Originally Posted by
BoilerUP
I'm all for helping the environment...but the European ETS has been a clusterfark of epidemic proportions and it hasn't even started yet!
By most estimates I've seen, aviation GLOBALLY contributes only 2% of annual carbon emissions...but sure, let's tax the hell out of an industry that ties together the global economy simply because we can. Freaking idiots...
Thankfully, Obama's cap-and-trade (which will hurt US industry going forward) exempted aviation...
Many of these numbers are estimates, and all are apt to be manipulated by their owners. Still, let's go with that 2% number.
I think what you meant to say is 2% of industrial emissions. Industrial emissions are something like 4-5% of total carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year (insects exhale more CO2 each year than do humans, including our industrial emissions and those of our domesticated animals), the rest is respired by other animals, zooplankton, and the like.
Carbon dioxide, despite the increase in ppm in the atmosphere in the last decades, remains about 0.04% of the atmosphere.
Whether the CO2 actually creates a problem is for another thread. The bottom line is that our industry is 2% of 5% of .04% of the annual total.
Destroying our industry with taxes will do nothing except spread misery.
WW