Posted on 11/30/2009 8:09:53 PM PST by thouworm
The Environment Agency will argue today that carbon rationing is the fairest and most effective way for the UK to meet its legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Agency’s chairman, Lord Smith, will propose at the organisation's annual conference in London that every citizen be provided with a "carbon account" and unique number that they submit when buying carbon-intensive items such as petrol, electricity or airline tickets.
Individuals would then periodically receive statements that show the carbon impact of each purchase and how much of their annual ration has been used up. If they exceeded this ration, they would need to buy extra credits from those people that have not used their full allowance, in a similar fashion to existing emission cap-and-trade schemes.
Lord Smith, former culture secretary under the Blair Government, is expected to say that carbon rationing will help citizens "judge how they want to develop their own quality of life in a sustainable way".
(snip)
The move is likely to reopen the debate over carbon rationing, which was shelved by the government last year despite a Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) feasibility study, which indicated that rationing was technically possible and had the "potential to engage individuals in taking action to combat climate change".
However, the study also concluded that the idea was "ahead of its time", would be expensive to implement, and was unlikely to secure widespread public support. As a result, the research programme was dropped, although Defra said it would continue to monitor third-party research and may still "introduce personal carbon trading if the value of carbon savings and cost implications change".
The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee last year called on the government to resume its research in the area, however, and to be "courageous" in attempting to overcome likely public hostility to the concept.
It also concluded that: "Widespread public acceptance, while desirable, should not be a pre-condition for a personal carbon trading scheme. The need to reduce emissions is simply too urgent."
“We have to be realistic about Copenhagen. It won’t solve all the issues. We have therefore to see it as the crucial start to a process, not the end. We need an agreement of principles and commitments that will at least give us a chance of beating the worst that climate change will bring.
“I’d like cap and trade schemes adopted around the world. And part of the agreement at Copenhagen should be to take this approach, with further development by each continent.
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/113108.aspx
Lord Smith's scheme was reported by both Mark Steyn and Charles Krauthammer.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
MARK STEYN
But no, it was systemic. Hysterical queens like Gordon Brown are demanding we introduce global taxation, micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, massive multi-trillion dollar transfers from the productive sector to eco-rackets and transnational bureaucracies, bovine flatulence levies and extraterrestrial surveillance of once sovereign states on the basis of fevered speculations for which there is no raw data:
No raw data, huh? But why let that stand in your way?
[quoting Krauthammer] "Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe."
But don't worry. It'll all be very scientific. Your carbon allowance numbers will be kept in a big database. Maybe in East Anglia?
(*Or, as Jim Treacher puts it, the science is settled ...at the bottom of the dumpster.)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjZkM2I0MWNlMTYwNzUwNzAxOTQ0ZDAxN2ZlNzAzMjA=
I wonder how many points they’d charge for burning the card.
Guess they didn’t get the memo.
Any move to implement this in the US should be met with armed resistance.
My tagline supports that notion.
I wonder how much carbon is going to be emitted, or however the hell it works, from all the cards being printed. I don’t understand how people can be so stupid.
“Vapor Cards”
These people are certifiable.
lol; 10 points and a trip to the re-education camp.
I looked for any recent statements on the email scandal from him. Crickets....
Facts and fraud be damned, it’s full speed ahead.
There will be exclusions for those at the top. Count on it.
Not allowed to buy or sell without a special card/chip? Where have we heard this before? Looks like the climate change scam is the vehicle the globalists are going to use.
You Brits gave away all your means to resist and now your goverment can impose any tyrannous outrage and your only option is how much you will smile as you placidly comply.
Since the scandal is being reported far more widely in the EU, one would hope that there are massive demonstrations in Copenhagen. Of course, even if there were, MSM would not report it.
Where are the soccer hooligans to round up these eco-fecal freaks and stomp the living crap out of them?? I can’t believe the Brits are bending over for this BS.
When Obama distributes those over here I am going to first piss on it and then stick it in the tailpipe of my two-stroke dirtbike. lol
As the older Brits from WW2 would merrily comply....”Oh, well. Never mind. Come the better weather.”
Krauthammer - post #1
“There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.”
I eat beans for my health. Will there be an exhaust tax on each can? (Oh, and you soy lubbers, watch out.)
The key to discrediting the US enviro-whackjobs with millions more Americans is to show their associations in ideas and Gaia ideology with their comrades in the UK. Even if this specific proposal is not being pushed (YET) in the US, it allows for strong counter-attacks on where the greenie Gorebots are trying to take this country.
well I’m sure that Algore must have said by now that “global warming is the moral equivalent of WAR” or some such tripe......
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