European Union to charge Airlines for Carbon Emissions

December 21, 2011

All airlines flying to and from EU airports will buy permits under the Europe’s emissions trading scheme, from 1 January 2012.

Reuters
December 21, 2011

Europe‘s highest court gave unreserved backing on Wednesday to a hotly contested EU law charging airlines for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe, a decision likely to escalate tensions with the United States and other trading partners.

All airlines flying to and from EU airports will buy permits under the European Union‘s emissions trading scheme from 1 January 2012, the European court of justice ruled.

“The directive including aviation activities in the EU’s emissions trading scheme is valid,” the court said in a statement.

“Application of the emissions trading scheme to aviation infringes neither the principles of customary international law at issue nor the open-skies agreement.”

Wednesday’s ruling was in line with expectations after a senior adviser to the court issued a preliminary opinion in October finding the EU legislation did not infringe the sovereignty of other states and was compatible with international agreements.

The case was initially brought to the London high court of justice by the Air Transport Association of America, American Airlines and United Continental, but the London court referred it to the court in Luxembourg.

Critics of the EU rules have argued that under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, countries agreed to address emissions from aviation jointly through the UN’s aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

More than a decade on, talks have not yielded significant progress and the European court of justice said the EU was within its rights to take unilateral action.

The EU already sets a cap on the level of emissions allowed from factories and power plants. Emitters exceeding their quotas must buy carbon permits, while those within their limits can sell any unused allowances.

While emissions from most other sectors have been falling, those from airlines have doubled since 1990 and could triple by 2020, commission figures show.

The EU carbon market pared losses immediately after the ruling, but stayed negative.

Peter Liese, a German Christian democrat who led discussions in the European parliament on the emissions law, said that including airlines was a modest proposal, which had won unanimous support from the European council of ministers.

“I cannot imagine a situation where the European parliament amends legislation just because of pressure from China or the United States,” he said. “We (in Europe) represent 500 million people and the biggest market in the world.”

But the US, where environmental legislation has become a focus of disagreement betweenDemocrats and the Republicans, has reacted angrily.

Proposed legislation in the US Congress, if passed, would make it illegal to comply with the EU law.

In a letter sent to EU officials last week, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the US secretary of transportation, Raymond LaHood, urged the EU to reconsider and re-engage with the rest of the world.

“Absent such willingness on the part of the EU, we will be compelled to take appropriate action,” they said in the letter.

The court ruling is final, although there is some flexibility in how the regulation may be applied. Airlines initially would only be required to pay for 15% of the carbon they emit and would be allocated free allowances to cover the other 85%.

The law also allows for “equivalent measures”, meaning incoming flights to Europe would be exempt if the nation from which they came had measures in place to offset the international emissions of the route.

Depending on decisions by airlines on how much to pass on to customers, the European commission has calculated that costs per passenger could rise between €2 and €12, much less than the €100 per allowance penalty it would impose on airlines that do not comply.

Many airlines have given much higher assessments of the cost and said the EU was being unfair.

Singapore Airlines spokesman Nicholas Ionides said the EU was imposing its Emissions Trading Scheme unilaterally and called for a global solution.

“It could also cripple competitiveness as it offers carriers operating through hubs closer to Europe an unfair advantage,” Ionides said.

Qantas said the “patchwork approach” was flawed, but its policy was to comply with carbon law wherever it operated.

A spokesman said it was still finalising policy, but anticipated costs would be passed on to customers.

Filed under World Tagged with , , ,

Australia Officially Under Carbon Tax Tyranny

November 8, 2011 1 Comment

According to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard - who came into office swearing there would not be a tax on carbon emissions – expected consequences include higher prices for consumers and a price tab for industries of more than $380 million annually.

AFP
November 8, 2011

Australia’s parliament approved a controversial pollution tax on Tuesday, after years of bitter debate over the reform which is aimed at lowering carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

Cheers and applause broke out as the upper house Senate passed the Clean Energy Act, requiring Australia’s coal-fired power stations and other major emitters to “pay to pollute” from July 1 next year.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was the culmination of a “quarter of a century of scientific warnings, 37 parliamentary inquiries and years of bitter debate and division.”

“Today Australia has a price on carbon as the law of our land,” she said as the tax, which scraped through the lower house last month, was approved by the Senate in a 36-32 vote.

“Today we have made history — after all of these days of debate and division, our nation has got the job done.”

Gillard said the scheme — which will levy a price of Aus$23 (US$23.80) per tonne on carbon pollution before moving to an emissions trading scheme in 2015 — would begin to address “the devastating impacts of climate change”.

She said the reforms, which include investments in renewable energy sources, would result in Australia cutting its carbon emissions by 160 million tonnes in 2020 — equivalent to taking 45 million cars off the road.

The government hopes the levy will create economic incentives for the biggest polluters to reduce their emissions but acknowledges that businesses will factor the carbon price into the cost of their goods and services.

To offset this, much of the revenue raised from the tax in the first three years will provide for higher family payments, pension boosts and income tax cuts to help pay for the higher cost of living.

Only New Zealand and the European Union have taken comparable economy-wide action by introducing cap-and-trade schemes, and the tax will put mining-driven Australia at the forefront of efforts in the Asia-Pacific.

“This is a big achievement, coming at an opportune time,” said Professor John Quiggin, an economics and tax specialist from the University of Queensland.

“With South Korea planning to follow suit, momentum towards carbon emission reductions in the Asia Pacific is starting to build.”

Tuesday’s senate vote caps a tumultuous period in Australian politics, largely centred on how the vast nation, which is among the world’s worst per capita polluters, should tackle carbon emissions linked to global warming.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd harnessed an unprecedented wave of popular support for climate change action in 2007, winning elections in a landslide after campaigning to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and take other green measures.

But his plans were frustrated by entrenched conservative opposition which led to him shelving a proposed emissions trading scheme, damaging his credibility. He was ousted by Gillard in a Labor party-room coup in 2010.

Gillard went to the subsequent election promising there would be no carbon tax, but later backflipped, saying it was a necessary first step towards a flexible carbon pricing scheme.

Australia is heavily reliant on its coal exports, and thousands have rallied against the levy which they argue will raise living costs, cut jobs and ultimately prove ineffective.

Industry associations says Australia’s scheme is punitive and priced far higher than the European Union system.

Earlier media projections indicated that mining giants BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata would be liable for a combined $380 million annually at an earlier price of $20 a tonne.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea is pursuing a “cap without trade” scheme involving some 450 companies from next year in preparation for a full emissions trading scheme (ETS) from January 2015, but Japan shelved national ETS plans late last year.

China is considering a pilot ETS programme in some provinces and while there are sub-national schemes in some parts of North America no broad-scale action has been taken in the United States.

The timing of the vote is significant, representing a firm commitment ahead of high-level UN climate talks in South Africa later this month that are being called a “make or break” meeting for legally binding carbon emission reduction targets.

Filed under World Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Carbon Tax Scam Shifts from Climate to Poverty

September 21, 2010

Paul Joseph Watson

As the science behind global warming becomes increasingly discredited and its proponents are exposed as eugenics-obsessed control freaks who care only about destroying freedom, the effort to make Americans pay a global tax has shifted from the justification of climate change to that of poverty.

As we documented on Sunday, leaders from 60 nations will be meeting at the UN this week to push a tax on world financial transactions, formally launching a massive program to bankrupt the middle class and enrich the coffers of global government.

Separately, the leaders of Spain and France are also now calling for new “financing sources” with which to build the infrastructure of a one world government. Remember, this has nothing to do with poverty. As the leaked Danish text revealed, global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have no intention of handing the money looted from American taxpayers to poorer countries, they will merely continue to keep the third world in bondage with crippling loans while withholding the real wealth for themselves.

“We need to make more effort to look for alternative financing sources … that aren’t as vulnerable as the budgets of developed countries when faced with crises like the one we’re seeing today,” said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

“Both he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for some form of financial tax to raise money to combat poverty, an idea already rejected by the International Monetary Fund and many Group of 20 major developed and developing nations,” reports Reuters.

Although climate change still gets a token mention in the call for a global tax, the justification of poverty has firmly overtaken it as the primary ruse via which globalists plan to conduct a massive transfer of wealth – not to poor nations – but to their own back pockets.

As the science behind global warming becomes increasingly discredited and its proponents are exposed as eugenics-obsessed control freaks who care only about destroying freedom, the effort to make Americans pay a global tax has shifted from the justification of climate change to that of poverty.

As we documented on Sunday, leaders from 60 nations will be meeting at the UN this week to push a tax on world financial transactions, formally launching a massive program to bankrupt the middle class and enrich the coffers of global government.

Separately, the leaders of Spain and France are also now calling for new “financing sources” with which to build the infrastructure of a one world government. Remember, this has nothing to do with poverty. As the leaked Danish text revealed, global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have no intention of handing the money looted from American taxpayers to poorer countries, they will merely continue to keep the third world in bondage with crippling loans while withholding the real wealth for themselves.

“We need to make more effort to look for alternative financing sources … that aren’t as vulnerable as the budgets of developed countries when faced with crises like the one we’re seeing today,” said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

“Both he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for some form of financial tax to raise money to combat poverty, an idea already rejected by the International Monetary Fund and many Group of 20 major developed and developing nations,” reports Reuters.

Although climate change still gets a token mention in the call for a global tax, the justification of poverty has firmly overtaken it as the primary ruse via which globalists plan to conduct a massive transfer of wealth – not to poor nations – but to their own back pockets.

As the recently leaked UN blueprint revealed, the elite are determined to use a global tax as just one of the weapons in their arsenal to dismantle the middle class of richer nations.

In their own words, the globalists talk of their aim to “limit and redirect the aspirations for a better life of rising middle classes around the world,” in other words to reduce the standard of living for the middle classes in Western Europe and America.

As the opening session paper puts it: “The real challenge comes from the exponential growth of the global consumerist society driven by ever higher aspirations of the upper and middle layers in rich countries as well as the expanding demand of emerging middle-class in developing countries. Our true ambition should be therefore creating incentives for the profound transformation of attitudes and consumption styles.”

This is globalist talk for dismantling the middle classes by looting them with global taxes and consumption levies in the name of alleviating poverty in poorer areas of the world and stopping climate change. However, as we have already explained, this is merely a ruse. The money will not be “redistributed” to the poor, it will be swallowed up by the same globalist institutions running the scam.

To achieve their goal, the UN will have to oversee “nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the global economy,” states the report. In other words, economic growth will wither and be replaced by a “green economy” and a “post-industrial revolution.”

Since Spain’s “fundamental transformation” of its economy over to a “green economy” has devastated the country, with unemployment hitting a crippling 20 per cent, it’s unsurprising that Zapatero is now calling for a new global levy on financial transactions in an effort to force already destitute Americans to pick up the tab for the failed and economically crippling “green” measures that he inflicted on his own country while doing the bidding of his globalist masters.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

Filed under World Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Costa Rican Shill Heading UN Climate Fraud Negotiations

August 9, 2010

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
August 9, 2010

Cristiana Figueres, a descendant of a Costa Rican elite family is the top United Nations climate official in charge of conducting negotiations to impose a worldwide tax on humanity for the purpose of funding the World Climate Fund, a United Nations organ that would rule over every single country on environmental policy. Figueres is the daughter of former Costa Rican president Jose Figueres Ferrer and sister of also former Costa Rican president Jose Maria Figueres Olsen. Figueres got the position only after her predecessor Yvo de Boer walked away from the chairmanship after the fiasco in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was proposed as a replacement by a group of insular nations who opposed the arrival of a representative from the BSAIC, a group of countries formed by Brazil, South Africa, India and China. This group was the only bloc opposed to the insane policies the United Nations wanted to approve at the Copenhagen meeting. After the failure to reach a consensus, the United Nations is back bolder than ever and with a new face. It wants to mandate that countries finance and support the World Climate Fund which will undoubtedly be managed by the controllers that founded and direct the UN today.

Cristiana Figueres, Head of the UN Convention on Climate Change.

The United Nations wants to make sure once countries meet back to discuss the creation of the World Climate Fund, most nations will be on board with the climate tax scam that this organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have requested as their only solution to face an inexistent global warming emergency. Developing countries withdrew their support in Copenhagen after a document was released establishing the real intentions the United Nations and the industrialized countries had with the adoption of the Copenhagen Treaty. In it, the UN intended to impose a mandatory tax on all nations which would have started with the establishment of national emission reduction targets and contributions to the Fund.

What tipped the developing countries against the Treaty was the fact the document clearly stated that third world countries would not receive the funding promised by the UN on the conditions stated in a previous draft of the Treaty, and that such subsidies for cutting down emissions would have strings attached. “It’s a little bit like a broken record,” said European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger. “It’s like a flashback,” agreed Raman Mehta, of the Action Aid environment group. “The discourse is the same level” as before Copenhagen.

Organizations like the UN as well as many bought and paid-for scientists justify the imposition of a world tax on industrialization due to the false unproven and debunked assertion that carbon dioxide, a gas emitted from most industrial activity, is responsible for the runaway warming of the planet. It is false, because the planet has actually cooled off in the last 10 to 12 years. Their assertion is unproven, because in spite of the thousands of white papers and studies scientists and universities cite as infallible proof CO2 causes the warming, the truth is, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 4-6 percent of the total amount of gases present. From those 4-6 percent, human activity is only responsible for about half. But even if human activity was responsible for such warming, how would a world tax on emissions help slow atmospheric pollution? It does not. The funds raised from adopting any kind of protocol or treaty, would only help finance the creation of a global centralized entity, that not only the United Nations but also the World Bank and the IMF have uncontrollably called for.

According to the Associated Press, global climate talks slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, Germany. There, poor countries faced-off with rich nations on the very same topic that sank the Copenhagen negotiations: The details on what countries in the third world would receive and under what conditions as well as agreements they made last year.  “Delegates complained that reversals in the talks put negotiations back by a year, even before minimal gains were scored at the Copenhagen summit last December,” reports the AP.

Christiana Figueres, said the Bonn talks was the last chance for nations to agree on a set of maximum national demands, and insisted countries had to “radically narrow down their choices”. One more round of talks is scheduled for October in China. The results of the November meeting in Cancun, Mexico have already been downplayed by organizers in order to avoid the grand fiasco experienced in Denmark. But Figueres’ statement makes it clear developing countries will have to abide by the rules the globalists at the head of the UN want to impose; or else. It seems the UN wants every country to approve their package of “concessions” and take it home where it can be passed as the law of the land. This way, the agreement will be binding. Another fact that made poor countries get up from the table in Copenhagen, was the statement countries who signed the Treaty could not withdraw from it later. Not even Barack Hussein Obama, fresh from a highly overrated election, was able to inspire confidence in the 120 representatives who walked away from the conference. The failure Copenhagen came to be known for, ended with an empty statement pledging to downgrade industrialization to levels only seen in the middle ages and to reduce emissions to amounts only realistic in the planet Earth of the 1700′s. Not even the explicit and corrupt intention to buy countries off was enough to reach a binding agreement.

Although treaties have always promised to provide aid to developing nations in order to reduce carbon emissions, their representatives did not bite the bait, as rich nations would not do the same. It is through schemes like Cap&Trade, that industrialized nations would encourage and indeed pimp the very own emissions plan to large corporations -owned by globalists- so they do not have to reduce their emissions neither in developed countries nor in Asia, Africa or Latin America. According to the Cap&Trade text, anyone with deep pockets (corporations funded by banks) could purchase carbon credits from other companies or from the Chicago Credit Exchange to continue polluting. Where would the emissions reduction come from then? From the no development of poor nations. The Cap&Trade scam would not only further break down all current industry in developed countries, but also stop any hint of development in third world nations.

“At this point, I am very concerned,” said chief U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing. “Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from progress made in Copenhagen, and what was agreed there.” On the other hand, British economist Nicholas Stern said that government regulation and public money would also be needed to create incentives for private investment in industries that emit fewer greenhouse gases. In other words, tax payer money would bailout large corporations (owned by banks) in order for them to get rich as they themselves manage the carbon credit scam. For this purpose, the United Nations brought in an unknown face (Cristiana Figueres) in order to gain some confidence back from disenchanted representatives. The new head of the Convention on Climate Change is seen as an expert due to her experience as president of several working groups, (the compartmentalized type) that meet behind closed doors to secretly decide on the destinies of millions of people. She is recognized for having a deep understanding of how the inside circles are managed in negotiations such as the climate tax and the creation of unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic bodies.

With the most recent face change, the United Nations wants to achieve the same effect the globalists looked for in the United States with Barack Obama. Once the people learn of the scam they run, a new puppet must come to be the front man, (in this case, the front woman) so they can enforce their eugenicist scientific technocracy. But as everyone has seen with Obama, you can only fool some people for some time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. Now we see the light.*

*Bob Marley

Filed under World Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BP Not Interested In Cleaning Up Oil Spill

July 12, 2010 1 Comment

Paul Joseph Watson

Former high-level BP contractor and Army Special Operations soldier Adam Dillon told a New Orleans television station that British

A disaster like BP's oil spill is the perfect one to impose a pollution tax in order to finance a broken government. So why stop it?

Petroleum is not interested in cleaning up the oil spill because the company is run by “cutthroat individuals” who only care about money.

Dillon was fired by BP “after taking photos that he believes were related to the use of dispersants and to the cleanup of the oil.” Before his dismissal, Dillon was “confined and interrogated for almost an hour,” by BP officials.

“There are some very great, hardworking individuals in there. But the bottom line is just about money. There are some very cutthroat individuals. They’re not worried about cleaning up that spill as it is,” said Dillon, adding that he has “lost faith” in BP’s response.

Dillon was one of BP’s hired goons used to keep reporters from asking questions of cleanup workers on beaches in Houma, but turned whistleblower after he was fired for taking photos of the consequences of chemicals used by BP to clean up the spill.

“I saw something when I was out there,” he said. “I took pictures of something and I brought it to the attention of the command structure and whatever I took pictures of, 12 hours later I was gone.”

Dillon decided to speak out publicly because he placed his oath to his country over and above any loyalty to BP.

“I will never have loyalty to this company,” he said. “I will always have loyalty to my country. And my country comes first.

“What this company is doing to this country right now is just wrong.”

As we have highlighted, as one of the founding members of the cap and trade lobby, BP stands to reap a financial bounty if the Obama administration succeeds in exploiting the worsening oil spill crisis to push through a carbon tax.

The worse the situation gets, the more political capital Obama builds in his effort to impose a consumption tax on American citizens in the name of reducing dependence on foreign oil. Viewed from this perspective, BP has no real motivation in cleaning up the oil spill.

BP’s market value plunged by more than a third in the months following the oil spill debacle, but this has recovered somewhat in recent days and once the spill is finally cleared up, expect to see the price return to pre-spill levels.

If the government manages to justify a carbon tax in the eyes of lawmakers by pointing to an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP can look forward to massive long-term profits from both a sustained rise in the price of oil allied to a carbon tax that will be passed on to consumers.

BP’s botched efforts to cap the leaking oil well have done nothing to alleviate the problem, while the company’s use of the chemical Corexit is worsening the damage caused by the oil spill while causing sickness amongst large numbers of cleanup workers. The Obama administration has similarly dragged its feet in responding to the oil spill, waiting for months before it accepted help offered by thirteen different countries whose sophisticated technology could have fixed the leak within weeks.

BP’s reaction to the oil spill has proved that the company is more concerned about blocking media access to information about the situation than actually cleaning up the consequences of the spill.

Watch the clip below.

Filed under World Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Related Links:

Togel178

Pedetogel

Sabatoto

Togel279

Togel158

Colok178

Novaslot88

Lain-Lain

Partner Links