UK's "Greenest Govt. Ever" On Verge Of Shredding Committments To Deal With Climate - Guardian

[hatrack]

EDIT

Now, as Friends of the Earth has discovered, the coalition could be about to rip up its commitments. The Treasury, the Department for Transport and the business department (run by the Lib Dem Vince Cable) have been lobbying within government to overturn the committee's advice that, to stay on target, carbon should be cut by 60% by 2030. So much for George Osborne's promise in 2009 that "under a Conservative government, the Treasury will no longer be the cuckoo in the Whitehall nest when it comes to climate change".

Other departments, including Huhne's, have been trying to defend the target. The decision has already been delayed several times: it now looks as if the showdown will take place at the meeting of the cabinet's economic affairs committee on Monday. If Osborne and Cable win, this will be the first time the climate targets have been rejected. It would set a disastrous precedent: the parties in power today will be unable to hold future governments to account if they too let the schedule slip. Friends of the Earth argues that if the Treasury and the business department win, Huhne must resign. To stay on under those circumstances would be to lose all remaining credibility. The central purpose of his department, and of his career in government, is to enforce the act.

But this is just the beginning of the coalition's assault on the environment. The government's Red Tape Challenge presents, on paper at least, the widest-ranging threat to environmental protection since the enclosure acts. Suddenly it is asking whether environmental legislation – yes, all of it – should be "scrapped altogether". Listed as negotiable are the entire Climate Change Act, the clean air acts, the rules governing ozone-depleting chemicals, the Town and Country Planning Act, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, the acts establishing national parks (and therefore the parks themselves), the rules enforcing energy efficiency, governing hazardous waste, preventing litter and dog-fouling: all the regulations, grand and petty, that protect us from other people's greed and selfishness.

It's a breathtaking, astonishing initiative, and the little protest it has generated testifies to how punchdrunk this country has become as the government pummels every protection our forebears worked so hard to win, everything that defends us from a feral, unregulated market.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/09/coalition-greatest-threat-to-environment

[CreekDog]

1. damned Clegg

he's cooperated in the decimation of progressive government in UK.

[saras]

2. You don't mean this guy, do you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJDeZ8qBd5A

[Nihil]

3. They've been doing their best ...

... to f*ck up education and the National Health Service
whilst maintaining protection for their BFFs in the City
(traders & bankers) so this really doesn't surprise me.

The OP shows the reason:
> ... testifies to how punchdrunk this country has become as the government
> pummels every protection our forebears worked so hard to win, everything
> that defends us from a feral, unregulated market.

:argh:

[guardian]

4. No surprise really

The "legally binding overall target: an 80% cut by 2050" of carbon is ridiculous, unnecessary, and hugely expensive. That sort of carbon reduction will destroy life/culture as we know it. People aren't going to accept that, let alone pay for it, when over half the population doesn't even believe in global warming.

I submit the folly of the global warming lobby is actually HURTING THE ENVIRONMENT with this nonsensical CO2 reduction bandwagon. It is hurting the environment because it takes focus and resources away from actual environmental issues like hazardous waste, clean water, clean air, and general conservation. The global warming movement has been sucking up all the air in the room for 15 years. The population at large is starting to rebel and it will ultimately cause more harm than good.

The same thing is going to happen in the US. People rebelling against the global warming movement will as a by product attempt to gut the EPA. Good work doomers. Charlie Sheen sums up the global warming lobby best: "Duh winnnnning"