Now the right wing cheese-eating surrender monkeys are also putting their American political counterparts to shame. As Nature reports about the new conservative French President:
Yet it seems inconceivable a U.S. conservative politician could take such action, or agree to the following remarkable proposals now under active consideration in France:
• All newly built homes to produce more energy than they consume by 2020. Renovate all existing buildings to save energy. Ban incandescent light bulbs by 2010. Reduce greenhouse-gas emission by 20% by 2020.
• Increase renewable energy from 9% to 20–25% of total energy consumption by 2020.
• Bring transport emissions back to 1990 levels. Reduce vehicle speed limits by 10 kilometres per hour. Taxes and incentives to favour clean cars. Shift half of haulage by road to rail and water within 15 years. Develop rail and public transport.
• Reduce air pollutants quantitatively.
• Create a national network of ‘green’ corridors and nature reserves.
• Increase organic farming from 2% to 6% of total acreage production by 2010 and to 20% by 2020.
• Ecological groups to be stakeholders, like trade unions, in government negotiations.
• Create a body to review planting of genetically modified crops on a case-by-case basis.
We must join the climate fight soon, lest some French satricial TV show label us “Freedom-Fry-eating polar-bear killers.”
Tip o’ the hat to Earl Killian for pointing this story out to me.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
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France is unlikely to meet its target of a fourfold reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050, according to a report by a government-appointed commission, business daily La Tribune reported on Monday.
The report into French energy perspectives up to 2050, due to be published this week, will say the best that can be expected is a reduction by 2.1 or 2.4 times, La Tribune said in an article from its Tuesday edition issued ahead of publication.
The report comes shortly before a major meeting of representatives from government, industry, environmental associations, agriculture and the public later this month.
“By 2050, given the need for growth, it appears difficult to do better than a factor of two, except by adopting breakthrough technologies which have not been taken into consideration because they appeared relatively improbable,” the report says.
Under an energy law of July 2005, France committed to a fourfold reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases over the decades to 2050.
The commission recommends import taxes on products which consume large amounts of energy, auctioning carbon dioxide quotas and harmonising the system at European Union level.
Other measures included forcing carmakers to adopt standards limiting carbon dioxide emissions to 120g/km by 2012, increasing petrol tax by three cents a year and by five cents a year for gas-oil and taxing vehicles according to the amount of pollution they produced.
How anyone could possibly determine today that the plan is unachievable in four decades is beyond me. I wonder if they considered plug-in hybrids, for instance.
Well, I admit I have no idea really whether the plan is workable, but if scientists can be sure what the climate will do in the next few decades, I don’t see any reason why economists and other experts couldn’t figure out the workability of this plan.