Fighting Global Warming Amidst a Snowstorm
The Brits have quite a reputation. Stiff upper limit and all that. Which may account for the picture of parliament debating global warming legislation in the midst of the first October snowstorm in London in more than eight decades. Reports the Britain’s Register:
Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday – the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session.
In order to combat a projected two degree centigrade rise in global temperature, the Climate Change Bill pledges the UK to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The bill was receiving a third reading, which means both the last chance for both democratic scrutiny and consent.
The bill creates an enormous bureaucratic apparatus for monitoring and reporting, which was expanded at the last minute. Amendments by the Government threw emissions from shipping and aviation into the monitoring program, and also included a revision of the Companies Act (c. 46) “requiring the directors’ report of a company to contain such information as may be specified in the regulations about emissions of greenhouse gases from activities for which the company is responsible” by 2012.
Recently the American media has begun to notice the odd incongruity of saturation media coverage here which insists that global warming is both man-made and urgent, and a British public which increasingly doubts either to be true. 60 per cent of the British population now doubt the influence of humans on climate change, and more people than not think Global Warming won’t be as bad “as people say”.
Just about the time when all the governments of the world get on board legislation designed to cool the planet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will decide that the real threat facing mankind is a new ice age. And the process of scare-mongering will begin anew.