Free Republic

Gordon Brown on Sunday said the large economies were close to agreeing a global tax on banks that would cost the financial sector billions of pounds a year but played down expectations that a deal could be struck at the next Group of 20 meeting in June. The UK prime minister, who held talks with Angela Merkel, German chancellor, last week, said the scene was set for a ­“global responsibility levy”. He said Britain, France and Germany were now broadly agreed on the need for a levy, and he hoped the US would come on board. “Britain, France and Germany...

London (United Kingdom) The first meeting of the UN-instituted ’climate fund group’, kicked off in London with Britain offering to sign a new Kyoto Treaty as developing countries’ demand ; urging those nations to play their parts by enshrining their commitments to tackling global warming in international law.    The move came as the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his visiting Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi, held prolonged talks, on Wednesday, with billionaire financier George Soros, United States president Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers ; as well as other renown economists and finance ministers ; aimed at finding ways to raise...

The Kyoto Protocol Launches! But Will it Matter? Ronald Bailey Today the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change comes into effect. Thirty-five industrialized countries have vowed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012. This will allegedly prevent catastrophic global warming caused by man-made gas emissions--chiefly carbon dioxide, which is emitted when fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas are burned. Kyoto is a solution in search of a problem. What are the chances that catastrophic global warming will occur in this century? That depends on a...