India joins China in boycotting EU's aviation blackmail

23 March, 2012 by

Carbon price down 7%

China has already rejected the EU’s carbon blackmail, and now the Indian government has done the same. Not only is the EU in danger of starting a global trade war, but repercussions are widening, as China cancels a $14bn order with European aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

And all for what? To prop up the EU’s pointless emissions trading scheme which will do virtually nothing for the climate, and everything to damage Europe’s competitiveness. Even Reuters, in the article below, acknowledges that the carbon price in the EU is too low to encourage any low-carbon investment. What a joke.

NEW DELHI, March 22 (Reuters) – India joined China in asking its airlines to boycott the European Union’s carbon scheme on Thursday, confirming what a senior Indian government source previously told Reuters and stoking a diplomatic row over the issue.

“Though the European Union has directed Indian carriers to submit emissions details of their aircraft by March 31, 2012, no Indian carrier is submitting them in view of the position of the government,” India’s civil aviation minister Ajit Singh said on Thursday.

“Hence the imposition of a carbon tax does not arise,” Singh told lawmakers in a written reply.

The European Commission was not immediately available to comment. [LOL – Ed]

India’s opposition to the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), a major plank in the bloc’s efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions and combat global warming, could damage the chances of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) it is negotiating with the EU.

On Monday, a senior government official told Reuters that India would ask local airlines not to buy carbon credits from or share emissions data with the bloc.

Since January this year, all airlines using EU airports start to become liable to pay for carbon emissions, but no carriers will be handed a bill until next year.

Initially, they will also be given free allowances to cover the bulk of the cost.

The March 31 deadline is one of a series for airlines to comply with various EU requirements. Documents seen by Reuters showed that airlines, including from India and China, have previously signed up to become eligible for free allowances.

SOVEREIGNTY

Foreign governments, including the world’s top three carbon emitters – the United States, China and India – say the EU is exceeding its legal jurisdiction by charging for an entire flight, as opposed to just the part covering European airspace.

In a meeting last month in Moscow of the so-called “coalition of the unwilling”, countries opposed to the EU law including India, agreed on retaliatory steps, although it did not agree on enforcing them.

China said in February its airlines were barred from participating in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme unless they gained government approval. Beijing has also suspended the purchase of $14 billion worth of jets from European maker Airbus .

The EU’s Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said the EU only adopted its current policy because efforts to agree a United Nations scheme to curb rising aviation emissions had failed.

She has repeatedly said the EU will stand by its law unless the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization can come up with a global plan.

The European Parliament has also reiterated support for the carbon charge and officials say it could decide to express its anger at India by blocking the Free Trade Agreement with the country. (source)

The EU is embarking on a very dangerous journey. It will end in tears for the EU, and China and India will be laughing.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

SHOCK: China to introduce a carbon tax

7 January, 2012 by

Except that it will be just over $1.50 a tonne… from 2015… possibly… compared to Australia’s $23 a tonne (fifteen times as much)… from 2012… definitely.

Still madness.

Link.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Chinese airlines refuse to pay EU carbon blackmail

6 January, 2012 by

Calling Europe's bluff?

As ACM reported last month, the EU is in danger of triggering a trade war with its demand that airlines pay an additional carbon tax when flying within its territory. Obviously thinking that opposition would crumble, the EU is standing firm. Unfortunately, however, so are the Chinese:

CHINA’S four leading airlines have thrown down the gauntlet to the European Union by saying they will refuse to pay carbon charges levied under Europe’s emissions trading scheme.

The defiant message – which could lead to a ban from European airports – marks an escalation of resistance to the scheme, which came into effect this week and is also opposed by the US.

Despite the growing threat of a trade war, Europe sees the cap-and-trade system for aviation emissions as a crucial tool for reducing greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Since Sunday, any airline using an airport in the EU has been obliged to participate.

But China’s leading aviation body said it would not.

”China will not co-operate with the European Union on the ETS, so Chinese airlines will not impose surcharges on customers relating to the emissions tax,” said the deputy secretary-general of the China Air Transport Association, Cai Haibo.

The association represents Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and Hainan Airlines, which fly millions of passengers to Europe each year. (source)

Legal action is being considered. Watch this space.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Global trade war looms over carbon taxes

23 December, 2011 by

This is what happens when we finally arrive at the pointy end of the ludicrous and dangerous policies implemented in the EU to theoretically reduce emissions [note: which don’t work]. The Chinese are furious at the EU’s unilateral decree that it will start taxing international flights as part of it’s carbon pricing regime:

China has warned the European Union to abandon its controversial carbon tax on airlines or risk provoking a global trade war.

Adding weight to the warning, an industry insider told the Financial Times that the Chinese government was seriously considering measures to hit back at the EU if it insists on charging international airlines for their carbon emissions.

In a case initiated by US airlines, the European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the EU’s carbon emissions trading scheme did not infringe on the sovereignty of other nations, and that it was compatible with international law. The change is set to go into effect from January 1.

Chinese airlines have also been preparing an legal challenge in Europe and they still plan to proceed with it, but Chai Haibo, deputy secretary general of the China Air Transport Association, conceded that the European ruling complicated matters as it means they will need to find an alternative reason to challenge the law.

Even if court action fails, Mr Chai was optimistic that concerted global pressure could yet persuade the EU to repeal its law. In the short term, he called on Brussels to delay implementation in light of the intense international outcry that it has provoked.

“Except for the EU, no countries support this,” he said.

He added that several Chinese government departments in Beijing were in the midst of researching possible counter-measures. Chinese airline officials have said before that they might refuse to pay the carbon tax, raising the prospect of a drawn-out legal fight. (source)

The realities of the imaginary green utopia begin to sink in.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

China urged to take more climate action, so Australia will be "left behind"

1 September, 2011 by

"Low carbon" China

In public, Labor claims that China is at the forefront of tackling climate change, and therefore Australia will be “left behind” unless we enact a pointless carbon tax. However, in the shadows (as revealed by Wikileaks), Australia has secretly complained to China about their lack of real commitment to such action. In other words, please improve your action on climate change so we can use it to justify our own:

THE Gillard government has always publicly insisted China is taking significant steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, but WikiLeaks cables reveal senior Australian bureaucrats complained privately to China about the ”lack of ambition” in that country’s targets.

A confidential cable sent from the US embassy in Canberra in January last year, weeks after the disastrous Copenhagen climate change conference, reported the then secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Dr Martin Parkinson, said his department ”expressed concern to Chinese diplomats over the lack of ambition in the [Chinese] stated goal of a 40 to 45 per cent reduction in carbon intensity by 2020.” [ACM Note: don’t forget, “carbon [dioxide] intensity” is emissions per unit GDP, and since China’s GDP is going through the roof, emissions in absolute terms will continue to rise]

The 40 to 45 per cent reduction in emissions intensity target was pledged by China at Copenhagen and remains that country’s target. The government’s climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, judged it to be more than China’s ”fair share” of global emission reductions.

Dr Parkinson, now Treasury secretary, told US officials Australia’s emissions trading legislation would be ”seriously jeopardised” if China did not inscribe its target in the UN agreement. China eventually did, but the legislation failed anyway. (source)

Yet another example of a government addicted to spin, that will say one thing to the electorate, and yet believe precisely the opposite in private.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Garnaut: China has carbon trading, so…

29 March, 2011 by

"Low carbon" China

See? Australia is lagging behind China in cutting emissions. Disgraceful. We must follow China’s lead and implement Julia and Greg’s wonderful carbon tax to cut our emissions from 1.3% of the global total to just a teensy-weensy bit less than 1.3%, at a cost of several billion dollars each year, which will be slugged mercilessly from the wallets of every family in Australia…, every year…, for ever…

CLIMATE change adviser Ross Garnaut says China is experimenting with carbon trading in a number of large cities because it knows that’s the cheapest way to reduce emissions.

The economist held talks today with the man responsible for China’s climate change policies, Xie Zhenhua, ahead of ministerial-level meetings.

Professor Garnaut said the emerging power was trialling carbon trading in five provinces and three cities – Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing.

“The way China tends to do these things is they try them out, sometimes in different ways, and if they seem to be working they adopt them nationally,” Prof Garnaut told reporters, adding he wouldn’t presume what China’s next step would be.

“(But) they are experimenting with broader approaches like a carbon price because the economists in China as well as other places have worked out that’s a lower-cost way of doing things.”

Maybe we should copy China in other ways, like building a new coal fired power station every fortnight… no, wait. Laughably, even Greg Combet is citing China as a shining example of “tackling climate change”:

Mr Combet’s climate change department put out a briefing paper today, outlining the action China and other countries were taking to reduce emissions.

“Thirty-two countries and 10 US states already have emissions trading schemes in place,” the paper states. [24 of those countries are in the fraud-riddled EU ETS, aren’t they? And it’s nine US states now that New Hampshire has bailed out of the RGGI, isn’t it – Ed]

On China, it notes that Beijing’s latest 12-year plan speaks of an imperative for the country to establish a “green, low-carbon development concept”.

China’s new targets include:

  • increasing the proportion of non-fossil fuels in energy consumption to 11.4 per cent by 2015;
  • reducing energy per unit of GDP by 16 per cent by 2015;
  • reducing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 17 per cent by 2015.

China? Low carbon? My aching sides. Of course, the “trick” to “hide the incline” is the magic words “per unit of GDP”. So let’s do the math, as our US friends would say. China is likely to have a GDP growth over the next four years of, say, approximately 9% per year, so if we take 2011 as a baseline 100 units of GDP, 2012 will be 109 units, 2013 will be 118.8 units, 2014 will be 129.5 units and 2015 will be approximately 141 units. So reducing emissions by 17% per unit of GDP actually works out as an increase of 17% on 2011 figures in absolute terms.

If we take China’s 2007 emissions figure of 6.5 Gigatons of CO2, which is probably far less than in reality today, that means an increase of about 1.1 Gt CO2 per year by 2015. For comparison, Australia emitted just 0.3 Gt per year in 2007. Which means in just four years, China will increase its emissions by nearly FOUR TIMES Australia’s annual total. Any reduction our pointless carbon tax might make will be simply lost in the noise. If we manage to reduce emissions by 10% by 2015 (highly unlikely), that equates to one fortieth of China’s increase – a joke in other words.

The reality of China is that it is far more concerned with raising its population out of poverty than “tackling climate change”, and nothing Australia does will make the slightest bit of difference.

More spin than a launderette from Garnaut and Combet – but what else do we expect?

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

China: one more "Australia" of emissions every year

12 August, 2010 by

One every year for 25 years

James Delingpole on the myth of the Chinese “green economy”. China is building power stations equivalent to one “Australia’s worth” of emissions every year for the next 25 years. Which kinda makes our ridiculous ETS (that will cut at most a few percent of “one Australia’s emissions”) seem even more pointless than we already knew it was:

One of the great lies told us by our political leaders in order to persuade us to accept their swingeing and pointless green taxes and their economically suicidal, environmentally vandalistic wind-farm building programmes is that if we don’t do it China will. Apparently, just waiting to be grabbed out there are these glittering, golden prizes marked “Green jobs” and “Green technologies” – and if only we can get there before those scary, mysterious Chinese do, well, maybe the West will enjoy just a few more years of economic hegemony before the BRICs nations thwack us into the long grass.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The Chinese do not remotely believe in the myth of Man-Made Global Warming nor in the efficacy of “alternative energy”. Why should they? It’s not as if there is any evidence for it. The only reason the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming myth has penetrated so deeply into Western culture is… No. I’m going to save that stuff for my fairly imminent (Nov?) book on the subject which I hope you’re all going to buy.

What do the Chinese think about CAGW? Well, until now it was largely a question of educated guesswork, based on inferences like the fact that it was the Chinese who derailed the Copenhagen negotiations. But thanks to a new book called Low Carbon Plot by Gou Hongyang we know exactly what the official view is.

Can you guess?

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

China says no to emissions cap

25 February, 2010 by

The best bit about the Herald’s headline is the last two words: “for now.” The most blindly optimistic words in journalism this year:

China’s top climate change negotiator says the world’s biggest carbon polluter has no intention of capping greenhouse gas emissions for the time being.

Su Wei, who led China’s negotiating team at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, said the country’s carbon emissions had to increase because the economy is still developing, the China Daily reported on Thursday.

China “could not and should not” set an upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions at the current stage, Su told a meeting on climate change policy in Beijing on Wednesday.

However, he said China was committed to making its economy more energy-efficient.

Beijing has pledged to reduce its carbon intensity – the measure of greenhouse-gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product – by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020 based on 2005 levels.

Su said that pledge would be a binding part of China’s next two five-year economic development plans.

His remarks came a day after President Hu Jintao told a high-level Communist Party meeting that China must “recognise the importance, urgency and difficulty of dealing with climate change”.

Looks like they are saying nice reassuring things to pull the wool over the UN’s eyes, but in fact carrying on exactly as before, business as usual.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Copenhagen: China and India torpedoed the talks

23 December, 2009 by

Ramesh: priorities right

Probably because they’re both more interested in raising millions of their own populations out of a miserable life of poverty rather than flushing trillions of dollars down the toilet on pointless efforts to “tackle climate change”, which, as any fule kno, will change nothing about the climate.

India has confirmed it worked with China and other emerging nations to ensure there were no legally binding targets from the Copenhagen climate talks.

Facing parliament for the first time since the UN talks last weekend in the Danish capital, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said India had “come out quite well in Copenhagen”.

He listed what he said were a series of accomplishments, including the thwarting of moves to impose binding targets for global reductions in carbon emissions – something India has always rejected.

“We can be satisfied that we were able to get our way on this issue,” declared Mr Ramesh, who has consistently said India would be one of the countries hardest hit by climate change.

Well done. At least some countries have got their priorities right.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Copenhagen: Obama threatens China with "eco-spying"

19 December, 2009 by

Whatever next!

Ouch:

The final accord is widely seen to have acquiesced to Chinese demands by agreeing that emissions can be measured domestically, as long as the results are reported to the rest of the world.

However, speaking later, Mr Obama gave a veiled warning that satellite technology could be used for what is likely to be termed “eco-spying” to ensure countries honoured their commitments.

“We can actually monitor what takes place through satellite imagery and so forth, so I think we are going to have a pretty good idea of what people are doing,” he said. He added that the deal could be successful if “there is a sense of moral obligation and information sharing so that people can see who’s serious and who’s not”.

Can’t imagine the Chinese will be too happy about that, BHO…

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
Next Page»
%d bloggers like this: