Economy Screws Climate
| Fri Oct. 3, 2008 5:26 PM PDT
.png)
Economic turmoil on its latest grandest scale is already threatening Europe's climate protection policies. Automakers today urged EU authorities today to reconsider proposed limits on CO2 emissions. Their argument: the current financial crisis makes it too hard to meet them, reports New Scientist.
Cynical-mini-me says why not make the car-makers adhere to tighter CO2 emissions and then give them a bail-out? You know, the tried and true method.
The European Commission is also proposing to auction CO2 emissions permits by 2013. But now Poland, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria are assembling a blocking minority to stall that climate package. They argue their power plants don't have enough cash to compete with giants like Germany on the free-market auctions.
Well, no one's got cash now. Maybe not even by 2013. Too bad we didn't seriously tackle this environmental regime change when the global economy was fat and happy. The ranks of the whiners just got bigger and louder and harder to budge. All while the environmental meltdown that no one's paying attention to until it gobbles us up is coming our way too.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
Continues Below
Continued From Above
Comments
You would really like the little island I live on. Our Critical Areas Ordinance is being updated as required by the state Growth Management Act.
With a little luck and some good lawyers, we should be able to eliminate the possibility of anyone living within 800 feet of the coastline. Current homeowners won't even be able to repair or maintain their houses. Any when they decay, they will be liable for clean up costs. We're so excited to finally be able to start removing the human vermin from Mother Gaia!
Submitted by Fair Trade (not verified) on Sat Oct. 4, 2008 3:14 AM PDT.
Sadly, there always appears to be a good short term reason why we as humanity cannot work on sensible long term solutions.
I think it's one of the collective flaws of the pervading western mentality - we want it all now and we want it on credit...
The average American is stupid when it comes to this issue, I guess since the average (and majority) politician is, likewise, a total bonehead. I used to try to want to save the Earth, but I've given up...20% can't force the other 80% to do the right thing. We deserve what we get, and we will definitely get it one way or another. Keystone species matter people!! Oh, and humans are NOT the actual top of the chain, although weapons help eleviate that little problem.
In 1991, Norway became one of the first countries in the world to impose a stiff tax on harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the country's emissions should have dropped. Instead, they have risen by 15%. Although the tax forced Norway's oil and gas sector to become among the greenest in the world, soaring energy prices led to a boom in offshore production, which in turn boosted overall emissions. So did drivers. Norwegians, who already pay nearly $10 a gallon, took the tax in stride, buying more cars and driving them more. And numerous industries won exemptions from the tax, carrying on unchanged. It wasn't supposed to be this way. By making it more expensive to pollute, carbon taxes should spur companies and individuals to clean up. Norway's sobering experience shows how difficult it is to cut emissions in the real world, where elegant theoretical solutions are complicated by economic changes, entrenched behaviors and political realities. Europe struggled with a similar dilemma as it set up its "cap-and-trade" system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by utilities and heavy industry. Regulators cushioned industry in the early years of the system, giving them little incentive to improve. As a result, emissions have crept up 1% a year since 2005. In the U.S., the Senate voted down cap-and-trade legislation in July, won over by arguments that the system would hurt industry and boost consumer prices. But the measure could be revived, since both presidential candidates support it.
