Tag: climategate

Yachts To Be Exempt From EU’s Carbon Pricing Plan

If there is anyone still confused why ESG, and the entire “green” movement is one giant, boiling cauldron of lies, hypocrisy and fraud, read on.

Last summer, we reported that the European Commission – that murder of career bureaucrats – has proposed exempting private jets, the one most polluting form of transportation, from the planned EU jet fuel tax. A draft indicated that the tax would be phased-in for passenger flights, including ones that carry cargo. Private jets will enjoy an exemption through classification of “business aviation” as the use of aircraft by firms for carriage of passengers or goods as an “aid to the conduct of their business”, if generally considered not for public hire. It gets better: a further exemption is given for “pleasure” flights whereby an aircraft is used for “personal or recreational” purposes not associated with a business or professional use.

This is odd because a recent report found that private-jet CO2 emissions in Europe rose by 31% between 2005 and 2019, with flights to popular destinations up markedly during summer holiday seasons. So if Europe was truly concerned about curbing CO2 emissions it would ostensibly go after some of the biggest culprits… but no.

Of course, since it is mostly billionaires and the ultra wealthy that fly private, and these same billionaires and ultra wealthy tend to be exempt from regulations (which are usually written by politicians that the ultra rich have previously bribed or bought) that apply to the rest of the peasantry, this was hardly a huge surprise.

Which is why we doubt that the latest news showing just how pervasive the “green” hypocrisy is, will also come as a surprise.

According to a new report from Transport & Environment (T&E) titled “Climate Impacts of Exemptions to EU’s Shipping Proposals:
Arbitrary exemptions undermine integrity of shipping laws” , more than half of Europe’s ships would be exempt from the European Commission’s carbon pricing plan for the sector. Among them: highly polluting if extremely desirable – for the Monte Carlo set – yachts.

According to the report, in July 2021, the European Commission published a set of proposals to decarbonize the maritime sector. However, what quietly not mentioned, is that the proposed carbon pricing scheme (ETS) and the low GHG fuel standard (FuelEU Maritime) will only apply to ships above 5,000 GT and exclude a number of ship types such as offshore vessels, fishing vessels and…. yachts.

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After Testing it With COVID, Experts Weigh ‘Authoritarianism’ to Fight Climate Change Too

A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University, begins with a teasing question: “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?”

For many, the answer is clearly no, concedes the study’s author—Ross Mittiga, an assistant professor of political theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. But Mittiga, in the abstract to the study, suggests otherwise:

“While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.”

The study caught the eye of Alexander Wuttke, a Twitter user who studies political behavior at the University of Mannheim in Germany.

“In my reading, it explicitly argues that we must put climate action over democracy and adopt authoritarian governance if democracies fail to act on climate change,” tweeted Wuttke.

In an extensive thread, Wuttke explained why he disagrees with Mittiga.

“I am genuinely puzzled about the origins of this anti-democratic intuition that seems to give rise to the entire endeavor of exploring whether we should sacrifice democracy for the sake of a higher good,” Wuttke says at one point. “The article argues that crises not only can legitimize but may require authoritarian governance. This is not true. Democracies have fought the pandemic without giving up being democratic.”

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Bizarre World Economic Forum Video Orders Citizens to Stop Washing Their Clothes to Fight Climate Change

A bizarre new video of the globalist World Economic Forum is ordering citizens of western countries to cease washing their clothes in order to fight climate change, following the WEF’s commands that the populace of developed nations eat bugs and renounce all possessions in order to lower carbon emissions.

The strange missive appeared on the WEF’s Twitter feed on Sunday morning.

The World Economic Forum, chaired by infamous “Great Reset” architect Klaus Schwab, routinely insists that decreasing the quality of life of average citizens is the way forward to deter climate change and supposed catastrophe.

Twitter users chimed in to voice their opposition to the WEF’s authoritarianism, making it clear they don’t intend to function as peasants for the corrupt and sinister elites to command in the twisted organization’s sick vision of the future.

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Climate scientist asks YouTube to censor climate “misinformation”

A climate change scientist has complained to YouTube for appearing to promote what he suggests is climate change denial content. The scientist told the platform that it should treat climate change “misinformation” the same way it has been treating COVID-19 “misinformation.”

Prof. Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, tweeted: “Hey @Youtube. It’s good you’re taking down COVID denial videos. Now it’s time for you to remove climate denial videos. They pose an even greater threat to humanity in the long term.”

His tweet was in response to another user who tweeted that he has been getting recommendation of a 2013 climate change denial video too often.

The video, titled “Why has Global Warming Paused? – William Happer,” featuresPrinceton University physics professor and Trump appointee to the National Security Council William Happer.

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Global CO2 emissions have been flat for a decade, new data reveals

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement have rebounded by 4.9% this year, new estimates suggest, following a Covid-related dip of 5.4% in 2020.

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) projects that fossil emissions in 2021 will reach 36.4bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), only 0.8% below their pre-pandemic high of 36.7GtCO2 in 2019.

The researchers say they “were expecting some sort of rebound in 2021” as the global economy bounced back from Covid-19, but that it was “bigger than expected”.

While fossil emissions are expected to return to near-record levels, the study also reassesses historical emissions from land-use change, revealing that global CO2 output overall may have been effectively flat over the past decade.

The 2021 GCP almost halves the estimate of net emissions from land-use change over the past two years – and by an average of 25% over the past decade.

These changes come from an update to underlying land-use datasets that lower estimates of cropland expansion, particularly in tropical regions. Emissions from land-use change in the new GCP dataset have been decreasing by around 4% per year over the past decade, compared to an increase of 1.8% per year in the prior version. 

However, the GCP authors caution that uncertainties in land-use change emissions remain large and “this trend remains to be confirmed”.

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China and India set to receive £1.5billion climate aid windfall – despite scuppering COP26 coal pledges

China and India are set to receive a £1.5 billion climate aid windfall despite scuppering a COP26 deal on reducing reliance on coal power.

Richer countries agreed to double funding for developing nations to prepare for global warming at the Glasgow conference earlier this month.

Despite having two of the fastest growing economies in the world, the UN designates China and India as ‘developing states’.

Analysis shows that the two countries received a total of about £700 million from developed countries in 2019, the latest figures available, as well as millions more from investment foundations and private donors.

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Build Back Better’s climate pork will benefit the rich — but not the environment

The irony of the Build Back Better bill passed in the House with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s brute force last week is that it is called a “reconciliation” bill, since it attempts to straddle so many irreconcilable differences in the Democratic Party.

The whole mess now moves to the Senate, where two things are certain: The final bill, if it passes at all, will be drastically different from the House bill; and the final bill will contain hundreds of billions for “climate-change action” and “clean energy” because this (along with racism) is the central mania of the Democratic Party today.

Aside from the huge price tag, will the climate and energy features add up to a serious and coherent policy? If the House bill is any indication, the answer is a resounding “No.”

The headline is that Build Back Better includes more than $500 billion for climate and clean-energy measures, but keep in mind that the already-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill included $150 billion for clean-energy baubles such as electric-vehicle chargers ($7.5 billion) and electric school buses ($5 billion), so the grand total of both bills would be about $650 billion.

What are we actually getting for that eye-popping sum?

Some of the infrastructure bill targets worthy improvements, such as $65 billion for upgrading our creaky electricity grid and $50 billion for “climate resilience,” which includes common-sense steps such as building more robust defenses against flooding and better managing national forests to reduce wildfire risk.

The bulk of the Build Back Better bill, on the other hand, consists of large tax credits and subsidies for special interests with marginal benefits — and, incredibly, still more tax breaks for the affluent on top of the reinstatement of the state and local tax deduction that will deliver more than 90 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of income earners.

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