Once again, the LYING, AGENDA-PUSHING MSM has been OUTED!!!!
I'll BELIEVE the BLOGS from now on, thank you very much!
"Brother, can you spare a carbon credit?"
"by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | February 24, 2008
GLOBAL WARMING IS a planet-sized problem, so policy solutions tend to aim for the grandest possible scale. The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions at a national level, while laws in various countries and states seek to reform entire industries.
For individuals, the picture is very different. Environmentalism often boils down to small lifestyle choices, like turning down the thermostat and screwing in the squiggly light bulbs - gestures that can feel virtuous but futile. Some environmentalists even consider them counterproductive if they substitute for activism.
But a new wave of thinking suggests it may be better in the long run to address this global problem in a way that directly involves individuals. Several proposals generating buzz chiefly in the United Kingdom and Ireland operate on the notion that every individual has an equal stake in the atmosphere. The most provocative idea, personal carbon trading, would grant all residents a "carbon allowance," setting a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from their households and transportation. In the model of the industrial "cap and trade" system, guzzlers who exceeded their allowance would need to buy extra shares. People who conserved energy, meanwhile, could sell their leftover shares and ride their bikes all the way to the bank.
The blogs TOLD YOU about this SCAM!!!!
This is not just a fantasy floating around in the greenest reaches of the blogosphere. In 2006, the UK's environment secretary, David Miliband, endorsed the idea, and the British government has commissioned a study to explore the policy's feasibility. An alternative proposal, known as "cap and share," is under consideration by the Irish government, and Peter Barnes, an American entrepreneur, promotes a kindred scheme in his new book, "Climate Solutions."
The collective impact of individual energy use is enormous, so any effective approach to climate change will ultimately require major changes in individual behavior. The most broadly accepted estimate is that direct emissions from individuals - that is, residences and transportation - account for 30 to 40 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in both the United States and the UK. The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that the average American is responsible for the emission of about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year....
You are KILLING the PLANET, shit-chewer.
Better to just die!
Engaging individuals directly could have a groundbreaking impact, alerting them to their contribution to the problem while enlisting them in solving it. There are substantial differences among these policies, and practical and political obstacles to implementing any of them, especially in the United States. Some believe a tax, aptly applied, could accomplish the same goals more efficiently. But advocates see these plans as a necessary shift in the way we think about pumping carbon into the air - infusing the global energy debate with a deeply personal sense of rights and responsibilities.
Yup, they are going to thrust more "rights" of "responsibility" on us for the "greater good."
Translation: The agenda-pushing pukes are going to RAISE YOUR TAXES as your standard of living shits the bed.
Carbon dioxide is an inevitable byproduct of most modern human activities. Beginning with the industrial revolution, we have been spewing it into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, along with other gases that trap heat from the sun. (Carbon dioxide makes up over 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; "carbon" seems to have become shorthand for all of them.) A solidifying consensus has it that in order to avert catastrophic climate change, we must slash greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050....
I'm tired of THIS MSM LIE, too!
They LIE about everything and they LOVE GLOBAL WARMING PROTESTERS, so what am I to think?
Was Iraq for the GOOD of us all, readers?
So why believe these lying shit agenda-pushers now?
In 1996, British policy analyst David Fleming, director of the research center the Lean Economy Connection, thought of a twist on this approach: What if, in addition to nations and corporations, we applied these rules to people? Under his plan, an independent committee would set a cap for total emissions for all of Britain. Forty percent of this cap would be allocated to individuals, free, with everyone receiving the same share. The rest would be allotted to businesses and government, which would have to pay for their shares. To rein in emissions, the total cap would be incrementally lowered each year.
So WHO DECIDES WHAT, shitters?
Fleming and others imagine a system that reaches deeply into how people live - and how they think about their lifestyles.
Yeah!
Under such a system, you would have a personal carbon account that used the technology of credit and debit cards. When you bought gas or paid utility bills, the units would be deducted.
How about when you fart?
That adding to global warming?
Wanna put a meter down there, do ya?
How about up the ass to catch any seepage?
Or would you rather just stick your head up there?
Pfffffffffttttt!
When you had to run errands, before hopping in the car, you would pause to consider taking the bus, or riding your bike, or calling up a friend to car pool. Vacationers deciding between Vermont and Colorado would have to weigh the relative carbon impact of driving and flying. To save up carbon units for the trip, they might have to turn down the air conditioner for a couple of weeks. Carbon costs would start to figure into such everyday decisions, until the calculus became automatic.
Translation: Watch your standard of living shit out!
If you had carbon savings, you could use them next year, when the cap would be lower, or sell them on the carbon market.
What about old people who need heat and car power, etc?
When I'm 70, I don't want to be on a bike with my arthritic bones!
One of the main attractions of this idea is its equity. The outsized carbon footprints of the wealthy - those who fly by private jet and live in McMansions - would come with an extra price tag, so the penalty would fall on the people most able to afford it. The poor, who generate much lower emissions, could actually turn a profit by selling their surplus.
When the wealthy start paying their fair share on anything rather than raping us blind I will believe it.
Until then, I'm not eating the horse shit promises!!!!
As entrepreneurs and businesses adapted to this system, the development of alternative energy and energy-efficient appliances would take off. As you used more wind power and your car consumed less gasoline, you'd have a little more leeway with your carbon account. At the same time, though, every year the cap would tighten, cutting into your allowance, further spurring conservation and innovation.
Heard this all before.
Then why did Bush cut research funding into alternatives?
"Getting Americans to find another way of living is going to be very difficult," says Fleming. His plan, he believes, would be a "guarantee to change their way of life and have a future."
Depending on your perspective, the notion of a personal carbon allowance may sound utopian or nightmarish. Meanwhile, there are other proposed schemes that may be easier for Americans to swallow. They share certain elements with that idea, but avoid the individual quota and place more emphasis on rights than responsibility....
That's how the bowl the shit for you, readers!
You getting the "right" to a TAX INCREASE and a drop in the standard of living so some richer can shit in a golden pot!
In AmeriKa, you got the right to get hammered in the butt-hole!!!!
A third proposal, which has support from some American environmentalists, is an idea called the "sky trust," first floated in 1999 by Peter Barnes, the American entrepreneur and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in California. In several books, including "Climate Solutions," Barnes conceives of the atmosphere as a common asset. He proposes that an independent board set a cap for total emissions and hold an auction for emissions rights. Companies would pay for the permits, and the resulting pot of cash would be divided equally among citizens.
Where's my check?
His scheme is based on an existing American system, the Alaska Permanent Fund, founded in 1976 in response to a windfall from oil exports. Every year, a semi-independent corporation distributes the oil revenue among Alaskan residents.
So who is going to control this fund again?
Because Africa has the same set-up for oil, and some of those places are rife with corruption.
Barnes calls this a "very interesting precedent - this notion that if you have revenue from selling a common resource, of giving it back to everybody equally."
Every time they turn environment into a business, I'm suspicious, readers.
Just another way to rip you off.
Although different in structure from personal carbon trading, the sky trust would similarly reward the carbon-thrifty. "If you have a Hummer and three houses, you're going to be paying in a lot more than you get back," says Barnes. "If you ride a bicycle and take the bus, you'll get back more than you pay in."
Promises, promises!
According to Richard Starkey, who studies all three schemes at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the UK, the main advantage of personal carbon trading over the second two ideas is that it might most effectively foster "carbon literacy," as consumers would be made aware of the exact cost in carbon for their decisions. It would also send a signal about acceptable levels of personal emissions.
Better hold that fart in and NEVER LET IT OUT, readers!!!!!
You never know; you could be tagged as an "environmental criminal" if you pass gas.
The minuses, however, would be the need for the card infrastructure, and, as Starkey puts it, the "Big Brother element."
Oh, concerned about that, are ya?
David Fleming regards the second two schemes as "nonstarters" because they guarantee money rather than energy. As a result, they are unequipped to grapple with a second major concern of energy analysts, "peak oil" - the coming energy scarcity caused by an expected drop in oil production. Fleming's plan would promise everyone a minimum share of energy.
How long we been hearing that one, too?
Inside of the earth is cooking all the time.
Partisans of all these schemes assert their superiority over a carbon tax on gasoline and other fuels. They call such taxes regressive, since as a rule flat taxes penalize the poor. But Dan Rosenblum, a lawyer and cofounder of the Carbon Tax Center, doesn't see the ideas as fundamentally different from a tax. "They avoid the word 'tax,' and there is a benefit to that," he says. "But we're all saying that you ought to pay for dumping carbon into the atmosphere." Some carbon tax plans address the "regressive" charge with provisions for returning revenue through reduced income taxes or rebates.
I was wondering if the piggish, gas-guzzling military was going to be subjected to the same limits?
Just a question.
In the UK, skeptics of personal carbon trading call it an administrative nightmare and an infringement on civil liberties. In the United States, with a much larger population, much greater aversion to government interference, and less widespread appreciation of the threat of climate change, such a scheme may seem unthinkable. That could change if it's successfully implemented in the UK, and if the perceived threat of global warming intensifies.
Yeah, as we suffer through brutally cold and record winters all over the globe.
Ooops, let a fart slip just now... hey, maybe that will warm things up around here.
In the UK, Prescott says that in their surveys of the public, "the idea of an allowance is very popular. There seems to be a pretty high level of recognition that something has to happen."
You know what you can do with your survey, shitter?
Pffffffffftttt!!!!
Because of the relative administrative simplicity and the Alaska precedent, Barnes believes the sky trust scheme, at least, should be politically palatable in the United States, and there are indications that we could be headed in that general direction.
No shittee?
This year's remaining Democratic presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system that would auction permits to companies, thereby generating revenue for the federal government. "The question is," says Barnes, "to whom does that money belong?
I'll stake a claim to it, before the war contractors get it.
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is an associate editor at Boston Review Books."
