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| Europe |
| EU tax to 'double air fares' |
| 2006-07-05 |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #14 KBK, ever looked at EU institutions payroll? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-07-05 21:57 |
| #13 What happens to the taxes collected? Are they put to some use intended to solve the 'problem' or are they just 'punishment' intended to drive the market towards cleaner technology and less consumption? |
| Posted by: KBK 2006-07-05 19:53 |
| #12 There is a book The Strategy of Technology, by Steven Possony & Jerry Pournelle, which claims that the underlying reason for environmental regulation is resentment by the upper classes of the fact that technology gives "the herd" options that were previously the sole reserve of said upper classes. I used to think of this explanation as way too fanciful. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-07-05 18:28 |
| #11 If they can't afford to fly they'll vacation in Europe and thus help the European economy. Not that much. The Euros already vacation mostly in Europe. Air travel allows Norweigans and Swedes to fly to Majorca or the Canary Islands, or the Costa Brava in Spain. The Germans fly to Greece, Albania, or Turkey. The Italians go north or stay at home. The Brits go EVERYWHERE. The big increase in tourist dollars come from North America - primarily Canada and the US. Without those dollars, many tourist places will be heavily pinched. The EU is cutting its own throat, like it does most of the time. The US needs to greatly reduce its "footprint" in Western Europe and tell the EU it needs to start building its own defenses, because we're pulling out. Let them crumble from within. I think all of Europe is beginning to understand that islamic immigrants won't solve their problems. Europe needs people trained in high-tech fields, and lots of them. The muzzies only want to learn the koran. In 20 years, the level of technology in Europe will begin to decline, then accelerate rapidly as the aging, trained, educated workforce is replaced by people who can hardly read and write. Europe is dying, and it's a suicide. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-07-05 17:14 |
| #10 If they can't afford to fly they'll vacation in Europe and thus help the European economy. It'll kill the European airlines but help the economies. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2006-07-05 14:43 |
| #9 Kyoto Protocol in action. Thank goodness U.S. senators gave Gore's nonsense the boot. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2006-07-05 13:45 |
| #8 Well, if the European Parliament were truly concerned abut greenhouse gasses, they would shut down the airline industry completely. That would end all CO2 emissions from airlines. Next they could outlaw cars, trucks, etc. After that they could outlaw heating and cooling. While it is true that implementation of these measures would result in the death through starvation, freezing and so on of millions, it would be a small price to pay for helping out with |
| Posted by: Rambler 2006-07-05 13:42 |
| #7 And Europe will continue to wonder why no one visits anymore. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-07-05 09:25 |
| #6 Tony, I was floored by the vote. I would say it was from an alternative reality, except that it wasn't. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-07-05 01:29 |
| #5 Well, we can thank one Caroline Lucas (she's against most things, for Amnesty International - I stopped reading there) for this; MEPs voted by 439 to 74 to adopt proposals drafted by Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MEP for southeast England. There were 102 abstentions. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2006-07-05 01:23 |
| #4 Naw, the Greens want them to ride nice clean electric trains that are powered by, umm, windmills or something. Reminds me of a book ad I saw the other day. The book was decrying the demise of electric cars. Why there were just oodles of them in 1998, and now they're all gone. Must be a plot or something. No sunshine, after all those lead acid batteries started to die and the owners saw the replacement bill, they quietly drove their electric cars to the junk yard one night and got in line to buy a hybrid. Of course, the hybrids will have exactly the same problem in three or four years, though not to the same extent as the electrics. Plus municipal waster managers can't be overjoyed to get all of that lead and sulfuric acid in the waste stream. We need to start a list of Green "successes": • We had over a hundred years of clean natural gas to heat our houses thirty years ago. Now we have less than ten years of reserves in this country and are importing massive amounts. Why? Because the damn enviro-nazis blocked the contsruction of nuke and coal plants and forced natural gas turbines and CNG busses and taxis down our throats. We're not even talking about serious economics here, just consumption rates. Boneheads. • After their big "success" in eliminating lead from all of those harmful circuit boards, their brain-dead policy is forcing all of that lead back into the wastestream in lead acid batteries for hybrids. Dumbasses. • They got rid of all of those pesky fluoro-carbons and saved the ozone layer. (It's highly debatable whether the ozone layer needed saving. I've never seen a study showing increases in UV exposure over time during the whole ozone "crisis.") The results: seven dead astronauts, many American businesses destroyed (the latest -- the number one maker of surfboard blanks in the world), and less effiecient heat pumps, that use, holy crap, more electricity. Idiots. I hate these guys. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2006-07-05 01:14 |
| #3 The main proposal was for airlines to be forced to buy emissions permits within a separate trading scheme dedicated to aviation, with a specific cap on the amount of CO2. BA had wanted to be allowed virtually unlimited growth by being able to buy cheap surplus permits from other industries. The existing Carbon Credits scheme failed cos governments gave out too many. Solution - set up a new Carbon Credits scheme. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-07-05 01:11 |
| #2 So now millons more will drive instead. That really saves greenhouse gas production. /satire |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-07-05 00:21 |
| #1 First the "poverty tax" on French airfares, and now this. Can't wait to see what the next one imposed will be for. |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie 2006-07-05 00:17 |