Climate [fraud] clock is ticking
“I frankly think that this Copenhagen is the last chance for us to deal with this problem,” Andrew Weaver, a climate expert, IPCC contributor and author of Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World with the University of British Colombia. “I’m serious. They’re vital.”Airlines cut flights in tax-hike protest - Business News, Business - The Independent
“If we don’t do anything now, we’re going to push the world past what is known as a 2-degree-Celsius threshold, which means that we are committing it to 12 metres of sea level rise, the desertification of southern Europe and many, many other things. So, frankly, now is the time.”
Britain's largest low-cost airline is to cut almost a third of its flights from Stansted this winter, blaming "unfair" passenger taxes for making the routes uneconomical.[But why doesn't India create millions of jobs and power their entire country with wind turbines and solar panels?]
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Belgium, Holland, Greece and Spain have all reduced or scrapped similar taxes to boost tourism during the recession. Yesterday Ryanair's arch-rival easyJet joined in the attack, branding the tax "certifiably bonkers".
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The Government introduced it as a green tax, which easyJet rejected yesterday. "As an environmental tax it is stupidity itself as it is a flat rate. A passenger flying on the most environmentally friendly plane will pay the same as one on a dirty old banger."
Virgin Atlantic also came out against the tax, and has started printing anti-APD messages on its e-tickets. Sir Richard Branson called it "one of the most unjust taxes out there" on a website launched railing against APD. He said there was "not a shred of evidence to suggest the £2bn-plus currently raised is going towards environmental or sustainable projects".
United Nations (IANS) India will continue to use coal to meet its energy demands, says Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).April '09: U.S.: China, India must join climate action - Climate Change- msnbc.com
"Can you imagine 400 million people who do not have a light bulb in their homes," Dr. Pachauri told reporters here Monday.
"You cannot, in a democracy, ignore some of these realities and as it happens with the resources of coal that India has we really don't have any choice but to use coal in the immediate short term," he said.
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that any agreement to combat global warming should require developing countries like India and China to reduce emissions, a position that prevented former President George W. Bush from signing an international pact.
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"There is no sense in negotiating an agreement if it will have no practical impact in reducing emissions to safer levels," Clinton told the participants at the start of the two-day meeting.
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