” “Not just human beings have rights, but the planet has rights,” he said. “What’s happening with climate change is that the rights of Mother Earth are not being respected.”
Bolivia’s first indigenous president is not as dumb as he appears. I am sure the self-proclaimed “Marxist, Leninist, communist, socialist” knows that such a “set of principles”, if accepted, will harm the developed capitalist nations the most. Which, of course, is the whole idea.
Evo Morales (right) with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro
Daniel Andreas San Diego, 31 - animal rights activist, strict vegan, and most wanted terrorist
There are plenty of people who want to liberate the earth from human oppression, but you can’t get more extreme than trying to kill people to liberate cells:
The FBI for the first time has placed an animal rights activist on the bureau’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list.
The FBI announced Tuesday the addition of Daniel Andreas San Diego to the list, hoping a burst of international publicity associated with the move will help investigators find him after six years on the run.
San Diego, 31, may appear to be out of place on a terrorist list with familiar names like alQaeda’sOsama bin Laden, Aymanal-Zawahiri and Adam YahiyeGadahn. The “strict vegan,” according to the FBI, is charged with bombing two corporate offices in California in 2003. The blasts caused extensive property damage but no deaths.
Vegans eat no meat or any other food containing animal products.
Authorities allege San Diego bombed facilities in Emeryville and Pleasanton, California, because he believed the Chiron and Shaklee Corporations had ties to animal-testing labs.
After both bombings, e-mails from a group called “The Revolutionary Cells-Liberation Brigade” claimed responsibility for the acts.
The guy’s tattoos are a manifesto of militant environmentalism’s final goal:
According to an artist’s rendering of the body art, San Diego has one in the center of his chest of a burning hillside and the words “It only takes a spark” in a typewriter-style font.
An abdominal tattoo shows burning and collapsing buildings, while his back features a leafless tree rising from a road above buildings that are burning but still standing, the FBI says.
I wonder if these people will terminate their own existence if they ever achieve their goal of liberating nature from intelligent life. Nah, they’ll say their lives are important to ensure nature’s continued freedom.
And besides, there will be no intelligent life on earth anyway.
And while you’re at the store, buy some eggplants to plant in your backyard and grow your own eggs without harming any chickens by keeping them in cages.
You can be one of the most famous living scientists, as well as an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, - but the moment you express doubt about global warming, you will become “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, of course, “a mad scientist.”
California’s enviro-Nazis, in their quest to make the lives of Golden Staters easier, are aiming to remove another choice they now have to make – the choice of color for their cars. The California Air Resources Board wants to ban all dark paint colors for cars - including black – because they make cars hotter in the sun and require more energy from the air conditioner to cool.
Nothing about California surprises me anymore. Maybe next they’ll want to ban dark clothes – because you get hotter in them and then take more energy to cool down when you get in an air-conditioned building – or your car.
Preferably children, before their global-warming footprint goes out of hand. Children like Bakouma Kpatekatola from Togo, who was 14 when he died of malaria last year:
Bakouma was one of approximately one million people who died of malaria last year. Almost all of them were like him: poor, young, and African. And almost all of those deaths could have been prevented through vaccines, insecticide-treated netting, and (gasp) DDT spraying. Empirical research supports the indoor residual spraying (IRS) of DDT as not only safe, but the most economical and effective method for malaria prevention. For example, a 1996 DDT ban in South Africa, pushed by environmental groups, led to a malaria epidemic with over 60,000 cases reported in 2000. After DDT spraying resumed in 2001, infections dropped 80% in one year. Facing a mounting death toll across Africa the World Heath Organization and USAID have recently lent support to IRS using DDT, but its adoption continues to be opposed by environmental extremists relying on shoddy science and fearmongering.
Read the rest. Bakouma was a child Iowahawk’s family sponsored for several years.
Tourists may have flights abroad rationed under new plans being considered by the Government.
Gordon Brown’s green adviser Lord Adair Turner said a partial ban could be the only way to cut pollution. A Westminster source added: “People may be limited to just one or two return plane journeys a year.”
Lord Turner, who chairs the PM’s climate change committee, told MPs: “We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could.”
Government members are important, though, so I’m sure they’ll make an exception for themselves.
Well, when you stand in the way of making the country wealthier, safer and more independent, you hurt all people. But yeah, poor and minorities hardest hit.
Energy-guzzling flatscreen plasma televisions will soon be banned as part of the battle against climate change, ministers have told The Independent on Sunday.
“Minimum energy performance standards” for televisions are expected to be agreed across Europe this spring, they say, and this should lead to “phasing out the most inefficient TVs”. At the same time, a compulsory labelling system will be drawn up to identify the best and worst devices.
The moves, which follow last week’s withdrawal of the 100W incandescent lightbulb, are part of a drive to slow the rapid growth of electricity consumption in homes by phasing out wasteful devices and introducing more efficient ones. Giant plasma televisions – dubbed “the 4×4s of the living room” – can consume four times as much energy as traditional TVs that used cathode ray tubes (CRTs).
In what they deem a natural progression of age-old struggles for social justice, environmentalists gleefully predict that the 21st century will be an era of environmental justice. The freeing of nature from enslavement by man is their main objective for this period. Other goals include upholding the right of rivers to flow unimpeded, safeguarding the dignity of plants and consideration for the sensitivities of animals. According to environmentalists, social justice struggles have evolved from emancipation of slaves, suffrage for women and civil rights for minorities to, now, the fight for the inalienable, legal right of nature to exist and prosper.
Recent laws in Switzerland, Ecuador and the State of Pennsylvania detailed in the article are not just funny or dumb – they have consequences that will be felt by everybody.
The predictable effect of all this is a slowdown in economic development. The enviro-Nazis want it to be as painful as possible – they want mankind to atone for its sins, and atonement must be painful.
There doesn’t appear to be any force in the Western world that can stop this fanaticism. Except Islamization, which for some people may soon begin to look almost like a liberation of sorts.
