Saturday 31 October 2009

Carbon corporatism

Mark Wallace, writing at Devil's Kitchen, nails the reality of the EU's corporatist 'Emissions Trading Scheme':

"Despite all the rhetoric from politicians and eurocrats alike about helping the poor and the elderly, alleviating fuel poverty and reducing extortionate energy bills, the reality is that through the ETS they are increasing costs for UK consumers alone by £3 billion a year. Across the whole EU, between the scheme starting on 1 January 2005 up to the end of 2008, this monster cost over £67 billion.

This is the reality of the current tranche of flawed emissions policy: in the name of green policymaking, ordinary people who already struggle to heat the homes and make ends meet are being stung for billions of pounds a year. Where does the money end up? Well, a decent chunk is effectively handed straight to wealthy energy companies in windfall profits, kindly provided by Mr and Mrs Joe Public.

Don't think that the powers that be in Westminster and Brussels aren't aware of this, either. Indeed, the Express revealed this week in leaked EU Commission documents that there are plans afoot in Brussels to use the Emissions Trading Scheme as the basis of a pan-European, harmonised tax in order to fund the EU directly.

In short, they know perfectly well how profitable this enterprise can be for them - and they care not a jot that it is those scraping a living in the real world who suffer as a result."

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