|
(Continued from page 23)
• In Fredericton, New Brunswick, Mike Gange said the buffeting winds tore down a maple tree in his front yard, damaging roof tiles and a rain gutter as it fell. He said that as he drove around the New Brunswick provincial capital he saw about 25 homes with big trees knocked down.
• Gange said he has not seen weather this severe in his 41 years in Fredericton.
• "It's like a Tasmanian devil ripping through your backyard," he said. "It's crazy here ... at times it rains so hard you can't see 10 feet in front of you."
• ___
Misconceptions helped kill Australian carbon tax, turning climate-change consensus to conflict
• CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- In 2007, Australians were ready to do something to combat climate change, even if it was expensive. More than two-thirds of them said so in a poll, and both major political parties vowed to make industries pay for greenhouse-gas emissions.
• The undoing of that perspective will likely be complete after a new Senate is sworn in Monday. It's expected to give Prime Minister Tony Abbott the votes he needs to repeal a 2-year-old tax charged to around 350 of Australia's biggest carbon polluters. Three top political leaders lost their jobs over the issue as support for climate-change measures plummeted.
• A global recession, political miscalculations and failed negotiations only partially explain the dramatic change.
• Opponents of the carbon tax implemented in 2012 had the media largely on their side. Electricity prices soared -- not mainly because of the tax, but because power companies were spending billions on infrastructure. Most electricity users were compensated for the added cost of the tax, but many of them didn't know that. And rising gas prices fed the fury -- even though the tax didn't apply to gasoline.
• Australia's experience illustrates how easy it is to scuttle complicated environmental laws, and serves as a warning to President Barack Obama, whose recent proposal to force a 30 percent cut in power plants' carbon emissions is drawing anger from both sides of politics.
• ___
Video online purportedly shows Islamic State group's shadowy leader delivering sermon in Iraq
• BAGHDAD (AP) -- A man purporting to be the leader of the Sunni extremist group that has declared an Islamic state in territory it controls in Iraq and Syria has (Continued on page 25)
|
|
