Posted on 02/01/2007 11:10:24 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
PARIS (AP) - The United States could face possible European carbon taxes on its exports if it does not sign global climate accords, French President Jacques Chirac was quoted as saying in an interview published Thursday.
"A carbon tax is inevitable," Chirac reportedly said in the interview with the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and French weekly Nouvel Observateur.
Chirac urged the United States to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls for steep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions believed to worsen global warming, the publications said.
France has pushed in the past for a carbon tax on industrial goods from countries that refuse to sign the Kyoto accord, meant mainly to target the United States and China. Some lawyers say it would violate international trade rules.
"If (the tax) is European, and I believe it will be European, then it will all the same have a certain influence because it means that all the countries that do not accept the minimum obligations will be obliged to pay," Chirac was quoted as saying.
The Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. treaty on climate change, requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The U.S. and Australia are the only major industrial nations to reject the treaty. Kyoto parties are discussing what kind of timetables and quotas should follow that pact's expiration in 2012.
Chirac spoke before a two-day conference on the environment in Paris aimed at getting support for his idea for a new world environmental body. Chirac's officials said Thursday that the U.S., Russia, China and India remained opposed to the idea.
Would that survive scrutiny at the WTO?
Go ahead Jacques. It ain't like you're selling Renaults or Peugots here anyway, and I can certainly live without French wine and cheese.
It's not like France is meeting its obligations on carbon emmissions with respect to Kyoto...
Screw you, Chirac !
Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!
Capitulation to Islamo Facists is a past deed done, now they are active and willing partners.
TT
I'd suggest a Coward Tax on France but that would definitely collapse their economy.
This is just another way to get a trade tariff (to protect France's subsidized industries?). If the EU imposes sanctions/tariffs on the United States, the United States can do the same to the EU.
France needs to take care of itself first. How much global warming is caused by allowing the Islamo Fascists to burn cars every evening?
The author used poor diction. China and India (and the United States and Australia) are all industrialized, only the latter two are developed, though.
Of course that's when Bush should sign an executive order nationalizing all French owned businesses and assets within the US and then watch the frogers piss les pantz.
The EU is trying to make socialism work by sabotaging American companies. Good luck with that.
Chirac still holds America responsible for his mother getting her head shaved back in 1945, and sending his daddy back to germany
More info on Carbon Credits here too:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775002/posts
Trading Hot Air?
China owns 43% of the carbon credits with the UN. See link at post 16.
He can kiss my carbon ass. What's really going on in the world is that China is running a really dirty economy and all that Kyoto nonsense exempted China. It's ok for a communist dictatorship to soon surpass the US in carbon pollution, while preparing to kill lots of free Taiwanese in a war of aggression.
Chirac is threatening us? France is a signatory to Kyoto, and they are`nt living up to the agreement.
"Europe 'behind on Kyoto pledges'"
"France, Greece and Germany are given an "amber warning" and will not reach targets unless they put planned policies into action, the IPPR said."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4561576.stm
A unilateral carbon tax against the USA is, IMO, a declaration of WAR.
I wouldn't be at all opposed to B52s over Paris if France pulls this crap.
The whole Kyoto treaty is a socialist conspiracy to make the world into a global socialist society for the re-distribution of wealth.
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