Tony Blair Flies Commercial
December 27th, 2006 by Maria EvansWhen a British Airways flight overshot the runway in Miami on Tuesday there were some surprising passengers sitting in first class, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family, who were flying to Florida for a vacation. My first reaction was surprise that a Head of State would fly commercial, since security is such an issue today. But my surprise quickly turned to a kind of admiration for a man who actually isn’t a total, flaming, hypocrite about protecting the environment.
Tony Blair is the man who quietly and sometimes not so quietly prods President Bush to do more to curb greenhouse emissions. And Blair has been one of the biggest supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, speaking endlessly with other world leaders about global warming and the need to reduce emissions and the importance of signing on to the agreement.
So I was thinking that maybe Tony Blair can set up some kind of slide show for Al Gore about private jets and their harmful emissions. Al Gore travels by private jet, sucking fossil fuels and spewing emissions into the atmosphere, as he promotes his movie about global warming. But then, Gore does buy carbon credits to offset his travel, and I’m sure paying someone else to reduce emissions because he won’t fly commercial isn’t THAT lame and hypocritical. Or at least his movie company is buying carbon credits to pay for his private jet travel….
December 27th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
This tactic is aimed at shooting the messenger in order to shoot down the message, a pathetic tactic indeed! I don’t excuse Gore for his alleged excesses, but this gets us nowhere in terms of actually doing something about global warming, in contrast to how absolutely serious Tony Blair and Great Britain are about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Who cares if most of the state of Delaware is under water by the end of this century??? On the other hand, our Federal Government under the GOP has done nothing but continue to encourage Big Oil to expand, as per, for example, the very recent legislation that passed the lame duck GOP Senate to permit more off-shore drilling in the eastern gulf region. We need to invest our money on non-fossil fuel alternatives, like wind, solar and biofuels. This really is not rocket science, folks!!! But it does take investment and dedication to a worthwhile purpose.
Let’s see what the Dems do about this total GOP failure to face the scientific facts, promoting Big Oil business instead of some sustainable alternative fuel strategy. Now it is the Dems turn out of the box.