Environment

The best 5 minutes of the US Congress in 2008.

[via]

Environmentalists are complaining about an American Airlines plane that crossed the Atlantic with only five passengers on it. Ignoring the fact that it was on the first leg of its journey, and that its fuel use would have been about the same if it was 2/3 full, they are showing their business knowledge can be summed up by one word, “non-existent.”

Environmentalists have been campaigning for the government to force airlines to pay for carbon offsetting rather than passing it on to passengers.

Mr Baker said: “This case shows the need for the aviation industry to pay its own tax on fuel rather than the passenger which would give companies the incentive to fill their planes.”

Idiots! The customer will always pay. If you don’t believe me, I have some carbon credits to sell you.

Cheatneutral is about offsetting infidelity. We’re the only people doing it, and Cheatneutral is a joke.

Carbon offsetting is about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon. The Carbon offset industry sold £60 million of offsets last year, and is rapidly growing. Carbon offsetting is also a joke.

I’ve signed up to be an offset project.

It’s hard to see the little things.

2. you americans only got what you deserved : you guys are the worst animals of the world, the first polluters the responsible for the environmental collapse of our world by striking mother earth with your “standarts of living”. Well mother Earth warns you with these fires : change your behaviour, respect our planet and the other peoples of the world otherwise you will feel the Earth wrath. But I doubt you guys will change your way of living, you love too much your gas guzzling SUVs and are too selfish to change
Submitted by: loveitorleaveit
2:40 AM PDT, Oct 29, 2007

From the comments on this article at the LA Times.

Key point from the articles.

Investigators have said that at least two of the huge wildfires, one in Orange County and the other in Temecula, were the work of arsonists.

and

Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region, a man in Hesperia has been arrested on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.

This one is interesting too. I guess Mother Nature outsources its arsoning.

The woman called police, and Highway Patrol and sheriff’s deputies were soon looking for the suspect, who witnesses said took off on a Honda motorcycle, wearing a red-and-white-striped helmet.

Mr. Vice President. You may want to turn off your TV when you aren’t watching it. I heard that will save the earth from certain doom in a couple of years.

If Al Gore took on the role of Health Care evangelist he’d own a cigarette company and cough up a few dollars a month to pay for lung transplants.

In, of all places, the New York Times, I found this interesting interview.

An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New ‘Heresies’

“Any time that people are forced to acknowledge publicly that they’re wrong, it’s really good for the commonweal. I love to be busted for apocalyptic proclamations that turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. In 1973 I thought the energy crisis was so intolerable that we’d have police on the streets by Christmas. The times I’ve been wrong is when I assume there’s a brittleness in a complex system that turns out to be way more resilient than I thought.�

Everyday Joe: I’ll take Hypocrites for $1000 Alex.

Alex: His mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

Everyday Joe: Who is Al Gore?

Yes. THAT Al Gore. The one who’s documentary won an Oscar for brainwashing enough people to think that climate change is more important than dealing with Al Quaeda. The one who calls on the little guy to take the bus and to reduce electricity consumption at home.

Yes. THAT Al Gore.

I guess it’s a little too inconvenient to only turn off the plasma televisions that run his award winning, full of exaggerations, insomnia killing DVDs 24/7. Well, at least when they’re not playing re-runs of President Bill Clinton’s “It depends what your definition of ‘is’ is” speech.

I guess the electrical bill is going up now that he’s going to have to build another room just to house the statue that has more charisma than him.

Be prepared to see something like this come from the Conservatives in the next few months in response to the “Screw Canada, Implement Kyoto bill.”

This is taken from a comment at Political Staples.

Mister Speaker, I rise today to announce measures that my government must take to comply with Bill C288, otherwise known as the “Pablo Rodriguez Law of Unintended Consequences�.

In order to comply with the Bill and Kyoto, it is necessary to take some drastic measures to either reduce emissions ort buy credits from other signatory nations of the Kyoto Protocol who do not need to reduce their emission but get to sell these credits.

Canada got hosed at Kyoto. Jean Chretien’s Liberal government signed Canada to a treaty that means we must reduce our standard of living in order to comply. Bill 288 further obligates Canada to reduce its economy in order to comply and because of the way the Bill is worded, our Government must achieve the 2012 targets within 180 days of the Bill being granted Royal Ascent, so we must act NOW.

I am instructing a number of government department and agencies to enact the following emergency measure so that we can comply with the will of Parliament, or at least the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois parts of parliament.

Immediate shutdown of all coal fired power plants in Canada. We realize that this will hit Ontario very hard – 1/3 of Ontario’s electricity is coal generated, but look on the bright side, the lack of power will also cause the shutdown of thousands of plants and factories, throwing hundreds of thousands out of work. While we are it, we’ll close down all the top ten listed below:

Rank Company Name Province 1 Ontario Power Generation On 2 Transalta Utilities AB 3 Sask Power SK 4 Alberta Power Corp AB 5 Nova Scotia Power Inc NS 6 Syncrude Canada Ltd. AB 7 Suncor Energy inc. Oil Sands AB 8 EPCOR Generation Inc. AB 9 Petro-Canada AB 10 Dofasco Inc. On

Immediate shutdown of the entire Petroleum industry across Canada – we will need to import our oil but we are only going to import oil from countries that will sell us Kyoto Credits.

Immediately ban all wood burning fireplaces, charcoal and propane BBQ’s and summer campfires. All recreational vehicles and activities are deemed frivolous and will be banned. Sorry Bombardier, no more skidoos and water jet boats. We are investigating how to ban forest fires as well, but that has its challenges. No

A 30 cent per liter “GhG Kyoto credit buying Tax. Based on recent data that we use about 45 Billion liters of gasoline every year. This new tax revenue should provide enough money to both buy the $10 billion in foreign credits we need annually and make up for the billions in lost income taxes the Federal and Provincial governments will not collect by the 35% contraction of our economy we need to achieve

We ill not be able to afford generous EI support for all the laid off workers because the numbers could reach in the millions. Shutting down the oil sands alone will result in huge job losses in Alberta, but also in Quebec and Ontario, where tens of thousands of workers make the pipes, valves, machinery, trucks, tires, computers and other equipment that would have been purchased had we not put these actions in place to meet the requirements of the “Pablo Rodriguez Law of Unintended Consequences�.

For the tens of thousands of workers in the Financial sector, we are aware that the mortgage and credit crisis these moves will cause will result in the devastation of your industry as well but we expect that the Barons of Bay street will be able to salvage a few jobs trading in the International Credit Trading Market, or as some have come to call it, the Kyoto Hot Air Credit Socialist Sucking Ponzi Scheme. Hopefully you will be one of the few out of the tens of thousands Financial Sector workers who will get one of these new jobs – you might even make megatonnes of money

Since there will be a huge rise in the number of corporate and personal bankruptcies , our government will be enacting new legislation to simplify the process. Simply nail a sign to your property say “We quit� or for consumer debt, place your cut up credit and bank cards in an envelope. That’s all, no lawyers or courts needed

We will also be reducing the size of the federal government payroll by at least 35% to meet the requirement to keep the budget balanced to the new and much lower levels of government funds.

We will be reducing the Federal government transfer of dollars to the provinces to meet the new fiscal capabilities of Canada’s Federal government. We will leave it up to individual provinces to decide to close schools or hospitals or whatever. It’s a provincial responsibility

Its not all bad news. Canada should be able to save a fortune in Immigration costs. We have a forecast from government experts that Canada will go to last place in the quest for skilled immigrant labour. Somehow they don’t want to come to a country with power shortages, no air conditioning, limited winter heating, no jobs and a devastated economy. Go figure. The USA and Australia will benefit form these immigrants and their skills,

Mr. Speaker, let me close by thanking the Liberals, especially the mega green leader Citoyen Dion, the NDP, under the leadership of Jack “Talban� bin Layton, the Bloc Quebecois and their inspired of Gilles “Hairnet� Duceppe for voting for Bill C288. But especially all Canadians want to thank Liberal Pablo Rodriguez for devastating our economy, depressing our standard of living to upper third world status. As we huddle in the cold and swelter in the summer heat, as we stare at our old car we can’t afford to drive, as we fondly remember how hard it was to get out of bed on a Monday morning to go to the job we used to have, we can take pride in being the best-est, wonderful-est, the most moralist international boy scouts out to help the planet be saved.

Thank you Mr. Speaker

Then watch the Libs, NDP and Bloc scramble.