In the first such program in California, and perhaps the United States, Bay Area air pollution regulators are proposing to charge an annual fee to thousands of businesses based on the amount of greenhouse gases they emit.
The fee – 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide – would affect everything from oil refineries to power plants, and landfills, factories and small businesses like restaurants and bakeries.
The risk of a fatal heatwave in the UK within five years is high, but overall global warming may mean fewer deaths due to temperature, a report says.
A seriously hot summer between now and 2012 could claim more than 6,000 lives, the Department of Health report warns.
But it also stresses that milder winters mean deaths during this time of year – which far outstrip heat-related mortality – will continue to decline.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
I'm in Milwaukee, where I spent time with a lot of climate atheists at Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin's Defending the American Dream Summit yesterday. I presented on a panel with AFP's Phil Kerpen (based in DC) and Wisconsin State Rep. Jim Ott, who was a television meteorologist here for about 30 years.
As the snow blew outside causing near-whiteout conditions, I put up a quote on PowerPoint from Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle in which he said, "Failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could raise Wisconsin temperatures…," which prompted an immediate cheer. Right now it is 5 degrees below zero outside with a wind chill of -38.
Pretty soon I will try to go out and do my emitting part as I have to drive to the airport. I'm not looking forward to filling up the gas tank.
A few thoughts on the heels of Sen. John McCain’s wise counsel on Fox News Sunday that “the worst thing we can do right now, Chris [Wallace], is — we’ve got some shaky economic times — is to increase peoples’ taxes.”
Indeed. But Congress’s newly most-prominent champion of what the Congressional Budget Office describes as “similar to those of a carbon tax [because] both would raise the cost of using carbon-based fossil fuels, lead to higher energy prices and impose costs on users and some suppliers of energy” might consider three headlines from just the past week:
n “Industry shelving investments over EU emissions plan”
n “Green laws and regulation risk energy crisis, say Europe’s power companies”
n “RWE halts investments in German power plants due to rising emission costs”
Iowa's caucuses, a source of so much turbulence, might even have helped cause the recent demonstration by 10,000 Indonesians in Jakarta. Savor the multiplying irrationalities of the government-driven mania for ethanol and other biofuels, and energy policy generally.
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