Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Financing Global Warming, Taxing SUVs, and Buying Stock in Arctic Ice?

The Union of Concerned Scientists has issued a new action alert:
Across the United States, utilities are proposing the construction of more than 150 coal-fired power plants. Construction of these plants would increase U.S. global warming pollution by 25 percent, making it virtually impossible for the United States to bring emissions down to levels scientists say are needed to avert the grave threats posed by global warming. The Wall Street Seven, a group of banks including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, are the major funders for the new plants. Please send a letter calling on these banks to end their support for proposed coal plants and to help finance clean, renewable energy instead.
You can take action here!

Should we tax gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing SUVs to discourage ownership? One London suburb is doing just that.

Check out Leonardo DiCaprio's personal environmental site. I hadn't been a big fan of his, but he was one of the few bright spots in The Departed, and I have to respect his work on climate change. I just bought Vanity Fair's "Green Issue" with DiCaprio and Knut on the cover, I'll let you know how it is.

And if you're bored at work today, take a look at my friend Kyle's site, gullible.info -- made up stuff that sounds true. It's the detail that cracks me up. One from last week:
The Chicago Board of Trade has filed notice with the SEC that it intends to offer "Arctic Ice Futures" starting Sept 1, 2007.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Taxing SUVs makes sense to me (though it would hurt my business a little). I think people really need to start looking at pooling, telework and green technologies to make improvements locally. And government should support that with taxes (as appropriate). Similarly, the business community must support telework and pooling (via buses, etc.).

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link, Miles!