Yeb Sano: fasting makes me a better climate negotiator
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China reconsiders carbon tax, citing Australia’s planned repeal
China is reconsidering plans for a carbon tax as local air pollution trumps concerns over climate change and some rich nations back away from imposing a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, a top official said.
Premier Li Keqiang last week declared war on pollution, which is expected to speed up the process of turning China’s limited environmental levy into a full-blown tax targeting the nation’s major polluters.
But the all-out efforts to combat China’s disastrous pollution levels might get in the way of plans to tax carbon dioxide emissions in a bid to stunt the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions, Zhu Guangyao, the vice environment minister, said.
“We have to reflect the requests of the majority through many consultation rounds,” he told the Beijing Morning Post from the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary sessions.
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A carbon tax is increasingly controversial among lawmakers, said Zhu, adding that an environment tax would be easier to push through without carbon in the mix.…
Driverless cars may be an environmental disaster
…ELECTRIC CAR BATTERIES ARE ADDING TO CHINA’S POLLUTION WOES
…Researcher: Ice on Madison lakes ‘the thickest I’ve ever seen’
http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/todd-milewski/article_8059511a-ab98-11e3-9b2d-001a4bcf887a.html…
Global Warming Lecture Cancelled Due to Unexpected Blizzard
Bill Gates laments lack of carbon tax: ‘We haven’t put a price signal like a carbon tax in, and this is certainly very disappointing’
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/bill-gates-the-rolling-stone-interview-20140313?print=true
Excerpt:
Let’s talk about climate change. Many scientists and politicians see it as the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.
It’s a big challenge, but I’m not sure I would put it above everything. One of the reasons it’s hard is that by the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited. Like with viruses, the problem is latency. The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.
Right . . . we’re not virtuous yet, are we?
We’re not even close – we’re emitting more CO2 every year. In order to get a 90 percent reduction of carbon, which is what we need, the first thing you might want to get is a year of global reduction, and we have not had that. U.S. emissions are down right now, partly because we buy more goods from overseas. But even if you invented some zero-carbon energy source today, the deployment of that magic device would take a long time.
Are you hopeful that global climate talks will lead to a solution?
Many climate-change discussions are off-target because they’ve focused on things like the $100 billion per year that some people believe should be spent by the rich world to help the developing world, which is not really addressing the problem. At the same time, discussion about how to increase funding of research-and-development budgets to accelerate innovation is surprisingly missing. We haven’t increased R&D spending, we haven’t put a price signal [like a carbon tax] in, and this is certainly very disappointing. I think it’s a real test of the boundary of science and politics – and an acid test of people’s time horizons. Before the economic downturn, attitudes in the U.S. about climate change had become quite enlightened, and then there was a big reversal, which I believe was a result of people’s worries about their immediate economic situation. Talking about problems that will have a significant effect 30 or 40 years out just gets off the agenda, and there’s this shrill political debate that is distracting people. So we’ve made some progress, but you can’t take the progress we’ve made and linearize it – …