As energy prices go through the roof, shocking figures reveal one in four families has been plunged into fuel poverty. Consumer Focus warns as many as 6 million could be forced to choose between a hot meal or heating their homes this winter. --Ruki Sayid, Daily Mirror, 6 July 2011
Rocketing energy prices mean that the middle classes are no longer immune to social ills such as fuel poverty. The fact is that we can now find the fuel poor amongst all walks of life and in all types of households. The sad truth is that consumers are paying a heavy price for this country’s disjointed, incoherent and unaffordable energy policy. --Ann Robinson, USwitch, 6 July 2011
The fact is that these green taxes, part of David Cameron’s politically-correct promise to lead the ‘greenest government ever’, are imposing a punishing burden on families and businesses struggling to cope with tough economic times. For all our sakes, ministers must drop their dogma about climate change — the science of which remains shrouded in doubt — and, wherever possible, give the country a break from green taxation. --Editorial, The Daily Mai, 7 July 2011
Three years ago, when the hysteria over global warming was still at its height, our own British politicians voted almost unanimously for the Climate Change Act committing us, uniquely in the world, to cut our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent within 40 years. Even on the Government's own figures, show that this will cost us up to £18 billion every year until 2050 - it is by far the most expensive law ever passed by Parliament. As our politicians continually impose on us ever higher taxes and other costs supposedly in the cause of 'fighting climate change' they have been carried away by a collective fantasy that has no parallel in history. --Christopher Booker, The Daily Mail, 6 July 2011
UK airline magnate Sir Richard Branson has warned Australia against introducing a price on carbon without any global agreement. --Australian Associated Press, 7 July 2011
The European Union’s plan to force international airlines to participate in its emissions trading scheme (ETS), thus lumbering them with additional costs, has run into severe turbulence. The airlines’ opposition to buying allowances marks yet another blow to the Emission Trading Scheme, which has been the cornerstone of the EU’s “market-oriented” solution to the threat of man-made climate catastrophe. However, as Nigel Lawson, former British chancellor of the exchequer and founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has pointed out, the ETS is not a market mechanism at all but a “government-controlled, administrative rationing system,” which is subject to horse trading and prone to corruption. --Peter Foster, Financial Post, 6 July 2011
