Airlines may pay for pollution

[Matt25]

rlg94086:

Matt25,

I know that economics are not the most important thing in the world, but I think this will hurt the EU economy - less tourism and possibly less business travel. Is there any concern in government and/or the business community?

Robert

I imagine there is. Sometimes short term pain is needed to avoid long term suffering. Besides if fewer non-Europeans can spend their holidays here similarly fewer Europeans will spend their holidays off continent.

 

[rlg94086]

Matt25:

I imagine there is. Sometimes short term pain is needed to avoid long term suffering. Besides if fewer non-Europeans can spend their holidays here similarly fewer Europeans will spend their holidays off continent.

What about the cost of shipping goods for European manufacturers? I compete head-to-head with a semiconductor equipment manufacturer in Holland. They are already a little bit more expensive because of the high labour costs, but this will make it even tougher for them. Costs of parts coming into the EU will be higher and costs of shipping finished goods will be higher.

Most of this equipment gets sold to locations in Asia, so I guess they’ll have to close their plant in the Netherlands and open one up in China.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Actually one very good proposal which is being used somewhere in Europe – I forget where – is to close the downtown core to casual car traffic, allowing only commerical traffic (shipping and receiving), and to make public transit free for tourists. A tourist would show ID to a transit depot and receive a photo-pass to travel in the downtown core for a set period of time.

Toronto is looking at this. I hope we do it. Many highrise buildings in Toronto now have chutes which rotate to catch ordinary garbage, paper products, or glass and plastic products. We have a rooftop garden initiative and a free-tree initiative. The really big one is the Waterfront which has yet to be built; this will be a green lane. I am hoping too that everyone is evicted from the Islands and that that land is reclaimed as a wildlife preserve.

Trouble right now is that Toronto has nowhere to dump its garbage. Michigan just closed the border on us. We have allowing households 6 bags of garbage per week. That will be lowered to 4 bags per week before the city starts charging them for garbage pickup. People will then be motivated to recycle and to use composters.