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Big on talk - less on action!

Remember the Stern Report on global warming a few weeks back? Tony Blair saying it was one of the most significant reports during his prime-ministership? The hype and seeming recognition that somethimg needs to be done.

That was then. As James Button reports in this piece in The Age:

"At the United Nations summit in Nairobi last month, ministers from France to Denmark to Bangladesh lined up to praise Stern and pledge their commitment to the cause.

But in Britain this month, Chancellor Gordon Brown released his pre-budget report. The document would normally hold little interest, except that it was hyped in advance as a visionary statement of what Brown will do if and when he becomes prime minister next year.

The report was brown all right. Green was hard to find. It marginally increased taxes on airlines and fuel and introduced a stamp duty exemption on a minority of new homes that are carbon-neutral. But it adopted none of Stern's proposals, notably those for targeted green taxes and more money for research into clean technology - a change Stern says is critical."

By the way, significantly, Stern has resigned from his government position.

On the other side of the Atlantic, blogger Rob McKay, as reported on The Huffington Report, writes:

"It is 60 degrees on December 18th in New York City. I'm hardly relieved I didn't have to bundle up my daughter and trudge with her through ice and now to go see "The Nutcracker" today. The temperature is terrifying. I want to crack some sense into the nuts who tell us there's nothing to worry about....

..Bush won't even use the term "global warming." He occasionally makes reference to the world's "climate change." Conservative politicians and pundits chalk up global warming to the next liberal bully pulpit, a rehash of "political correctness" or outcries from the "feminazis"...

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