US experts and environmental activists on Tuesday slammed US President George W. Bush for threatening to veto a far-reaching climate change bill that is before the Senate for debate.
“We have had seven years of President Bush trying to mislead the country about the science of global warming and the urgency of taking action,” Dan Lashof, climate center director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told a news conference.
“Now he’s trying to mislead the country about the economics of taking action,” Lashof told reporters listening in to the tele-conference, called to mark the publication of a report on how building a green economy in the US would create jobs.
Bush warned on Monday that the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which calls for a “cap and trade” system to try to cut emissions in the US, “would impose roughly US$6 trillion of new costs on the American economy,” and threatened to veto it.
“Nay-sayers for taking action now on solving global warming keep pointing to solutions as being a cost to the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think tank, told the news conference.
“It’s critical that all of us question the assumption that global warming is a cost when in fact it represents the future of the US economy,” Hendricks said.
The “cap and trade” system suggested in the climate change bill proposes that companies trade permits, giving them the right to emit a certain amount of pollution, “capped” below current emission levels.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that the climate change bill would have “a devastating impact on the US economy ... and result in massive job losses.”
But the report released on Tuesday pointed in the opposite direction.
“Millions of US workers will benefit from the project of defeating global warming and transforming the United States into a green economy,” it said.
The report highlights a “chance to revitalize this economy with green energy growth,” one of its authors, Bob Pollin, said.
Ignoring the economic opportunities inherent in building a green economy has cost the US its competitive edge and leadership role in developing technology, Hendricks said.
“We’ve seen solar manufacturing and markets taken up by Japan and Germany ... because the United States, which invented solar photovoltaic technology, has had a complete abdication of leadership in building this as a strategic industry,” Hendricks said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS