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Thursday, November 10, 2011
AL GORE COMMENT ON EVIL AUSTRALIAN CARBON TAX
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
MURDOCH'S MOTHER BACKS CARBON PRICE
A group of prominent Australians has published an open letter calling for a price on carbon to help deal with climate change.
The letter is signed by four former Australians of the year - including Professor Fiona Stanley, Ian Kiernan, Professor Pat McGorry and Sir Gustav Nossal.
It is also signed by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, the philanthopist and mother of News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch.
Last month, Australian actress Cate Blanchett fronted an advertising campaign for a carbon price.
Professor David de Kretser, a former governor of Victoria, organised the letter and says he hopes it leads to climate change action "to ensure that we have an environment and a planet which actually is there for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren." The letter says a carbon price is fundamental to reducing emissions and driving low-carbon technologies.
Sir Gustav says he expects to cop some criticism for publicly supporting a price on carbon.
He says he is no expert on climate change, but has followed scientific developments closely.
"I think it's important in a free and democratic country like Australia for people, who for whatever reason have achieved a little prominence in their lives, to speak out, to make their views heard, then carefully to listen to dissenting views, so the debate goes on," he said.
The group says it is confident that given the incentives, sustainable industries will flourish.
A SLOP BUCKET IN EVERY HOME: ANOTHER U-TURN AS COALITION SAYS ALL FAMILIES WILL RECYCLE FOOD SCRAPS
Last updated at 11:44 PM on 14th June 2011
Compulsory: Every home in the UK will be forced to use a slop bucket to recycle food scraps under a radical government proposal
Every home in the country will be ordered to use a slopbucket under Coalition plans set out yesterday.
The compulsory recycling of food scraps is the most radical in a series of ‘green’ schemes promoted by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.
It marks yet another U-turn for the Coalition. Almost exactly a year ago, Mrs Spelman said categorically: ‘The Government has no plans to force households to put food into slopbuckets.’
The fresh climbdown was revealed as the minister confirmed a retreat on the oft-repeated Tory promise to restore weekly bin collections, revealed by the Daily Mail on Saturday.
Mrs Spelman’s call for all food waste to be recycled raises the prospect of families having to save all of what she referred to as ‘smelly waste’ for separate collection, while the rest of their rubbish is picked up once a fortnight.
It came in her long-awaited Waste Review, which committed the Coalition to ‘a zero-waste economy’ and aims to make it the ‘greenest ever’ Government.
Labour ministers backed away from the slopbucket idea before last year’s general election after a cool public reaction when the first councils tried the scheme.
One such authority, Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, insists its residents use no fewer than nine separate bins, bags and buckets to satisfy its recycling requirements.
Mrs Spelman’s plans include persuading manufacturers and producers to use less packaging, asking families to throw away less uneaten food, and encouraging the spread of litter bins adapted for recycling.
But they have revealed a deep split in the Cabinet, with Communities Secretary Eric Pickles openly furious at the way the Environment Secretary has ditched the promise to bring back weekly bin collections.
Mrs Spelman explained the retreat on weekly collections was a matter of money. She said: ‘In Opposition you don’t have a chance to see the Government’s books. You don’t see how much the Government is overspent. When we came in we found the situation was worse than we thought. I think people will understand that.’
Ministers have said that bringing back weekly collections would cost £132.5million a year.
Deep split: The slop bucket proposal was introduced by Caroline Spelman in the Waste Review, who has already left Eric Pickles furious with measures such as not re-introducing weekly bin collections
However, Mrs Spelman’s plans involve supervision of rubbish policy by two quangos, the Waste and Resources Action Programme and Keep Britain Tidy. Abolishing those two bodies would alone save taxpayers around £50million a year.
The Environment Secretary also blamed the EU for directives which will mean big fines for councils that do not meet recycling and landfill targets in 2013.
Instead of bringing back weekly collections of all waste, Mrs Spelman wants ‘smelly waste’ to be collected separately and then used in a recycling process called ‘anaerobic digestion’.
The process has been known about for more than 150 years, but has never been used on a large scale.
It produces a ‘digestate’ material which, under current technology, is too polluted to be used on a large scale for its main potential purpose, as fertiliser for farmers.
The review acknowledged that kitchen slopbuckets were unpopular but said: ‘There are a number of ways in which households themselves may be able to treat some of their food waste, including composting, food waste digesters, or at-sink disposal units.’
It also proposed reducing the powers of council inspectors to enter homes and ending the £1,000 fines for those who break bin rules.
But local authority ‘bin police’ will still be able to levy on-the-spot fines, currently from £75 to £110, on those who breach recycling regulations.
Alongside the calls for more intensive compulsory recycling, the review did contain a pledge to ‘work with councils to meet households’ reasonable expectations for weekly collections, particularly of smelly waste’.
But last night Mr Pickles’s supporters claimed the wording had appeared in the waste review only as a result of pressure from the Communities Secretary.
And in the Commons, Labour’s environment spokesman Jamie Reed described the Environment Secretary’s ministry as ‘the political equivalent of the mad woman in the attic’.
Town hall chiefs have claimed they were forced to introduce fortnightly collections and ever more recycling bins to avoid paying a Landfill Tax.
Under the measure, introduced by John Major’s Government in 1996, councils are penalised for every ton of rubbish they bury.
It went up dramatically under Labour and now stands at £56 a ton. The Coalition has pledged to increase the tax, designed to help Britain meet the EU Landfill Directive, by £8 a year.
Town where families put out NINE bins
Residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme are already being forced to follow the strict new recycling regime – with households juggling nine separate bins.
The containers include a silver slopbucket for food waste, which is then tipped into a green outdoor bin for kerb-side collections, a pink bag for plastic bottles, a green bag for cardboard, and a white bag for clothing and textiles.
Strict regime: Residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme are being forced to put out nine separate bins for collection
Retired teacher Sylvia Butler said residents like herself, who live in a terraced house with no garden, were struggling to accommodate the bins.
The 59-year-old said: ‘I have had to take my brown bin down to my allotment – there simply isn’t room in my back yard to house it.’
Since the scheme was introduced, only food waste is collected each week. All other rubbish has to be stored for a fortnight.
Pictured above, the bins are, from left, food (grey bin kept in kitchen), food (green outdoor bin), tin cans, cardboard, plastics, clothing, paper, general waste and garden waste.Thursday, June 9, 2011
HIDDEN GREEN TAX IN FUEL BILLS: HOW £200 STEALTH CHARGE IS SLIPPED ON TO YOUR GAS AND ELECTRICITY BILL
Last updated at 12:44 AM on 9th June 2011
Hidden green taxes now make up a fifth of every household’s gas and electricity bills, energy campaigners warned last night.
Cash strapped families pay an average of £200 a year in stealth levies to subsidise Britain's massive expansion of wind farms, solar panels and 'environmentally friendly' heating schemes.
Yesterday outraged campaigners called for an end to the secret subsidies and demanded power companies reveal how much their customers are paying for climate change policies .
Hidden green taxes make up a fifth of households' gas and electricity bills, energy campaigners warned
The call came as the former head of the civil service, Lord Turnbull, demanded that politicians ‘stop frightening us and our children’ about the threat of global warming.
He demanded that Whitehall and ministers consider the damaging economic impact of blindly following the ‘climate change agenda’.
The attack on green taxes also came as one of Britain’s biggest power companies unveiled a round of price rises that will add nearly £200 to the average family bill.
Scottish Power blamed soaring wholesale prices for the 19 per cent increase in gas prices, and a 10 per cent rise in the cost of electricity.
But Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the soaring price of fuel was also the result of Britain’s ‘stubborn but wrong headed commitment to renewable energy’.
He said: ‘So called green stealth taxes are already adding 15 to 20 per cent to the average domestic power bill and even more to business users’.
Scottish Power has blamed soaring wholesale prices for the 19 per cent increase in gas prices, and a 10 per cent rise in the cost of electricity
Lord Turnbull demanded that politicians 'stop frightening us and our children' about global warming
The typical UK household spends £608 a year on gas and another £424 on electricity. Dr Peiser says green stealth taxes make up between £154 and £206 of that bill. For couples with large families - and large fuel demands - the figure is far higher.
‘And yet, despite the growing cost of these taxes, you won’t find any mention of them at all on your gas and electricity bills,’ he said.
‘That, of course, suits the Government down to the ground. If it raised the huge sums required to encourage renewable energy and limit carbon emission through general taxation it would make the Government itself very unpopular.
‘But by doing it through electricity and gas bills, the Government has cleverly ensure that it’s the power companies that take the blame.’
Under the Climate Change Act, the Government is legally bound to cut Britain’s C02 emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2025.
To meet its targets – the toughest in the world – the Government is encouraging the building of 10,000 wind turbines. It also wants power companies to install £7billion worth of smart meters in homes.
Government wants companies to install £7bn worth of smart meters in homes
The meters record precisely how much gas and electricity a household is using and show how much it is costing, hopefully encouraging households to use less energy.
The meters send this information back to the utility firm, making estimated bills unnecessary.
The drive for wind turbines is being subsidised by the Renewable Obligation – a scheme that forces power companies to buy a proportion of their energy from renewable sources such as wind.
The scheme artificially inflates the cost of coal, oil and gas power, and subsidises green power, making investment in costly wind farms profitable. The cost is passed on in fuel bills.
A second scheme, the European Emission Trading Scheme, forces energy companies and heavy industry to offset greenhouse gas emissions with ‘carbon credits’ – permits that allow them to generate a certain amount of carbon dioxide.
Energy companies and heavy industry can offset greenhouse gas emissions with 'carbon credits'
The scheme has been hit by scandals including tax fraud, the re-sale of used carbon credits and the theft of millions of emission permits.
Once industries have used up their free allocation of credits, they must buy them on the open market – inflating the cost of energy even more.
Bills are pushed up further by the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target – which forces suppliers to subsidise home insulation and new boilers.
Bills are also inflated by the Feed In Tariffs – a scheme that encourages homes and small businesses to install wind turbines and solar panels by guaranteeing a fixed, high price for electricity they sell to the National Grid.
Dr Peiser said: ‘The Government has to come clean and force the power companies to make their bills fully transparent.
‘Only then will it be possible to see if a power company has been raising its prices unfairly and change supplier. And only then will the true cost of the Government’s mad rush towards renewable energy become clear.’