Your financial support would be very welcome. Please sponsor my participation in this ride and help raise funds for Christian Aid. You can make online donations through this special purpose JustGiving website, which is in my name and specific to this event.  Please do not try to send me a cheque, or cash through the post, or money by bank transfers. My aim is to raise £2000.

More information on the route and the conditions of participation (in 2010) can be found here
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1. Carbon taxes will lend predictability to energy prices, whereas cap-and-trade systems will aggravate the price volatility that historically has discouraged investments in less carbon-intensive electricity generation, carbon-reducing energy efficiency and carbon-replacing renewable energy.
2. Carbon taxes can be implemented much sooner than complex cap-and-trade systems. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis, we do not have the luxury of waiting while the myriad details of a cap-and-trade system are resolved through lengthy negotiations.
3. Carbon taxes are transparent and easily understandable, making them more likely to elicit the necessary public support than an opaque and difficult to understand cap-and-trade system.
4. Carbon taxes can be implemented with far less opportunity for manipulation by special interests, while a cap-and-trade system’s complexity opens it to exploitation by special interests and perverse incentives that can undermine public confidence and undercut its effectiveness.
5. Carbon taxes address emissions of carbon from every sector, whereas some cap-and-trade systems discussed to date have only targeted the electricity industry, which accounts for less than 40% of emissions.
6. Carbon tax revenues would most likely be returned to the public through dividends or progressive tax-shifting, while the costs of cap-and-trade systems are likely to become a hidden tax as dollars flow to market participants, lawyers and consultants.

Other articles on carbon taxes

• Some more thoughts on a carbon tax, Economist, June 18th 2010
• Climate pioneer backs tax on carbon, nuclear power
• U.S. cap-and-trade choice inferior to carbon tax by John Kemp, a Reuters columnist, Feb 27, 2009
• Eleanor Clift Back to the Future The idea of a carbon tax, proposed by Al Gore 17 years ago, is winning new converts.
• Ireland announces  carbon tax
• France’s carbon tax proposal

Earth, as seen from near Jupiter, by Explorer 1, an image taken, at Carl Sagan’s suggestion, on February 14, 1990

Since then it has moved on. Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object from Earth —currently over 10 BILLION miles — this however only equals .0017 lightyears.

Take everything you know, and place it on a large grain of sand, 2 mm across. That’s Earth. The Sun is about the size of a soccer ball, suspended half a football field away. Between the Earth and the Sun is absolutely nothing, completely empty space, except, perhaps, two more grains of sand and a few large pieces of dust.

The Voyager 1 probe is over 5 kilometers away. It has not yet reached the boundary of our solar system, as defined by the heliopause

If Voyager 1 were traveling in the direction of the nearest star, it would arrive in about 75,000 years. It was launched from Earth in 1977.

See also ” The pale blue dot“, a video with more photos and a commentary by Carl Sagan

And on a larger scale…

“Most astronomers today believe that one of the most plausible reasons we have yet to detect intelligent life in the universe is due to the deadly effects of local supernova explosions that wipe out all life in a given region of a galaxy”. Read more…

,which I am a member of.

Also apposite:

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion-year-old-carbon,

And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

- by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,

and also (a variation of) by Joni Mitchell,

both at Woodstock

Miscellaneous links

1. WorldStove gassification stove

The galaxy designated NGC 628 (or Messier 74), more than 30 million light years from Earth. It is estimated that M 74 is home to about 100 billion stars, making it slightly smaller than our Milky Way.

Buddhas within stupas, on a larger stupa (Borubudur)

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………The Four Noble Truths………