Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Thank goodness for the Russians

June 12, 2013

It isn’t often that the Russian position is to be admired and even in this case they are doing – in my opinion – the right thing but for the wrong reasons. Anything which blocks the ridiculous UN Panel on Climate Change and its pointless and wasteful exercise in Bonn is welcome. Of course the Russians are only really concerned about the value of the Carbon credits they have stock-piled. Credits they received  for shutting down inefficient industries as being environmental “good guys” but where these were going to be shut down anyway.

This from AFP:

A key panel at UN climate talks in Bonn went into deep freeze on Tuesday as Russia ignored pleas to end a procedural protest, according to a webcast of the meeting and sources there. Supported by Belarus and Ukraine, Russia refused to let work start in the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), an important technical committee in the climate talks, more than a week after the 12-day negotiations began.

Observers said if the three countries did not back down, the future of the entire UN process to fight greenhouse-gas emissions would be at risk. “It’s a most unfortunate situation,” said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as delegates admitted the panel will most likely have achieved nothing by Friday’s close.

The Russians are incensed by what happened at the UNFCCC’s last big annual meeting, held in Doha, Qatar, last December. They complain they were ignored by the conference’s Qatari chairman, who gavelled through a deal that extended the Kyoto Protocol.

The decision at Doha hamstrung Moscow’s planned sale of 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon credits that Russia had amassed under the first round of the Kyoto Protocol.

It had gained these credits not through emissions reductions efforts, but after market pressure forced the closure of CO2-spewing factories following the fall of the Soviet Union.

……..

“If these three countries maintain their positions until 2015, they could wreck the entire process,” one observer warned AFP.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Politics | 1 Comment »

Parliamentary pigs and taxpayer troughs

June 11, 2013

Apparently pigs and humans share many genetic characteristics:

Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication – much like humans. 

Insights into the genetic code of pigs reveal the swine and its cousin the wild boar have much in common with humans.

from bellscorners.wordpress.com

This affinity between human and pig behaviour is demonstrated daily – and especially – by parliamentarians the world over. They don’t just feed – they gorge themselves. Perhaps it is the availability of the trough of taxpayers money which triggers our parliamentarians to revert to ancient type. Following the recent revelations about UK parliamentarians and their greed (Trougher Yeo), or in the US for example, comes this story from Australia:

The New South Wales Finance Minister Greg Pearce is facing further accusations about his parliamentary travel, with a Sydney newspaper reporting that he spent thousands of dollars on flights that coincided with sports events.

Last week, Premier Barry O’Farrell initiated an inquiry into claims the minister may have breached travel guidelines by taking a trip to Canberra that was initially booked through his office but was subsequently repaid by the minister.

The move came just days after he was accused of being drunk in parliament, prompting a public warning from the Premier.

Now the Daily Telegraph newspaper is reporting Mr Pearce has made at least $9,000 worth of trips to major sporting events around the country.

It says the events include the Melbourne Cup, AFL Grand Final and Australian Open, although Mr Pearce has denied the newspaper’s suggestions that he travelled to a V8 event on the Gold Coast last year.

I suppose they could all employ the defence that it is all in their genes and it is the fault of the taxpayers in providing them with the temptations which trigger their piggy instincts.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Australia, Behaviour, Corruption, Politics | 4 Comments »

Peer review for funding is different to that for publication

May 8, 2013

I note that battle lines are being drawn in the US between the parties concerning peer review and the NSF. The Republicans are questioning a number of NSF grants and demanding some justification of the review process for funding awards.  The Democrats are taking this as an heretical attack on SCIENCE. But I also note that one important distinction is not being drawn.

Choosing projects for funding from the public purse is fundamentally a political process and requires justification in simple terms to the providers of that funding (the taxpayer). While peer review – for all its faults – may be used to select projects the reviewers cannot escape the responsibility to justify their selections to the funders (and not just to the funding organisation – NSF – set up to channel the funds). Of course the NSF would prefer that they have complete freedom in disbursing the funds allocated to them in any way they please – but that won’t wash. The acceptance of public funds demands public accountability.

Peer review for publication is a very different thing. This should be in – engineering terms – a “Quality gate”. It should be a check of the quality of the work done and its independence. But here reviewers also carry  a “fiduciary” responsibility which is not always met. The reviewers carry an obligation of trust and ethical propriety not only to the journals they serve but also to the readers and subscribers of that journal. Where funding is involved this “fiduciary” responsibility extends to the providers of the funds. Unlike reviewers for funding selection who – I think – must be able to justify their choices to a wider audience than the “in-crowd”, the publication reviewer does not need to provide explanations for his opinions. But his opinions cannot be secret opinions – and that requires that such reviewers not be anonymous and that their opinions be available. Journal editors have the final responsibility for what is published or not. But reviewers should not escape being held responsible and accountable for their share of such decisions. They cannot escape from ownership and consequences of their own opinions and judgements on which decisions to publish or reject may be based.

Financial auditors cannot escape their fiduciary responsibilities (though they often escape accountability). Can the scientific community continue to take – or appear to take –  less responsibility than the financial community? Accountability is quite another matter.

ScienceInsider: 

The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. For good measure, it would also set in motion a process to determine whether the same criteria should be adopted by every other federal science agency.

The legislation, being worked up by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), represents the latest—and bluntest—attack on NSF by congressional Republicans seeking to halt what they believe is frivolous and wasteful research being funded in the social sciences. Last month, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that it pertains to economic development or national security. Smith’s draft bill, called the “High Quality Research Act,” would apply similar language to NSF’s entire research portfolio across all the disciplines that it supports.

Nature: 

In a brief 15-minute speech today, US President Barack Obama championed independence for the peer-review process, in front of an audience of elite researchers at the 150th annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC.

“In order for us to maintain our edge, we’ve got to protect our rigorous peer review system,” Obama said. His support comes on the heels of draft legislation, dated 18 April, that ScienceInsider reports is being discussed by the chairman of the US House of Representatives Science Committee, Lamar Smith (Republican, Texas). That legislation would overhaul peer review of grants submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and require the NSF director to certify each funded project as benefitting the economic or public health of the United States.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Science | Comments Off on Peer review for funding is different to that for publication

Reality bites as EU politicians slowly back away from costly energy policy

May 7, 2013

Reuters reports that EU politicians are to meet at a summit to reassess energy policy in the post-fracking world  (and  – but this is not to be admitted under pain of being shunned – a post-global-warming reality). I just note that politicians will be the most adept at changing direction aand taking credit for moving away from global warming orthodoxy. Many scientists will find their own exit strategies but many will find it difficult to find the rationale to move away from what has become their religion and their livelihood. The least adept at embracing the new reality will the “climate bureaucrats” whose comfortable existence depends upon the global warming religion continuing in force. And all those who have milked the EU subsidy regime for all its worth will not be pleased but they will just move on to the next scam.

(Reuters) – EU heads of state and government will seek ways to limit the impact of energy costs on European competitiveness at a summit this month, a draft document seen by Reuters showed.

European industry says it is disadvantaged because of the price it pays for energy compared with the United States, where the shale gas revolution has drastically lowered costs.

The document ahead of the May 22 EU summit, which has energy and taxation on the agenda, calls for examination of the impact of energy prices and costs and action to limit the effects.

One option is developing the European Union’s own shale gas resources, although this is not mentioned directly. Instead, the draft refers to safe and sustainable development of “indigenous sources of energy”.

Europe’s very different geography and land ownership would make it hard for the European Union to rival the United States in shale gas, but the executive European Commission is working on a framework to guide prospectors.

The leaders are expected to urge the Commission to analyze energy prices and costs in member states “with a particular focus on the EU’s competitiveness” against global rivals.

The draft also points to massive investment costs in boosting power generation and networks as likely to drive up energy prices.

Arguments over energy costs have featured prominently in political debate ahead of German elections and played a part in blocking a Commission proposal to boost carbon prices on the EU market.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), where carbon prices have sunk to record lows, is not on the draft agenda, but it could be debated on the sidelines of the summit, EU sources have said.

Efforts to repair that market are also a focus of attention for the European Parliament.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Energy, Politics | 1 Comment »

The Green mantra of “No we can’t” is unsustainable

April 28, 2013

It is a bright, sunny Sunday morning and I refuse to allow Green predictions of impending doom dent my optimism.

The Greens – no doubt – mean well.

Earnest, self-righteous, Malthusian, smug, often sanctimonious but rarely rational, the Greens of today are always ready to tell others what to do and what is best for them. From being – once upon a time – a constructive movement with practical and laudable objectives of improving local environments, it has developed into an authoritarian, arrogant, dogmatic, semi-religious and mildly fascist ideology. It has been perverted by scenarios of catastrophe and subverted by delusions of grandiose global ambitions. It is more concerned with forbidding behaviour it considers undesirable and of coercing people to comply. It has forgotten that humanity is an integral and necessary part of the environment.

I take the view that our descendants will be smarter than we are, that human ingenuity will meet the challenges to come and that change is the essence of humanity. Adapting to change is what has powered human evolution and it is in designing the changes to come which will drive our future evolution. Stagnation and maintaining a status quo in the name of conservation is essentially backward looking and an abdication of responsibility. I prefer to focus on what to do and not on what others should not do.

We can’t keep increasing energy use – Yes we can

We can’t keep using nuclear power – Yes we can

We can’t keep using gas – Yes we can

We can’t keep burning coal – Yes we can

We can’t burn fossil fuels – Yes we can

We can’t feed the world’s population – Yes we can

We can’t eliminate war – Yes we can

We can’t eradicate poverty – Yes we can

We can’t fight disease – Yes we can

We can’t maintain growth – Yes we can

We can’t use gene modified crops – Yes we can

We can’t use stem cells – Yes we can

We can’t adapt – Yes we can

We can’t depend upon human ingenuity – Yes we can

Without change there is no time and all is stasis and dead. The essence of humanity lies in meeting the challenges of change and not in futile attempts to stop change.

Green is also the colour of decay.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment »

Cameron’s War: Syria + Sarin = Iraq + WMD?

April 27, 2013

The war in Iraq is over. Everybody is pulling out of Afghanistan.

That a state of violent chaos continues in these countries is really of no consequence. But the subsequent consumption of weapons and ammunition by the US and the UK and in Nato will be a little too low and a growth in this consumption is something to be desired. The Libyan escapade was far too short and too limited in scope to contribute much to the consumption of materials and to the coffers of the weapons industry. And a vigorous and profitable weapons industry does require that that consumption should grow and not just be maintained or  – god forbid – be allowed to decline.

The weapons industry needs a new war. After all if the existing weapons and ammunition don’t get used up how can one sell any more in these times of financial cut-backs. France has Mali. But the US and the UK desperately need a new war. The US needs a new war for economic reasons.

Washington Post: As U.S. wars end, drop in spending hurts economy. A surprising 11.5 percent annualized drop in military spending is holding back the economic recovery, …

Obama would like to leave office having won a war of his own. Bush’s war on terror is a little unsatisfactory since it can never be won and it is not something Obama has created himself. Getting Osama provided little profit for the weapons industry. Cameron needs a new war for purely domestic reasons. He will have to face a new election in 2015. He needs to recreate his own image –  to try and live up to the heroic legacies of Winston Churchill in WW2, Margaret Thatcher in The Falklands and of Tony Blair in Iraq. Once upon a time, wars were declared when there was a genuine belief that no other options were available and a clear enemy could be defined. Bush and Blair (and Howard) and the neo-cons changed all that. They realised that the reasons for a desirable war could always be manufactured. Dossiers could be “sexed up” to invent enemies and provide evidence of their evil doings. Of course the “enemy” needed to be relatively weak so that a “victory” would not be jeopardised but sufficiently strong so that both air and ground forces could consume their equipment. Later if anybody found out that the reasons to go to war had been manufactured, they could just blame faulty intelligence.

It could be happening again in Syria. Cameron really needs to reinvent himself and if it takes a war to do that – then so be it. To just follow in the footsteps of “Slimy Tony” is a little demeaning, so this time the evidence for Syria and Sarin gas will have to be manufactured much more carefully than for Iraq and WMD.

BBC: The US president said there was “some evidence that chemical weapons have been used on the population in Syria, these are preliminary assessments, they’re based on our intelligence gathering.

“We have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use, there’s a range of questions about how, when, where these weapons have been used,” he said.

Mr Obama insisted more evidence was still needed and that there would be a “vigorous investigation”.

But proof of their use would be a “game changer”, he said.

“Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law.

“All of us, not just the United States, but around the world, have to recognise how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations,” he said.

….. Earlier Mr Cameron told the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson: “I choose my words carefully, but what I see does look very much like a war crime is being committed in our world, at this time, by the Syrian government.”

War has become just another tool of economic stimulus and for building the images of the war-leaders.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Syria, UK, US, War | 1 Comment »

“Gender neutrality” idiocy in Sweden

April 26, 2013

This is Sweden — (of course) where “gender neutrality” is a religion which transcends realities. Kill the inequality by enshrining the inequality. Vive la différence!

It seems to me that those lacking in intelligence often try to compensate by jumping onto some “politically correct” bandwagon without realising quite how illogical or irrational or ludicrous their pronouncements are. I suppose I am a little square but I take the position that being stupid may be genetic but intentionally displaying that stupidity is the height of obscenity.

I wonder if this “warrior for gender neutrality” – a certain Camille Trombetti –  has at least the intelligence to realise that she has just managed to define a new third gender of transsexual  “freaks” who need to be separated from other “normal” people.

Oh well! I suppose even these mentally disadvantaged must be protected in a caring and compassionate society.

The Local (SE): A Stockholm high school is set to open a third changing room for transsexual pupils and those who don’t want to define themselves as being male or female, a move believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

“It’s for people who aren’t comfortable being divided into gender stereotypes,” Camille Trombetti, who sits on the student council at Södra Latin gymnasium, told The Local. 
She said management at the central Stockholm high school at first welcomed the idea. 
“They were very positive and welcoming but we had to figure out how to do it practically,” said Trombetti, who underlined that the student council has long pushed to expand the rights of LGBT students.

How do they plan to identify who can use the new changing room? The next step could be to ensure that all such “freaks” be registered and bear a clearly visible identifying symbol – a yellow star perhaps.

Or why not have separate changing rooms for

  • women,
  • gay women,
  • women who would like to be men,
  • men who would like to be women,
  • gay men and
  • men.

Would that cover everybody to achieve “gender parity”?

And what should we do about short people?

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Sweden | Comments Off on “Gender neutrality” idiocy in Sweden

“Leaders” who can’t lead

April 18, 2013

Many, many years ago when I was first appointed a “manager”, my boss told me (and I don’t know if he was quoting someone):

Those who can lead , lead;
those who can’t lead, follow;
and those who think they can lead but can’t, blame others”

File:Congress-Graph.png

President Obama has a Democratic majority in the Senate to help him and a Republican majority in the House to carry along with him.  History will judge how much he accomplished during his terms but it is pretty clear – so far – that he takes few risks and has not been very successful in carrying his opponents towards any vision that he can communicate. For a US President I think “leadership” is manifested in being able to carry the country towards his vision even with the Senate and the House under the control of his opponents. That he has his own supporters with him is hardly any evidence of his leadership abilities. But there are 53 Democrats in the Senate . Yet he couldn’t even get all his own Democrats to stick their necks out, let alone the 7 Republicans he needed to get to the 60 required to make the cut.

Yesterday every single one of his proposals on gun control (nine in all) “failed to make the cut” in the Senate. Even the fairly innocuous measure of background checks on those wishing to purchase firearms was defeated. Inevitably the blame game began with an angry Obama blaming the Senate and the NRA and proclaiming that it was a shameful day for Washington.

Personally I think the US needs additional gun controls but that is not my point here. President Obama may prove to be an adequate administrator, but a leader he is not. He may well be one who thinks he can lead but can’t and so just ends up blaming others. A “follower” who ends up travelling in the wrong direction has few grounds for complaint.

Washington Post: 

President Obama’s ambitious effort to overhaul the nation’s gun laws in response to December’s school massacre in Connecticut suffered a resounding defeat Wednesday, when every major proposal he championed fell apart on the Senate floor.

It was a stunning collapse for gun-control advocates just four months after the deaths of 20 children and six adults in Newtown led the president and many others to believe that the political climate on guns had been altered in their favor. …… 

…..  One by one, the Senate blocked or defeated proposals that would ban certain military-style assault rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines.

But the biggest setback for the White House was the defeat of a measure to expand background checks to most gun sales. The Senate defied polls showing that nine in 10 Americans support the idea, which was designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” a visibly angry Obama said as he delivered his response to the nation.

The president was flanked by Newtown families, a scowling Vice President Biden and former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot in 2011 in Tucson and limped from the Oval Office to join Obama in the Rose Garden. ….. 

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Management, Politics, US | 1 Comment »

Getting confusing – Sweden’s Social Democrats are not the Sweden Democrats – or are they?

April 17, 2013

In Sweden the Sweden Democrats is a  (relatively) new anti-immigrant party with neo-nazi and skinhead roots which is growing in support and has managed to win seats in Parliament. Apart from being anti-immigrant and of blaming all problems in any area on immigration their Parliamentarians have mainly distinguished themselves by regularly getting involved in scandals (old-fashioned hooliganism and drug and alcohol abuse) and subsequently resigning.

Sweden’s Social Democrats on the other hand was founded in 1889, has its roots in the labour movement and was till 2003 the dominant party of Government through the 20th century. It is the party of Tage Erlander and Olof Palme and the largest party in the country and can be credited for most of the social advances made in Sweden. For a left-leaning party they have been remarkable in being very pragmatic and supportive of private manufacturing industry. It is currently in opposition but ought – in the normal course of affairs – to return to power in the 2014 elections.

Unless they can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Right now they seem to be keen on showing the world all their dirty washing and looking for ways to lose the next election.

It is still a party where party decisions are made in back rooms (no longer smoke-filled) by the few who exert the real political power. Within the party it is old fashioned power politics which matter and there is little trace of any real democracy. Lately the twists and turns over getting rid of Mona Sahlin as leader, appointing Håkan Juholt in a coup and then replacing him after a media campaign with Stefan Löfven, indicates that the internal antagonists have been well matched with the advantage shifting between the right/left and the left/left wings of the party. (All the factions are left of centre of course but the field is wide)!

But during the last week the party has shown itself as being particularly inept and the “dirt” from the battle for power has manifested itself as seeming to be racist and anti-immigrant! They appointed an immigrant to their governing board and then the internal fight began and the unfortunate Omar Mustafa was forced to resign less than a week later. But the double whammy for the Social Democrats is that in addition to their dirty washing becoming visible they now look exactly like the party they love to hate – the covertly racist and overtly anti-immigrant Swedish Democrats!

(If I were to be very cynical it could even seem that the Social Democrats are trying to win some of the anti-immigrant vote back from the Sweden Democrats).

 The Local: Embattled Social Democrat Omar Mustafa, who also chairs Sweden’s Islamic Association (Islamiska förbundet), resigned from all his duties with the party on Saturday night, bowing to calls from within the party that he leave the governing board.

“The party leadership believes that having a mandate within the party and within Muslim civil society is incompatible. The party leadership’s view isn’t only regrettable, it’s also a frightening signal to Muslims and other Social Democrats who are people of faith,” he wrote in an open letter. 

“I therefore feel that the party leadership doesn’t have confidence in me and have forced me to resign from all my duties in the party.”

Mustafa, 28, was chosen to sit on the governing board of the left-of-centre opposition party at last weekend’s party congress. Mustafa’s announcement came following a Saturday night crisis meeting among Social Democrats in Stockholm who had previously lobbied to have him included in the party’s governing board.

“Knowing what we know now and considering how events unfolded, the situation became unsustainable. I therefore urged him to resign,” Veronica Palm, chair of the Social Democrats in Stockholm, told TT.  Palm explained that she and her colleagues had nominated Mustafa to the Social Democrats’ governing board because he’d “done a good job” for the party in Stockholm.

The Local continues in its next article:

.. Demonstrator Malika Moor has supported the Social Democrats for 36 years, but said she wouldn’t vote for the party today.

“I don’t understand why it’s come to this. It might be because his name is Omar, because he’s an immigrant, or a Muslim. I really want the Social Democrats to explain this to us,” she told TT.

Meanwhile, 29 active Social Democrats signed an open letter published on Tuesday in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper taking issue with the party’s management of the situation.

According to the authors, it’s unacceptable that someone elected at a party congress should be forced to resign due to unfounded criticism from party colleagues and media hype.

They demand the party leadership distance itself from the accusations directed toward Mustafa and express their confidence in him. The authors also want those who published the unfounded accusations to apologize.

“We state with sorrow and anger that Mustafa was forced to leave the party’s governing board,” they wrote.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Politics, Sweden | Comments Off on Getting confusing – Sweden’s Social Democrats are not the Sweden Democrats – or are they?

EU begins “repatriation of climate policy”?

April 16, 2013

It is probably the best thing that has happened for German electricity consumers for some time as German power prices fell by 3% as a reaction to the vote in the European Parliament. Even the EU Parliament – which has long been known as a “politically correct” follower of global warming orthodoxy – today balked at the  prospect of “backloading” and postponing the introduction of 900 million “carbon allowances”. This had been proposed by the climate fanatics in an effort to increase the declining price of these allowances and the possible collapse of the entire carbon trading market.

It is to be hoped that it really is the “beginning of the “repatriation of EU climate policy” which has been so wrong and so stubborn and so stupid for so long. But the religious environmentalism is still pretty fanatic and they will not give up their cherished dogma and their entrenched positions and their carbon scams so easily.

The Parliament:

Controversial ‘backloading’ proposal rejected by MEPs

The European parliament has rejected proposals for ‘backloading’ to postpone the auctioning of 900 million carbon allowances for 2013-2015, in a bid to help boost the price of ‘polluters permits’.

The proposals have been much debated, with some believing that any interference in the EU’s carbon market – the biggest in the world – could undermine confidence in the emissions trading scheme (ETS).

However, others feel that the temporary backloading solution would give the ETS, which is considered to be a flagship policy in the EU’s climate change agenda, a much needed boost, increasing carbon prices and in turn stimulating investment and innovation.

On Tuesday, parliament rejected the proposals by a narrow margin, 334 MEPs voted in favour, 315 against, and 63 abstained. Carbon prices immediately fell by 44 per cent to a record low of €2.63 following the vote.

Matthias Groote, parliament’s rapporteur on the timing of auctions, said “I deeply regret today’s vote. It is the beginning of the repatriation of climate policy.”

Reuters reports: 

Traders took the lack of political support as a signal to sell, driving the market down to its lowest yet. Immediately after the vote, carbon prices dropped by around 40 percent to 2.63 euros a tonne. They were trading at 3.15 euros, down 33.4 percent, by 1423 GMT.

“The carbon market is now in a coma, until a clear intervention takes place,” an emissions trader said. 

The Commission’s backloading proposal was meant to be a quick fix that could be agreed by the end of last year.

But it exposed deep divisions, with interest groups intensively lobbying members of the European Parliament.

Hedegaard, together with analysts and some in the energy sector have warned that failure to agree on EU steps would spur fragmentation in environmental policy as member nations move to safeguard their own green targets. Britain, for instance, already has a carbon price floor.

Of course the “loony left” were appalled:

“This kind of politics plays into the hands of climate sceptics. The rejection of the backloading proposal weakens the EU emissions trading system and puts our climate goals at risk.”

S&D deputy Linda McAvan said that the UK Tory party played an instrumental part in rejecting support for the EU’s carbon market. 
She said, “In a tight vote in the full session of the parliament in Strasbourg, most Tory MEPs chose to side with climate sceptics once again and undermine their own government’s climate strategy.” 
She continued, “They put their fanatic euro-scepticism ahead of British jobs and our environment,” adding, “This vote is a catastrophe for the environment.”
Greens MEP Keith Taylor also condemned the UK’s Tory party, as well as UKIP, saying, “Some MEPs want to leave the EU carbon market to sort itself out, but this simply won’t work.
“The ETS is flawed and leaving it alone won’t get us anywhere towards improving it. By opposing necessary steps to fix these problems Tory and UKIP MEPs are effectively signalling their desire to destroy the EU’s flagship climate change policy.”
Climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard also expressed “regret” about the decision by parliament, and said that the proposal will now go back to the environment committee for “further consideration”. 
She added, “The commission remains convinced that backloading would help restore confidence in the EU ETS in the short term until we decide on more structural measures.
“We will now reflect on the next steps to ensure that Europe has a strong EU ETS.”
Josche Muth, secretary general of the European renewable energy council, said that the decision “renders the ETS impotent as a tool for shifting investments into less polluting generation technologies”.

But at least some sanity is returning

However, it wasn’t just the 315 MEPs who voted against the proposals that disagree with the proposals. 
BusinessEurope also welcomed the decision, with the director general Markus J. Beyrer saying that, “The European parliament expressed its support for a market-based instrument and rejected political interference. 
“It is time to move past the divisive and unhelpful debate around backloading and focus on the real priorities for the EU: how to secure a cost-competitive, secure and climate-friendly energy policy for 2030.”

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Business, Climate, European Union, Politics | Comments Off on EU begins “repatriation of climate policy”?

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »