MPs call for personal carbon allowance

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain should consider giving individuals a personal carbon emissions allowance in order to help the country meet its CO2 emissions target, a report by a committee of MPs said on Monday

Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee said the government had to reduce carbon emissions from individuals and households, as well as businesses and industry, if it was to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050 as planned.

Introducing a personal carbon allowance — whereby people would have to trade in credits if they wanted to exceed their own CO2 quota — would be more effective and fairer than bringing in “green” taxes, the report by MPs said.

The government said that while the scheme had appeal, it would be too expensive and complicated.

“Existing initiatives are unlikely to bring about behavioural change on the scale required, with many individuals choosing to disregard the connection between their own emissions and the larger challenge,” the committee’s report said.

“Personal carbon trading might be the kind of radical measure needed to bring about behavioural change.”

The idea for CO2 trading is taken from the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which forces big industrial emitters of the gas to clean up their act or buy permits from companies that have.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said a personal emissions system was an “interesting idea” and one that the government had already researched.

“It’s got potential, but in essence it’s ahead of its time, the cost of implementing it would be quite high, and there are a lot of practical problems to overcome,” he told BBC radio.

“It’s not as if the government isn’t taking lots of other action to get our emissions down.”

He said the cost of introducing personal carbon trading would be between 700 million pounds and 2 billion pounds.

However, Tim Yeo, the committee chairman, said difficulties of implementing the scheme could be overcome and called for more feasibility work to be done.

“It engages people at all levels in their decisions, about whether they heat their house to a slightly lower temperature, whether they really need to put air conditioning in their flat, whether they really need to take that flight,” he said.

“It does so more directly than any other system,” he told BBC radio.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Matthew Jones)

Michael Hanlon has more on the unworkability of Green ‘we will tax your every move’ Credit here.

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

CHENGDU, China - China said it was struggling to find shelter for many of the 5 million people whose homes were destroyed in last week’s earthquake, while the confirmed death toll rose Tuesday to more than 40,000.

Meanwhile, rescuers pulled a 31-year-old man to safety, the second known case of someone being found alive a week after the May 12 earthquake. Ma Yuanjiang was saved from the debris of the Yingxiu Bay Hydropower Plant after a 30-hour rescue effort, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Ma was able to speak and began to eat small amounts of food, colleague Wu Geng told the agency. A miner was rescued after being trapped for 170 hours Monday, Xinhua said.

The State Council, China’s Cabinet, raised the overall confirmed death toll to 40,075, most of those in Sichuan province. Officials have said the final number killed by the quake is expected to surpass 50,000.

The government was setting up temporary housing for quake victims unable to find shelter with relatives, but there was a “desperate need for tents” to accommodate them, said Jiang Li, vice minister of civil affairs.

She told reporters in Beijing that nearly 280,000 tents had been shipped to the area and 700,000 more ordered, with factories working triple shifts to meet demand.

Another 480,000 quilts and 1.7 million jackets were also sent to quake survivors, Jiang said.

Five million people lost their homes in the quake, she said.

“Despite generous donations, the disaster is so great that victims still face a challenge in finding living accommodations,” Jiang said.

China has said it would accept foreign medical teams, as the relief efforts shifted from searching for survivors to caring for the homeless. A growing number of countries responded to the call, dispatching doctors to the quake area Tuesday.

A Russian medical team with a mobile hospital arrived Tuesday in the Sichuan provincial capital Chengdu, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. A 37-member medical team sent by the Taiwan Red Cross organization also arrived in the disaster zone.

Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said a 23-member medical team will leave Tuesday for China. Crews of doctors were also en route from Germany and Italy, Qin said.

“China is willing to work closely” with outside doctors, Qin told a news conference.

Other countries and groups have also offered to send medical teams, but China has not given permission to allow all of them to help.

“But given the situation, and difficulties in the area, including transportation and telecommunications, it is not possible for us to accept all of the rescue and medical teams to engage in relief work,” Qin said.

Rescue workers resumed the search for bodies on the second day of a three-day national mourning period declared by the Chinese government, an unprecedented gesture to honor the dead.

A crew of volunteers from Tangshan, the Chinese city that suffered the country’s worst quake in 1976 that killed at least 240,000 people, arrived in the quake area.

“Now it’s time for us to help the others that are suffering,” said Song Zhixian, a farmer among a group of 15 older men wearing red hard hats and vests. “It is part of the Chinese virtue and spirit: when one place suffers, then everyone else helps.”

Because of plans to bury bodies quickly, the government said DNA samples will be taken from corpses to help with later identification, Xinhua said. Identified bodies will be cremated, although burial will be allowed where no cremation is possible.

Thirty-two radioactive sources were also buried under rubble, Xinhua reported, citing Minister of Environmental Protection Zhou Shengxian.

Only two have not been recovered, although authorities have located them and restricted access to nearby areas, Zhou was cited as saying. They were expected to be transported to safety soon. The rest have been disposed of.

The Chinese government has previously said all nuclear facilities affected by the earthquake were safe and under control, but did not give any details.

During the three-day mourning period, flags were flying at half-staff and entertainment events have been canceled. The Olympic torch relay also has been suspended.

Thousands of quake survivors awoke Tuesday after spending a night sleeping in cars and in the open, frightened by government warnings of a potential strong aftershock. The alarm compounded uneasiness in the region, which has been rumbled by dozens of aftershocks since the May 12 quake.

Elsewhere, a panda from the Wolong Nature Preserve that disappeared during the quake returned safely, but two of the endangered animals were still missing, Xinhua reported. The others were “very likely to be alive,” forestry official Xiong Beirong told the agency, because they were adults.

The quake killed five staff members at the reserve and destroyed or damaged all of its 32 panda houses. The local government has sent emergency supplies of bamboo, apples and veterinary medicine for the pandas, along with food and tents for staff.

Oil and gas operations in the region devastated by last week’s earthquake in central China are virtually back to normal, state-owned oil and gas giant CNPC said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, China’s banking regulators ordered banks to ensure adequate loans and other support for companies and individuals in the area.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, said donations for disaster relief had reached $1.5 billion.

Army Chief: Use of Hezbollah arms internally serves Israel

Published: Saturday, 17 May, 2008 @ 11:05 PM in Beirut

Beirut - Lebanon’s Army Chief Gen. Michel Suleiman said that Hezbollah did the Israeli enemy a big favor when it used the resistance arms in internal fighting

Suleiman made the remark while inspecting his troops deployed in south Lebanon.

Suleiman said that the army refrained from “resorting to the cannon during the recent incidents and this does not mean that the army was neutralized, but it aimed at averting more bloodshed and further cracks in national ranks.”

“Experience proved that stability cannot be achieved without entente,” he concluded

Of course, those Iranian weapons are supposed to go south of the border in the direction of civilians; the 1701 UN resolution of 2006 was only ever a charade - we don’t need a Lebanese army chief to lick his wounds to tell us that. I just had no idea Hezbollah was Israel’s bitch, did anyone?

For the real reason Lebanese Army Chief Gen. Michel Suleiman betrayed Lebanon, see the links below. Coming soon to Planet Earth: We’re All Under Hezbollah Demopathy Now!

• Caroline Glick’s Hizbullah’s Power Play and How Lebanon Was Lost
• Joshuapundit’s Lebanon Becomes Hezballahstan

Watch the appeal here.

A relative of one of the hostages also appealed for their release, showing the terrible emotional toll. Read that here.

And Richard Beeson asks whether news blackouts work.

May 14, 2008 16:34 | Updated May 14, 2008 17:09

Zahar: ‘We will persecute the Zionists’

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said Wednesday that a Palestinian state will be established on all of the land of Palestine and not only on parts of it, and that it will include “Jaffa, Lod and Haifa.”

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.
Photo: AP [file]

Zahar also reiterated Hamas’ unwillingness to recognize the State of Israel and said that the group “will continue to persecute the Zionists wherever they are, after we prove that the Zionist army can be defeated - contrary to what was believed in the past, that it is impossible to beat the Zionists.”

Speaking in the Gaza Strip, he went on to affirm Palestinian right of return, claiming that the “right of return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is closer than ever.”

“After we defeat the Zionists we will persecute them… we will persecute them to eternity, and the sun of the freedom and independence of the Palestinians will burn all of the Zionists,” he continued.

RELATED

• Hamas minister condemns Shoah denial

Speaking at a function in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Zahar also said that captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit’s release will not be part of a cease-fire agreement with Israel.

“We will not offer Schalit for free,” said Zahar, adding that talks on prisoner exchange are not connected to talks about a cease-fire.

As I suggested on the DryBones Blog, that cartoon could be extended year on year ad infinitum. The next few years could see the Palestinians really out on the streets celebrating, e.g.

2009: the year we chose to lose an Iran-Syria war against Israel instead of peace alongside her.

2010: the year we chose to nuke ourselves rather than peace alongside Israel.

2011: the year we chose to start World War 3 instead of peace alongside Israel.

2012: the year we prayed for aliens to invade and eat our children rather than peace with Israel.

While the never-ending Nakba drones on… happy 60th Israel!

Well done for surviving

• Norman Geras’s Schmolocaust
• Terrorism Awareness’s How ‘Nakba’ Proves There’s No Palestinian Nation

Abdul Alhazred

15 May 2008, 10:14 pm

The HP obsession with George Galloway is becoming old hat. I attended a Social Services training course today, which included among other things a group discussion about reality TV (don’t ask…). When I alluded to GG’s “pussy cat” performance, the reaction from one of the trainer’s was “Who’s he?”

There were several responses of “don’t know”, until somebody remembered he was an MP and added that he was in the BNP. (Common this - UAF members canvassing in the local estates were mortified that people tended to confuse the BNP and the SWP). Someone else corrected that he had his own party called Respect, adding that “He was mates with Saddam Hussein”.

I can’t see him posing much of a threat to anything if this is the extent of his reputation.

BNP, SWP,… what’s the difference again?

Systematic discrimination faces Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

The comments at Harry’s Place are worth reading. It seems even when some admit to the far greater suffering of Arabs at the hands of other Arabs, we shouldn’t take our eye off the Israel gambit…

Have they forgotten the Socialist mantra “do not criticise others until you have your own house in order”?

Feel free to roll your eyes.

For getting rid of Ken.

*Faith in humanity temporarily restored*

http://tinyurl.com/2zafkx