Feb 16 2007
Let’s have a target
The BBC went into ectasies today because the world’s legislators - that’s the people without government jobs! - have met and said the world must now have a target to hit on carbon emissions.
What kind of planet do these people live on? Let us assume the governments also go in for this kind of gesture, it may well be just like Kyoto. Some of the EU countries who have been keenest on the target have been the ones likely to miss it by the most. It’s not what you say or what targets you set that will take the trick. It’s what you do and how you do it.
Our government is especially profligate with energy - just look at all the street lights left on long after most people are in bed, electric signs, lights burning in?? unused offices, heating systems left on, and the advance of air conditioning in government buildings. Try living the brand first before posturing to the rest of us.
??
We will only reduce emissions of Co2 if everyone makes an effort to change tjhe way they live, or to re-equip themselves with lower carbon producing heating, cooling,production and transport systems. Setting a target does?? nothing to achieve that. What matters is what happens next.
If a Labour MP or two????are going to claim for travelling the equivalent of more than twice round the world in a year, why should we believe other Labour MPs saying now we can see a way to save the planet?
RSS Feed
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Has anyone actually come up with any sort of a protocol to decide which nation is responsible for what carbon yet?
Say we give a young Aussie lad a 2 year working visa, he flies from Sydney to London with a Malaysian airline, the works here for 2 years before heading home. Who’s carbon is it? Australia’s, Malaysia’s or the UK’s?
What about if I import 5 tonnes of Granny Smith apples from the RSA, but use a Japanese shipping company? Is it RSA, Japanese or UK carbon?
I ask because young Miliband was suggesting in a speech last summer that the carbon footprint caused by importing goods to the UK should be our responsibility. How is this going to affect economic development in poorer nations? Would we be shooting ourselves in the foot by restricting imports from further afield?
How far do we actually want to go with measuring carbon ‘footprints’ and trading ‘pollution rights’? Is it conceivable that we will have to ’stop’ one day because we’ve ‘run out’ of carbon? Whilst a load of bureaucrats and politcans try to save us from a crisis of their own creation?
‘He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast of the number of his name’ (Revelation 13,16-17)
At risk of sounding like a religious nutcase a carbon atom has 6 electrons, 6 protons and 6 neutrons, its number could be expressed as 666. I’m not religious, but I think personal carbon trading is asking for it.