Top scientists and economists tell us that Carbon Trading (Emissions Trading Scheme, ETS) proposals are dangerous, fraudulent Ponzi schemes and that genuine, non-manipulatable, equitable Carbon Taxes are urgently required to help stop planet-threatening carbon burning. [1].
16 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation (including 9.5 million infants) – and this global avoidable mortality holocaust is increasingly climate change-impacted. However, estimates from Dr James Lovelock FRS indicate that about 10 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed global warming – this including 6 billion infants, 3 billion Muslims, 2 billion Indians and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. [2, 3].
Excess deaths (avoidable deaths) associated with the Bush (now Obama) wars and occupations in 1990-2009 (Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Palestine, Occupied Syria, Occupied Iraq, Occupied Diego Garcia, Occupied Afghanistan and US robot drone-bombed NW Pakistan) now total 9-11 million. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
It can be estimated from UN Population Division data that there are a total of 655,000 non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation per year and 1,795 each day in the various Occupied countries of the American Empire. Thus in the first 6 months of Obama’s rule as President of the United States of America there have been 328,000 avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Overseas American Empire – this figure of about 0.3 million avoidable deaths in the Overseas American Empire under Obama does not include violent deaths from military actions of the US or its surrogates (as a notorious US general once declared: “We don’t do body counts’). [5, 7].
As evident from the failed G8 meeting at L’Aquila, Italy, the worst greenhouse gas polluters of the First World support cap-and –trade emissions trading scheme (ETS) approaches to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution despite contrary advice from top climate scientists and climate economists. In short, a Carbon Tax is the best way and Carbon Trading is flawed, will not work, is inequitable and will lead to a carbon pricing “bubble” and another market meltdown. Further, top climate scientists say that we must be urgently REDUCING GHG pollution rather than INCREASING it (see “300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm”).
Nevertheless, environmentalists and environmentalist groups are being seduced into supporting the Carbon Trading ETS approach e.g. that of Obama that is now before the US Senate and the disastrous, proposed, pro-coal Australian ETS . The weak argument they offer is that “something is better than nothing”.
The pro-coal, pro-war Rudd Labor Government of Australia was elected in November 2007 with promises to the electorate that it would stop Australia’s involvement in Occupied Iraq (18 months since the election, two thirds of Australian troops are still there and there has a big boost to Australian forces in Occupied Afghanistan) and that it would take strong action on man-made climate change (but its post-election actions have been largely confined to rhetoric and propaganda while Australia’s world-leading per capita Domestic and Exported greenhouse gas pollution continues unabated).
The Rudd Labor Government did sign up Australia to the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 (a decade late) but balanced this by helping the US sabotage the Bali Climate Conference by refusing to agree to definite targets. As a ploy to avoid having to do anything concrete to decrease Australia’s world-leading Domestic and Exported greenhouse gas pollution (54 tonnes per person per year as compared to a world average per capita GHG pollution of 6.7 tonnes per person per year), the Australian Government appointed an economist Professor Ross Garnaut to research climate change for about a year and then proceeded to propose a softened version of Professor Garnaut’s final recommendations.
I often hear people saying that overpopulation is the main problem to our environmental and ecological problems. Some people even claim that it’s responsible for global warming. I also agreed with this idea before. But after reading more about the subject over the years I have changed my mind.
The rich countries in the “North”, i.e. the West, have a “rapidly decreasing” population which is “expected to decline over the next forty years.” Developing countries such as India, China and most of Africa on the other hand is where we will see future population numbers increasing.
And yes. It seems so easy to blame countries with an overwhelming rising population for being responsible for wrecking our planet, climate and environment. Because surely more people must mean more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Right?
Not really. The West is responsible for about 80% of the worlds CO2 increase. An average person living in Great Britain will in only 11 days emit as much CO2 as an average person in Bangladesh will during a whole year. And just a single power plant in West Yorkshire in Great Britain will produce more CO2 every year than all the 139 million people combined living in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.
As Fred Pearce from the Yale Environment 360 blog notes, only a small portion of the world’s people are using most of the planets resources as well as producing the most of the greenhouse gases. And those are living in the West:
The Inter Press Service has an interesting interview with James Lovelock, known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, about everything from the IPCC to geo-engineering and climate tipping points.
Lovelock has earlier said that he believes that climate change is now irreversible. He predicts that the major part of the humans, more than six billion people, will get wiped out of the face of the earth due to wars, starvation, epidemics and chaos during the rest of the century due to the effects of a changing climate. Lovelock estimates that by year 2100 there will only be around 500 millions people left who struggles to survive on the few remaining liveable places on earth: Scandinavia, Canada and Iceland.
In the IPS interview Lovelock says he hopes that once climate disaster strikes “we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees”:
“TIERRAMÉRICA: What will this new climate be like?
JL: The tropical and subtropical zones of the Earth will be too hot and dry to grow food or support human life. People will be forced to migrate towards the poles to places like Canada. There will be less than one billion people by the end of the century. My hope is that we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees.”
Hybrid cars have well and truly entered the consciousness of the car-buying public in the last few years, as ‘greener motoring’ has become a hot topic. We have all heard that these cars are more eco-friendly than ‘normal’ vehicles and recently it has became trendy to own a hybrid. But how many of us know just what is under the bonnet of a hybrid car? Let’s take a look at exactly how a hybrid works and why it’s a greener option than a regular car.
Put simply, a hybrid car is one that combines an internal-combustion engine with an electric motor, powered by sizeable batteries, to propel the vehicle. There are two types of hybrid car: parallel and series (also known as serial). In the first case, both the combustion engine and electric motor are connected to the mechanical transmission, which means that both engines are capable of powering the car, at the same time or separately. In series hybrids, only the electric motor is linked to the transmission, and it alone propels the car. The combustion engine is connected to a generator and is used purely to recharge the electric motor’s batteries.
“The time for delays and half-measures is over. The personal leadership of every Head of State or Government is needed to seize this moment to protect people and the planet from one of the most serious challenges ever to confront humanity.”
Ban Ki-moon warned in a statement, issued shortly after the G8 climate meetings, that if the world’s leaders “fail to act this year, they will have squandered a unique historical opportunity that may not come again”. But the Secretary General did welcome the G8 long term goal to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. But said that for it to be credible it requires “ambitious mid-term targets” and “clear baselines”.
So much is happening today in and around Italy as the G8 meeting is taking place. That is why we are trying out something new here on Green Blog. We will be reporting about all the climate-related news coming from the G8 camp with the help from Twitter.
Will the G8 leaders agree on a strong climate plan and a roadmap to the Copenhagen climate talks? Or will they fail once again? Stay tuned to find out!
“Vattenfall, which won with 39% of the vote (about 2000 votes cast), was nominated for “its mastery of spin on climate change, portraying itself as a climate champion while lobbying to continue business as usual, using coal, nuclear power, and pseudo-solutions such as agrofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS).”
The energy company also played a key role in setting up the World Business Summit on Climate Change through the Combat Climate Change – a lobby group established by Vattenfall to promote the “climate-friendly technologies” such as carbon capture and storage and nuclear power, which are the company’s preferred options for tackling climate change.”
Climate Greenwash Awards Coordinator Kenneth Haar congratulated Vattenfall for their hard (read: dirty) work which resulted in their first place. Haar also gave a special mention the Danish Government for giving these dirty corporations easy access to the climate talks:
John Hocevar, from Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior, writes about the assault on the Greenpeace staff blog:
“We are in Valletta Harbor in Malta. We learned that there were two vessels here owned by Fuentes, the tuna tycoon who controls over half the bluefin catch in the Mediterranean. We decided to board the vessel to inspect the cargo and documentation. Three women, Emma, Rita, and Liz, were the first to volunteer.
After the vessels refused our polite request to allow us access, Emma stepped on board to press the point. She was immediately attacked – they punched her, pulled her hair, picked her up and threw her overboard. One person hurled a large wooden pallet which whistled by our heads, and another tossed a full bucket of paint into one of our boats. If either of those had hit their intended targets, someone could have been seriously injured, but fortunately no damage was done.”
This all reminds me about the video which shows peaceful environmental activists who were protecting an old-growth forest in Tasmania, Australia, being violently attacked by timber workers.
George Monbiot, Europe’s leading green commentator, joins other environmentalists in attacking the recently passed energy and climate bill in USA. Monbiot says the bill “would be laughable anywhere else” but that unfortunately it’s the best we can expect from the USA.
“The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act (pdf) the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.
The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.”
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As evident from the failed G8 meeting at L’Aquila, Italy, the worst greenhouse gas polluters of the First World support cap-and –trade emissions trading scheme (ETS) approaches to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution despite contrary advice from top climate scientists and climate economists. In short, a Carbon Tax is the best way and Carbon Trading is flawed, will not work, is inequitable and will lead to a carbon pricing “bubble” and another market meltdown. Further, top climate scientists say that we must be urgently REDUCING GHG pollution rather than INCREASING it (see “
The Inter Press Service has an interesting 
George Monbiot, Europe’s leading green commentator, joins 
