Quotes of the Day

by William Yeatman on February 18, 2009

in Blog

Taken from CCNet, a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. Every day Peiser sends out the latest news on the science, economics and politics of global warming. To subscribe, and I recommend that you do, send an e-mail to listserver@ljmu.ac.uk (“subscribe cambridge-conference”).

Like Coleridge’s ancient mariner, the nation is becalmed, a painted ship on a painted ocean and we have gone back a century, hewing the same coal that first put Britain on the fast track to the Industrial Revolution. The reason why we are still stuffing black lumps of carbon into furnaces is simple: it makes economic sense and the financial markets are shouting this message louder than ever before.

–Carl Mortished, The Times, 18 February 2009

Italian police on Tuesday arrested mobsters, businessmen and local politicians who allegedly used corrupt practices and bribes to gain control of a project to build wind farms in Sicily. Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy.

Associated Press, 17 February 2009

THE collapse in the international price of carbon is threatening the Federal Government’s ability to pay for compensation packages in the emissions trading scheme without drawing on the budget. Compensation for households, trade-exposed industries and high-polluting coal-fired electricity generators was expected to be drawn from auctioning carbon credits, which the Government estimated would initially generate $12 billion a year. But the assumed price of carbon – $25 a tonne – is now under threat because the Government’s proposal allows polluting businesses to offset an unlimited proportion of emissions by buying international credits.

–Tom Arup, The Age, 18 February 2009

AUSTRALIA’S second-biggest steelmaker says the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme is likely to cause job losses and force new investments offshore. “We understand the Government’s intentions, but the practical effect of the scheme as it stands is that we will bear a cost not borne by our competitors,” he said. “We would be the only steelmakers in the world to have these costs and that would put us at a material disadvantage.”

–Lenore Taylor, The Australian, 18 February 2009

As more and more discoveries are made about global warming, scientists and political organisations have been clamouring for stronger and more immediate actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Amid this rising call for action, there has been surprisingly little attention given to recent work suggesting that future peak carbon dioxide levels may have been overestimated by a factor of four to five.

–Thomas Crowley, The Guardian, 17 February 2009

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: