Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of "sustainable consumption" was now urgently required, he said.
"Today we have reached the point where consumption and people's desire to consume has grown out of proportion," said Pachauri. "The reality is that our lifestyles are unsustainable."
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Pachauri caused controversy last year by advocating, in an interview with the Observer, that people should eat less meat because of the levels of carbon emissions associated with rearing livestock.
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He said that he also believed car use would have to be "curbed": "I think we can certainly use pricing to regulate the use of private vehicles."
That's right, Pachauri would have us believe that the only thing that can save the world is fascism--though he prefers to think of it as a government-imposed "radical value shift" that remakes Western culture. In my book, that's a distinction without a difference.
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