2012: First trade war over climate change

[one...two...tree 2,762]

On January 1, 2012, something unprecedented will happen: The first global carbon tax will go into effect. It will affect only airlines that fly in and out of Europe, but since that's pretty much every airline on the planet, not a single flight to the continent will escape its reach. And countries including the US, China and India are all threatening to declare a trade war over the issue. The tax is straightforward. Any flight into or out of an EU member country must buy carbon credits sufficient to cover the greenhouse gasses emitted during the flight. By including carriers that aren't based in the Europe in the scheme, the EU is levying what is in effect the first international carbon tariff.

This is a bigger deal than most people realize, because it points the way to a future in which the EU could put a tax on any good or service coming into its borders, proportional to its greenhouse gas impact. Collectively, the EU is the single biggest economy on the planet, which means it has enormous power to shape the policies of its trading partners.

Which is precisely why they're all ready to levy their own punitive taxes in response. If Americans flying into Europe end up paying their share of their own carbon credits, the measure will have accomplished the impossible: forced U.S. citizens to pay to offset their impact on the climate.

What's amazing is that this will be a contentious issue at all. The impacts of climate change's unrelenting assault, present and future, are now beyond question, scientifically, and yet of all the countries in the world, only the EU has even proposed a system that would make everyone on our shared planet accountable.

http://www.smartplan...te-change/11850

[bigdog 376]

Global warming is all baloney any way. Isn't the economy bad enough with out this stuff.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Global warming is all baloney any way.

Stop watching Fox News and actually read about the science of Global Warming. It is very real. The whole world knows this.

You can start with NASA:

Climate change: How do we know?

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.¹

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

Certain facts about Earth's climate are not in dispute:

• The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.² Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

• Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth's climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth's orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.³

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

On January 1, 2012, something unprecedented will happen: The first global carbon tax will go into effect. It will affect only airlines that fly in and out of Europe, but since that's pretty much every airline on the planet, not a single flight to the continent will escape its reach. And countries including the US, China and India are all threatening to declare a trade war over the issue. The tax is straightforward. Any flight into or out of an EU member country must buy carbon credits sufficient to cover the greenhouse gasses emitted during the flight. By including carriers that aren't based in the Europe in the scheme, the EU is levying what is in effect the first international carbon tariff.

This is a bigger deal than most people realize, because it points the way to a future in which the EU could put a tax on any good or service coming into its borders, proportional to its greenhouse gas impact. Collectively, the EU is the single biggest economy on the planet, which means it has enormous power to shape the policies of its trading partners.

Which is precisely why they're all ready to levy their own punitive taxes in response. If Americans flying into Europe end up paying their share of their own carbon credits, the measure will have accomplished the impossible: forced U.S. citizens to pay to offset their impact on the climate.

What's amazing is that this will be a contentious issue at all. The impacts of climate change's unrelenting assault, present and future, are now beyond question, scientifically, and yet of all the countries in the world, only the EU has even proposed a system that would make everyone on our shared planet accountable.

http://www.smartplan...te-change/11850

Good thing we can fly nonstop to Kiev or Moscow. I guess the EU countries are going to miss our spending like we used to do. We used to layover somewhere...Zurich, Brussles, Munich, ,Helsinki, Paris etc for a few days and visit...spend money. Too bad that money would now get eaten up by a tax. Oh well. There are plenty of non-EU countries to visit.