[untothislast]

I just read this in the news section. It was reprinted from the UK 'Independent' newspaper.

'Tony Blair has warned world leaders they have less than seven years to save the planet. But he ruled out a "ticket tax" on British airline passengers to combat global warming.'

This manages to be both pathetic, and bathetic, all at once. If you're still looking for leadership on things like climate change, or peak oil - or have ever felt that 'they' must have some sort of plans in hand to deal with these issues - forget it. They're just crazy.

[Doly]

Bathetic??

[Wildwell]

Aviation is without doubt the trickiest problem. Not only is there no readily available cheap fuel to fly planes on, but the nub of the problem is one country cannot ‘tax fuel’. Why? Tankering for a start, where a plane fuels up cheaper fuel elsewhere, the fuel is just shipped over a distance. Don’t forget a very significant proportion of the weight of an aircraft is fuel, so all you would succeed in doing is burning more fuel and making the problem worse! Next up, in a globalized world, if you start taxing the fuel airlines might decide to avoid your country, meaning you make travel to is less attractive. The business simply goes elsewhere; you don’t achieve anything by it.

He says the best way is to make aircraft more efficient. Well, there’s no sector where Jevon’s Paradox applies more than aviation. You can see it with the low cost airlines, how they bought in more efficient planes, lowered the prices and produced more traffic! Worse still, aviation is 2-5 times more polluting because of altitude and undermines ground transportation.

The airlines sector is incapable of making the changes needed, they are a business. The only way to solve climate change and keep flying at the growing rates is for every other sector to cut their emissions to nil or just fly less. This form of transport is fine in moderation.

It would be nice to think that the people that inhabit this planet, their only home in the vast area of space where there is no escape might look at this as a responsibility. Instead, I rather think that if we have 7 years left to save to planet we will fail. Anyway, I’m taking the train to Europe in 10 days (French Nuclear/hydro power) so don’t look at me.

[untothislast]

Aviation is without doubt the trickiest problem.

This is a government fond of making all the right noises about global concerns, but does little or nothing to address them - especially if it raises any conflict with the demands of big business. At the moment, they're making a pitch for airport expansion in the UK, which is ridiculous both from a climate change and a peak oil point of view.

bathetic?

Sorry to be arcane. 'Bathetic' just means having the quality of bathos (a descent from the grand to the commonplace - or from 'lofty' to 'ludicrous').

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

Tony knows he'll be retired well before then.

If you want to save the planet (for human habitation) you'll have to end industrialism, good luck.

[Wildwell]

Well that was my point about the ‘sick of climate change’ thread the other day. We’re forever hearing politicians jumping up and down about it, but they do very little, in fact they tend to do quite the opposite. As you say, it’s usually big business and lobby groups, the extreme motoring whingers in particular.

Anyway, the forthcoming Iran war will change a few things – rationing and huge price hikes here we come. It will take a lot of people enthusiasm away from ever expanding roads and aviation. As I said, these things are fine in moderation, but we’ve opened ourselves right up now. Will there be a war in Iran? Of course there will! It’s either that or letting Iran get the nukes and there isn’t any way they are going to be allowed to get them, so military intervention will be the only way. Kiss goodbye to life as we know it.

[Jake_old]

Well the evil / crazy communists got nukes but didn't go around using them, the perfectly sane and rational Americans got them and used them. If the arguments that Wildwell suggests are used in order to attack Iran, it is then official, the world is run by madmen.

Agree with everything else though.

[sameu]

start the countdown

[Yavicleus]

Only 7 years?

Guess I'll go on that all-bacon diet after all.

[pilferage]

The planet is fine. The people are fucked.

[tmazanec1]

Don't forget the bourse. That is another reason for war.

[Longsword]

I kinda wish I was ultra-religious. Bush and his kind do not need to worry about the future of economy, environment or anything else at all, since at any time a supernatural being will wave his hand and fix everything.

Bush and his supporters will be whisked into Paradise, and rest of us will burn in eternal flames -fitting end for us for not blindly supporting him.

When this is your fundamental belief there is little need to worry about something as insignificant as the biosphere or leaving something for the future generations.

[Gorm]

Some truly belive we live in the end of times, so in their minds, there will be no future generations. So why should anything be spared to them?

[Dukat_Reloaded]

If there is only 7 years left, why even bother then. I think planes waste too much fuel, and we don't need them anyway, we can do what we did before we used airplanes, we used ships. Ships are much safer, you don't have to worry about terroists as much, I say ships are the way to go.

[LadyRuby]

Any explanation about the magic of 7 years? Any articles describing this?

[backstop]

Members here are exceptional in their awareness of PO and its interaction with GW,
so our decisions regarding career prospects and income are similarly exceptional.

So my question is this, among your circle of freinds and acquaintances what tiny percentage is voluntarily putting their personal prospects at risk by stringently cutting their GHG output ?

Transpose that dynamic to the world's nations, where Sweden is the only one committed to ending oil usage in 15 years, and that's 1 out of around 182.

From this perspective, Blair's refusal to hammer air travel without global agreement that others will follow suit, becomes wholly explicable.

And any diplomat would tell him that to follow Sweden's example now would reduce, not raise, the UK's influence on those nations most resistant to change.

His choice of 7 years is interesting - it points to 2012 - a year of no particular scientific climate-predictions, but one key diplomatic one - namely the replacement of the Kyoto Protocol with something new.

Specifically, something that is global in its participation, efficient in implementing the advice of the scientific community, and, to be negotiable and practicable, equitable in the sense of moving towards per capita parity of nations' GHG emissions entitlements.
It will also, undoubtedly, include the right to trade those emissions entitlements to maximize the endurable rate of change.

Thus I well agree that Blair's message appears grossly inconsistant, but, in reality, the international debate over what replaces Kyoto has begun, and he has just stated the priority the UK gives the issue.

regards,

Backstop

[untothislast]

Sadly, we don't have enough time now for international agreements, or the establishment of 'level playing fields' - especially if we're looking at projections of 7 year timeframes. Sometimes countries have to act unilaterally, if they really believe in the importance of their own message.

And Blair doesn't. He's just trying to leave a historical legacy for himself as a global statesman. As we say over here, 'he's all mouth and no trousers'.

Take this choice piece from George Monbiot's site. Apparently, the business community themselves recently came to the government, en masse, to ask for the imposition of environmental standards, to create such a 'level playing field' for future business practise - and Blair's mob refused.

' . . . At a conference organised by the Building Research Establishment, I witnessed an extraordinary thing: companies demanding tougher regulations, and the government refusing to grant them.

Environmental managers from BT and John Lewis (which owns Waitrose) complained that without tighter standards that everyone has to conform to, their companies put themselves at a disadvantage if they try to go green. “All that counts”, the man from John Lewis said, “is cost, cost and cost.” If he’s buying eco-friendly lighting and his competitors aren’t, he loses. As a result, he said, “I welcome the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, as it will force retailers to take these issues seriously.” Yes, I heard the cry of the unicorn: a corporate executive, welcoming a European directive.

And from the government? Nothing. Elliot Morley, the minister for climate change, proposed to do as little as he could get away with. The officials from the Department of Trade and Industry, to a collective groan from the men in suits, insisted that the measures some of the companies wanted would be “an unwarranted intervention in the market”.

It was unspeakably frustrating. The suits had come to unveil technologies of the kind which really could save the planet. The architects Atelier Ten had designed a cooling system based on the galleries of a termite mound. By installing a concrete labyrinth in the foundations, they could keep even a large building in a hot place – like the arts centre they had built in Melbourne – at a constant temperature without air conditioning. The only power they needed was to drive the fans pushing the cold air upwards, using 10% of the electricity required for normal cooling systems.'


http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/09 ... side-down/

[MfromAmsterdam]

Blair points to 2012 off course. Want to know what HAS to be in place in that year? The NEW WORLD ORDER. If you want to know what that entails go to www.senderberl.com or www.new-enlightment.com for example and search then even futher. Look and thou shalt find!

All the best and good luck,

Michel

ps. I too think that Iran will be attacked very soon by certain Western states. Be it because of the oilbourse, WMD, whatever. It will change every present dynamic in the world.

[backstop]

Sadly, we don't have enough time now for international agreements, or the establishment of 'level playing fields' - especially if we're looking at projections of 7 year timeframes. Sometimes countries have to act unilaterally, if they really believe in the importance of their own message.

And Blair doesn't. He's just trying to leave a historical legacy for himself as a global statesman. As we say over here, 'he's all mouth and no trousers'.

Take this choice piece from George Monbiot's site. Apparently, the business community themselves recently came to the government, en masse, to ask for the imposition of environmental standards, to create such a 'level playing field' for future business practise - and Blair's mob refused.

Untothislast - Only in the fact that we have 7 years to establish a new global treaty before Kyoto expires do I agree with Blair - we have that much time and there is no higher priority than using it effectively.

I would agree with you that there is much that could (should) be done today to set precedents of change on a unilateral basis - sorry if I gave the impression that Blair's inaction has my support - it hasn't - I began active campaigning, formal study, and professional consultancy on these issues back in the '80s.

With regard to UK industry calling for effective regulation, a rather strong letter was sent to Blair by leading industrialists and city firms prior to the G8 - (encouraged by Prince Charles "Business in the Community" organization).
It was capped by a still stronger one sent by business leaders at Davos last year -
In the event, timely bombs saved the US from any serious negotiation of the issue at Gleneagles.

Yet for all that the prime international dynamic has been "Who can ignore Global Warming & Climate Destabilization the longest"

with the prize being the date to be agreed for Convergence to all nations' per-capita parity of emissions' entitlements,

things are now starting to move - Public opinion is shifting globally - weather hits, on infrastructure, production and economic stability, are intensifying, and new official positions are being taken -

for example, the recent UK Govt report acknowledged the need for C&C, the PEW Centre (prime right-wing US think tank) is calling for mandatory targetted cuts, and the Whitehouse has acknowledged that Global Warming threatens Polar Bears !

What is pitiful to my mind is the near total absence of public discussion among the NGOs of the requisite framework for the vital global treaty.
Their silence, whether through corruption or incompetence, serves only the interests of the oil-based status quo.

regards,

Backstop

[untothislast]

Backstop, don't worry - I never actually formed the impression you were part of some sort of Tony Blair cheer-squad. Perish the thought.

It just seems to me, that these guys are more than well aware of the seriousness of our predicament, yet choose to play around with talks of 'conferences' and 'targets' and 'resolutions' without ever taking the actual actions required at this stage. And I don't think they ever will.

Here are a few ideas of my own, for starters:

I want to see unnecessary (we can all decide the definition) flights banned. From tomorrow.

I want to see requirements for new-build housing, incorporating the latest energy saving/insulation measures, enshrined in law.

I want to see SUVs parked outside supermarkets, where the owner has driven 5km for a litre of semi-skimmed milk, attacked by vigilante gangs armed with shoulder launched grenades. etc etc.

Blair and his like, are just messing about. A far as they're concerned, even if the planet grinds to a halt through inaction, absolutely nothing must stand in the way of prolonging every last opportunity for business to make money.