Friday, March 06, 2009

Save the Planet: Stay Home!

This has to be the bizarro story of the day: an environmental zealot in the UK thinks that Britons should be forbidden to travel abroad because their carbon footprint is several sizes bigger than it should be.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this bloke were just a lone wacko — England, after all, has a long tradition of treasuring its eccentrics — but this nonsense is coming from one of Gordon Brown’s advisors.

According to The Examiner:

“Environment Czar” Adair Turner Wants Brits to Stay in the UK

The British aren’t coming, the British aren’t coming!

It’s not fashionable these days to be critical of environmental issues, but a British advisor to the Prime Minister really needs to put a sock in it. Adair Turner is the chairman of the independent Committee on Climate Change. He advises Prime Minister Gordon Brown on environmental issues.

Turner, who is known as the “Environment Czar”, has proposed legislation to ration air travel. He believes that British citizens leave too great a “carbon footprint” so, obviously, the only solution is to prevent them from traveling abroad. His recommendation to Parliament is to prohibit UK citizens from traveling abroad more than a few times each year.
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Legislation that potentially strips free people of their own autonomy is criminal, especially when it is done under the guise of “environmentalism”. Fortunately, FlyingMatters, an organization representing airlines, airports and other travel and tourism groups, condemned Turner’s harebrained idea. FlyingMatters stated, “One always suspects with these half-baked proposals that the people who put them forward really intend them to apply to ordinary people, many of whom have only recently gained access to air travel, rather than to themselves.”

British tourists represented 1.4 million Orlando visitors in 2007. More tourists come from the UK than any other overseas location and Orlando’s economy is dependent on their patronage of our hotels, shops, theme parks and restaurants.

In related news: it may be difficult to find a flight out, anyway, because the UK’s Environment Agency will be given powers that enable it seize planes from airlines which break the stringent carbon emissions rules for aircraft.

A modest proposal: travel by wheelie-bin instead.


Hat tip: TC.

8 comments:

laine said...

This global warming thing has a life of its own like some Frankenstein that keeps crashing about despite enough credible science and scientists who say the whole thing is a scam.

Billions are being misspent and new rules made by control freak leftist politicians working toward their totalitarian utopia in their carbon sheep's clothing. But it's still the same old big statists.

Even if you granted them both their basic premises a)that global warming is occurring and b) man made carbon has the leading role, the danger is hypothetical and miniscule compared to real problems now that are killing millions. Bjorn Lomberg with a group of big brains has delineated how the billions could be better spent to save millions of lives now not hypothetical lives in the future.

The fact that the greenies ignore such proposals that save real lives and blather on about hypothetical lives demonstrates clearly that their concern is not saving lives at all but controlling our lives in totalitarian fashion, using any excuse to do so.

That we are stupid enough to put up with this and be stampeded into demanding that our governments impoverish us to no good end is depressing.

When President Obama repeatedly calls carbon dioxide "pollution", demonstrating complete science illiteracy, and appoints one of the biggest global warming shysters as his Climate Czar, what hope is there?

Frankenstein will continue to lay waste to energy policy followed down the toilet by western economies.

Anonymous said...

Wow, just when I think the environmentalists cannot get any more stupid and absurd...

Anonymous said...

WOW!!!!

Butlins here we come.

Altogether more fun

I wonder if they have a special holiday camp strictly for yabbos and lager louts?

parisclaims said...

I'd like to see Adair Turner contribute to global warming by flying one way to N.Korea

The 1st Earl of Cromer said...

It always arrives back at control, doesn't it?

The state will tell you if you're allowed to travel abroad, own aeroplanes, etc etc etc.

Shame our government aren't quite so effective at pointing out when people aren't allowed in (with one obvious exception, naturally).

babs said...

Well, it is only the little people that should not be allowed to travel, isn't it?
The elites have very important meetings, lectures and fund raising events that they must attend via their private jets.
This is getting more and more scary.

Unknown said...

Reminds me of serfs tied to the land and unable to travel without their lord's permission. Didn't Britain already fight that battle?

laine said...

Momteachs' observation about serfs is spot on. Our elites long for bygone days when there was no pesky middle class getting big-headed ideas about individual liberty and the ability to work for one's own gain.

The new paradigm instead of kings/queens, noblemen and churchmen running things is nominally elected leftist royalty/dictators with a mass of serfs-worker bees supporting the royal court and the drones who keep voting for it and their handouts. The religious are also consigned to the bottom of the barrel except for Mosque-men and Green-men who have the ear of the oh so foolish king.