Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/16/2010 1:00:30 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Business groups across the European Union reacted angrily to moves by German, French and British ministers to raise substantially the targets for carbon emissions cuts.
Business leaders called the proposals “absurd”, “alarming” and “naive”, after the ministers wrote in the Financial Times on Thursday that the EU should cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2020, instead of the current target of 20 per cent.
The ministers said it would provide green industries with “a vital head start” and made “good business sense”.
Arnaldo Abruzzini, general secretary of Eurochambres, the association of European chambers of commerce and industry which represents more than 19m companies, said: “We are very alarmed by this. The arguments they are using are biased by a certain perspective that European industry does not share.”
Gordon Moffat, director-general of steelmakers’ organisation Eurofer, said the ministers were “absurd” to suggest that because emissions had fallen during the recession, it would be easier to meet the higher target. Companies had been damaged by the recession and would struggle to recover.
“In fact, the financial pressures we suffered will mean it is more difficult to arrive even at the lower 20 per cent target,” he said.
Terry Scuoler, chief executive of EEF, the UK manufacturers’ organisation, said: “The EU already has the toughest targets in the world, but ... the very nations against whom we are said to be competing [on renewable energy] – China, Japan and the US – are hardly falling over themselves to set targets.
“It is therefore not clear that there needs to be a correlation between competing in the low carbon global marketplace and setting a tougher and unilateral target for reducing emissions.”
Many businesses were surprised and frustrated at the reopening of an issue they thought had been shelved after the Commission was forced to admit in May that the time was probably not ripe for such a move.
“A 30 per cent reduction will be difficult to deliver under the current regulatory framework. It would require complete overhaul of [the EU emissions trading scheme],” said Chris Stubbs, director at WSP, an environmental consultancy.
Businesses and consumers were already “struggling to tackle high levels of fiscal debt while justifying the cost of renewable energy”, said Ben Warren of Ernst & Young. “The support of Europe’s taxpayers will therefore be crucial.”
But Ian Cheshire, group chief executive of Kingfisher, said: “The move to a 30 per cent target is a welcome one and may prove to be a very positive step towards achieving a global deal [on climate change] in Cancun this December.”
He said there was “a strong appetite among the public to reduce” their emissions.
Greenhouse theory is pure bunkum.
No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Harvard astrophysicist dismisses AGW theory, challenges peers to 'take back climate science'
It Is Impossible For A 100 ppm Increase In Atmospheric CO2 Concentration To Cause Global Warming
The C02 scheme is nothing but a tax. EU wants to raise it.
Statistics prove that since the EUrotopian carbon credit fraud was instituted, no detectable decreases in CO2 levels have occurred on the Continent.
yitbos
Chinese firms cashing in on EU carbon trade
Absolutely suicidal! Note for instance the last paragraph. Insanity!
Destroying HFC-23 only costs around €0.17 per tonne of CO2, and yet Europeans are paying around €11 - the price of one credit - to destroy one tonne, said Fionnuala Walravens of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an NGO. She called on the EU to remove projects that destroy HFC-23 from the EU ETS.
If we could raise and lower atmospheric levels of CO2 at will it wouldn’t affect the climate. It would have to be millions of times more than the offhand contributions of CO2 man is responsible for now. Oxygen breathing life forms would die of asphyxiation before the level of CO2 got that high.
Rather than an obvious tax on gasoline, visible at the pump, they tax carbon production at the manufacturing level and all levels up the line.
A VAT on carbon.
yitbos
A very appropriate way to put it. It casts a tremendously bigger net than a gasoline tax alone would.
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