The plasma screen television is poised to become the next victim of the battle to curb energy use legitimize and perpetuate al-Gore's Hoax.
Giant energy-guzzling flatscreens are expected to be banned under legislation due to be agreed by the EU this spring.
Plasma screens have been nicknamed the '4x4s' of the living room because they use up to four times as much electricity and are responsible for up to four times as much carbon dioxide as traditional cathode ray tube sets.
The most energy intensive will be phased out under the new EU standards for minimum energy performance, which will follow the voluntary withdrawal of the traditional 100watt light bulb.
The remaining TVs of all types will have to carry energy rating labels designed to make it easy to distinguish between the best and worst performers.
LCD flat screen TVs are much more energy efficient than their plasma cousins so are unlikely to be banned.
That is, until some nitwit deems otherwise.
A 42in LCD TV uses similar amounts of energy to a much smaller traditional set.
A spokesman for the Department-for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the plasma TV would not be banned completely, with eco-friendly sets remaining on the market.
The moves are part of an effort to tackle climate change by stemming the spiralling electricity consumption in households.
It involves phasing out wasteful devices and introducing low-energy alternatives.
Families have nearly three times as many electrical appliances and gadgets as a generation ago and the amount of electricity used to power them has doubled.
Today Britain has 60million television sets - one for every person in the country.
Plasma screens, which are common in pubs and supermarkets, as well as in homes, are among the most popular buys.
A Defra spokesman said that in the past five years the main TV in many households has changed from being a 24-32in cathode ray model to a 32-42 flatscreen TV.
Busy doing some housecleaning, Carol M. Browner was unavailable for comment.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the European Union will not be able to expand further without ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
An EU summit in Brussels has exposed divisions over how to proceed with the reform treaty - which was rejected by Irish voters in a referendum last week.
A decision on what to do next is expected to be postponed until October.
The leaders are now expected to discuss Zimbabwe. A draft statement threatens increasing EU sanctions on the country.
Wrong signal
Mr Sarkozy's comments about EU expansion came after clear divisions emerged over the future of the treaty and the meeting decided that the Irish should report back in October on possible ways out of the impasse.
"Without the Treaty of Lisbon there won't be any enlargement," he said.
"You can't say no to reforms and yes to enlargement."
The BBC's Jonny Dymond says one diplomat described Mr Sarkozy's comments as a threat - and the wrong signal to send to the Irish people - and those of Croatia and Turkey, who hope to join the 27-member bloc.
Mr Sarkozy did add that he would travel to Ireland when France takes over the rotating EU presidency in July to help find a solution.
The treaty must be ratified by all member states to take effect. Nineteen have approved it so far, the latest of which was the UK, where it passed through parliament on Wednesday.
Czech brakes
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urged respect for the Irish "No" vote but said he was confident all the countries would complete the ratification process. He ruled out renegotiating the reform treaty.
"When a treaty is signed by 27 governments it's not just for fun," he said. "It's inconceivable that a government signs a treaty without the intention of ratifying it. It's a principle of international law."
And it's a principle of Euroean Union conventions that all member states must ratify a constitution treaty. Big difference, asshat. In a free, fair and transparent election, the people of Ireland said NO to the European Constitution Treaty of Lisbon. Get it?
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country is the current holder of the EU presidency, said enlargement should not be a victim of the delay in ratifying the treaty.
"I believe we'll find a way out of the situation before any candidate country is ready for a decision on accession to be taken in the EU," he said. "I don't think the commission wants to slow down the process."
In effect telling Sarkozy to go . . . himself.
Germany rejected the idea of moving ahead on Lisbon without Ireland, which won strong Czech backing at the summit.
Our correspondent says concern is swirling around the intentions of the Czech government.
Pressed on whether he intended to ratify the treaty, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said that he was not going to put the brakes on to halt ratification.
But he added he would not bet 100 crowns (£3; $6) on a "Yes" from parliament.
The Czech Republic may block the European Commission's plan to auction carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions permits to energy companies after 2012, government officials said on Tuesday.
The Commission, the EU's executive branch, introduced a plan last month to cut CO2 emissions after 2012.
Under the current trading system, companies are granted some emissions permits for free, but in future they will have to buy all the allowances, increasing their costs significantly.
Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek told an energy conference in Prague the plan would harm the Czech energy sector and undermine necessary investments into ageing power plants. He called for gradual implementation of the changes.
"Until then (2013) we will not be able to carry out the key investments, we would withdraw more money from the sector," Topolánek said. "I want to promise that I will do my best not to back down (in opposition to the plan)," he added.
High-emission coal plants make up for more than half of Czech electricity production.
Industry Minister Martin Riman said he would propose that the government blocks the plan in the EU.
"The French, who make 80 percent (of their electricity) in nuclear plants, do not care," Riman told Reuters.
"I think this is absolutely fundamental, we cannot accept the proposal of 100 percent auctioning," he added.
Instead of capitulating to the EUSSR, maybe Gordon Brown should rethink his grand plan of denying the Brits his previously promised referendum on the new EU Constitution Treaty of Lisbon.
A blueprint for tackling global warming was put on the table yesterday by the EU, which challenged the US and other big polluters worldwide to join the battle against climate change. Setting out plans for the world's first significant low-carbon economy, the EU ordered swingeing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions which included challenging targets for Britain.
Under draft legislation unveiled by the European commission, 20% of Europe's energy mix is to come from renewable sources by 2020, while Europe's biggest polluting industries must slash their emissions by 21% against 2005 levels by the same deadline.
The climate change package, senior officials in Brussels said, would give the EU the moral high ground, letting it lead the drive for a new, post-Kyoto international bargain on global warming with the US, China and India.
Moral high ground taken by a bunch of amoral hacks. rofl
While the overall aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 363m tonnes, or 20%, by 2020, Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, said the scheme included "automatic triggers" to take the cuts to the level of 30% if the remainder of the world signed up for similar action.
"Climate change is the great project of our generation," said José Manuel Barroso, the commission president. "Europe can be the first economy for the low-carbon age ... The package is the most far-reaching legislative proposals made by the European commission for many years."
Other than seizing the national sovreignty of member states, what other 'far-reaching legislative proposals' have been made?
The EU executive laid out binding targets for each of the 27 member countries on emissions reductions and on renewable energy in order to reach the goal of the 20% cut in greenhouse gases, as well as the 20% target for Europe's energy mix being provided by renewables, and 10% of all road fuel deriving from biofuels.
Barroso put the cost of the package at about €3 a week for every European - the price of three tanks of petrol a year.
Cool. Let the EU pay for it out of its budget - without increasing member 'fees'.
The bulk of the reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is to be obtained through a carbon trading scheme in which the union's biggest industrial polluters, such as power generators and oil refineries, buy and sell emission permits. The "price of carbon" is expected to rise and the hope is that the market will deliver the compulsory cuts.
In the sectors not involved in the carbon trading scheme, such as transport, farming, and construction, national caps are being imposed.
The British government welcomed the commission's draft, which orders a 16% cut in emissions by Britain by 2020. The UK is also obliged to increase its reliance on renewable energy, from less than 2% now to 15% of the country's total energy needs by the same date.
Hide your wallets, folks.
The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said: "This plan shows exactly what we are aiming for globally - a comprehensive and effective agreement to tackle climate change, with the carbon market at its heart."
John Hutton, the business secretary, said the government would review its strategy to meet the UK share of the EU renewables target. "This package will show the EU's continuing global leadership on climate change. I want to see it agreed as soon as possible to give business the certainty it needs to plan low-carbon investments with confidence."
Better results if market forces were allowed to work free of government interference, but try explaining that to a socialist.
Environmental pressure groups sounded broadly satisfied with the package, which has to go through the European parliament and be endorsed by national governments before becoming law, perhaps in a year's time.
"A work in progress", was the verdict of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. "I see no reason why some of these targets may not become stronger, may not become more stringent."
Barroso said the package would unleash a money-spinning bonanza in Europe and urged EU firms to seize the opportunity to become global leaders in innovative green technologies. He predicted hundreds of thousands of new jobs, insisting that the overall €60bn cost would be less than 0.5% of Europe's economic output.
For some reason, I'm quite confident that comrade Barroso will not do the honorable thing should the cost be more.
The scheme would save €50bn a year in reduced oil and gas imports, he said. Bowing to pressure from energy-intensive industries such as the steel and cement sectors, which have threatened to pull out of Europe if the measures cripple their competitiveness, the commission held out the prospect of free pollution permits under the carbon trading scheme.
This came amid warnings that it would be "economic suicide" to penalise the sectors too heavily. But big energy groups, which amassed huge profits in the early stages of the trading scheme, will have to bid at auction for all their permits from 2013.
The commission says that by 2020, this will be adding 5%, or about €150, a year to household bills, though its own officials say that the rise could be 15%.
In other words, they haven't a clue.
A decision on free permits for sectors hit by competition from low-cost countries is to be taken from 2010 onwards.
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. --- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
The al-Goracle cult, otherwise known as the Religion of Environmentalism, has many devotees within the corridors of the European Commission and European Parliament.
That is, until a known eeeeevil – reality – jumped up and bit 'em on the ass.
European countries and businesses have criticized a climate change action plan that COMINTERN the European Commission is scheduled to unveil next week. Their concerns about competition and carbon trading could undermine the EU's commitment to confront climate change.
As the European Commission puts the finishing touches on a sweeping climate change policy package to be unveiled on Jan. 23, politicians and business leaders from the EU's richest member states are lobbying to revamp draft policies that they believe could harm them in Europe and abroad.
Among the critics of the bill are France, which wants to protect its nuclear investments, Germany, which is worried about its renewable energy sector, and major European auto and steelmakers, who are concerned that Europe could lose its competitive edge.
But the Commission says it will not be bullied into diluting the climate change package. To back down, Commission President José Manuel Barroso told Reuters, would be an international embarrassment after the EU worked to promote itself as the international leader in addressing climate change. "We knew from the very beginning that transforming Europe into a low-carbon economy is not an easy task," said Barroso. "But this is the moment to be serious, responsible and coherent with our commitment."
In other words, Barroso believes that saving face is more important than the economic health and well-being of European Union member states. Nice to see that the consummate tax tick has his priorities straight.
Barroso was responding to complaints that include a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy objected to a policy that would raise the share of energy that Europe derives from renewable sources from 8.5 percent currently to 20 percent by 2020. He said the policy "unnecessarily penalizes the prospects of growth." France wants to have its huge nuclear energy program counted in the mandatory contribution it will be asked to make toward the EU goal, but atomic power, which produces toxic waste, is not considered a form of renewable energy.
Germany and Spain are protesting another proposed policy. Ministers in Berlin and Madrid sent a letter this week to the Commission criticizing a system [that] would encourage companies in Europe to trade renewable energy across borders. They are worried that an EU-wide system would undermine their existing national systems. "This will put a very successful development of renewables at risk, which is not acceptable to our governments," read the letter in part. It was the second time this week that German officials criticized the forthcoming policies, after Bavarian politicians condemned (more...) a proposal to cap the amount of carbon dioxide that new automobiles produce per kilometer they are driven.
In an interview with the German magazine Capital published Tuesday, the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, denied that a new renewable energy trading system would infringe upon existing "feed-in" systems in Germany and Spain. "Don't worry," said Dimas. "We will ensure that Germany can keep its system without restrictions in (the) future and ... we will construct it in such a way that it doesn't hinder national promotion systems in Germany and other countries -- that's a promise."
A politician making a promise. ROTFLMAO .
Private sector leaders also criticized the forthcoming policy package, saying strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions will hit major industrial polluters unfairly and encourage them to relocate outside of Europe. BusinessEurope, a lobby group that represents most of the Continent's largest companies, said it had learned that the Commission will require industrial polluters to cut emissions to 21 percent below 2005 carbon emission levels by 2020.
EU officials explained that 2005 was chosen because it is the first year in which data includes the impact of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme; BusinessEurope says it is unfair because it does not take into account efforts to reduce emissions that companies made between 1990 and 2005. In a letter to Commission President Barroso, the group also objected to broader plans to strengthen the continent's carbon trading scheme.
Many of the permits that a company must hold to emit carbon are currently distributed for free, but the Commission is proposing to auction those permits to the highest bidder by 2020. To offset the impact that might have on the competitiveness of a European business, the Commission is considering a carbon tariff (more...) on imports from outside the EU that were not produced within a carbon trading market. Still, BusinessEurope calls the prospect of an auction-based trading scheme "extremely worrying."
The lobbying in Brussels this week is in sharp contrast to the proud tones in which European leaders announced last March their joint agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and make major investments in renewable energy and biofuels. As the Commission drafts policies that will make those goals a reality, Europe's richer countries are frustrated that they will be asked to bear the brunt of the collective goal.
EU officials told Reuters this week that the Commission wants to allow the EU's poorest member states to actually increase their emissions, by up to 20 percent above 2005 levels. That would help poor states like Romania and Bulgaria grow their economies -- but could spell trouble for the strong European countries charged with making up the difference.
