I'm not all that optimistic about this: already we have industry complaining that this will just end up moving polluting sectors out of Europe to places that don't care about emissions: I guess we're going to need those carbon levies on imports.
Nature doesn't care where the carbon comes from guys - it all goes into the same atmosphere and we'll all have to deal with the consequences. If industrial processes produce shedloads of carbon as a byproduct then it has to stop going into the air. No ifs, no buts and no pretending that Chinese or Indian carbon somehow doesn't count.
There has to be a price on carbon (whether it is done by auctioning carbon permits, levying carbon taxes whatever) and everything coming into the EU has to pay that price, otherwise there is no price signal for the externality and nothing is going to get done.
I have every confidence that if the price signal is properly set there will be radical improvements in our emmissions situation - there's plenty of low hanging fruit to be gathered - but our political class need to grow a backbone and start demonstrating some fucking leadership for a change.
Regards Luke -- #include witty_sig.h
