Letters: June 16 | Letters | Comment | Calgary Sun

CAP AND TRADE A FARCE

I do not believe that cap and trade will do anything but raise taxes. So just call it a tax and be done with it. When it most likely destroys the economy of Canada, whoever put it in will be remembered longer than the NEP and will get just as many votes. Let it be Ignatieff. Let it be the Liberals. Even as the debate rages, and I hope it rages for a long time, there is no one that can guarantee that cap and trade will stop climate change. (Do we even want to?) So the temperature goes down and we have snow in June, can we blame it on cap and trade? In the end, the governments need the money to pay back all the stimulus packages, the waste on GM and so on. There is no available technology that can be implemented in sufficient quantity in sufficient time to reduce green house gases to the level anyone wants. More taxes, isn't that just great?

REG EKISS

Herbert on climate change: Science still has some convincing to do - Salt Lake Tribune

Park City » There was Energy Secretary Steven Chu bearing the grim news: Climate change -- from shrinking ice caps and swelling sea levels to fire-prone forests and a drought-plagued West -- is more ominous than previously projected.

Then came Utah's governor-in-waiting, turning Monday's discussion here at the Western Governors' Association gathering from how states should combat global warming to whether a climate threat even exists.
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Montana Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who replaced Republican Huntsman on Sunday as chairman of the Western governors group, agreed that, for many, the reality of climate change remains unproven.

Some people "think it's a bunch of hooey," he said in an interview. "You just have to get in my pickup truck and ride around with me a little bit. The debate is not over."

But Chu was matter of fact. Climate change is real and happening faster than scientists previously warned.

"The news is getting scary," said the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. "But the most scary thing in my mind is the [scientific] observations. People can be entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
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"There are economic reasons and economic opportunities that can provide that bridge between the skeptical public and where we need to be," said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of Iowa.

[Bigger than the sun?] The Associated Press: Asia set to become biggest climate change driver

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Asia's share of global greenhouse gas emissions could rise to more than 40 percent by 2030, making it the world's main driver of climate change, experts warned Tuesday.

The most populous continent with the fastest-growing economies in China and India already accounts for a third of world emissions of gases blamed for warming weather, including carbon dioxide, Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda told a conference in Manila.

Its share of discharges from energy use has tripled over the past 30 years, he said.