Thursday, December 27, 2007

More on Carbon Costing

Interesting letter in today's Guardian which suggests that the introduction of carbon costing will not affect planned airport expansion as the revised forecasts for air transport growth published in early December included the latest carbon cost. The letter then goes on to say that the price used in the recent forecast was based on £70 per tonne of Carbon (unchanged since 2003????) however the Stern report recommended a cost of £280 per tonne.

As i suspected all was not as it first seems. The costs used are not realistic if you take the Stern report (a government commissioned report so unlikely to be anything but conservative) as being an accurate piece of work. Appears we have another case of sounding Green but acting otherwise by this government.

The danger with all this, is that we are trying and value the planet and human life in monetary terms. I know this is necessary in the economic framework we work within but is bizarre when, as another corespondent notes, it is this very approach to valuing things that has got us into this mess.

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