False choice: Inaction on global warming is no option
The House Energy and Commerce Committee last week took a major step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It approved a bill that would cap releases of heat-trapping gases and create a national market to trade pollution credits.
The bill comes on the eve of talks that will set the stage for a new international treaty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The old treaty — the much-discussed Kyoto Protocol that the United States refused to sign — is set to expire in 2012.
Any new agreement will have to ask more of developing countries — including China and India — that were exempted from previous limits. But the United States can’t credibly ask them to reduce their emissions if it refuses to curb its own.
The climate change bill approved last week faces many serious challenges before it can be considered by the full House of Representatives. It already has been watered down to satisfy some powerful interests. But that hasn’t stopped critics from mounting a major disinformation campaign to defeat it.
At the heart of this disinformation campaign is a false choice — vote for the so-called cap-and-trade bill and face higher energy prices, or do nothing and keep costs low. It’s a seductive but specious argument.
In reality, the status quo comes at an unsustainable cost. Global warming already is occurring. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, the effects would be felt for decades.
Climate change imposes very real costs on all of us, on our children and on our grandchildren. We are subsidizing current energy prices at the expense of our progeny. The longer we defer payment, the higher those costs will be.
In a landmark 2006 report, the British Government Economic Service warned that delay could reduce the world’s gross domestic product by between 5 percent and 20 percent. That would occur because of a simultaneous need to switch from carbon-based energy to some other source and to address negative effects of climate change that were decades in the making.
It’s as if we are financing our lifestyle with an interest-only mortgage. There’s a big balloon payment looming in our future, but we’ve refused to set anything aside to pay it.
As originally proposed, the cap-and-trade system would have required companies to bid for permits that would allow them to emit greenhouse gases.
The idea was to encourage them to reduce emissions and reward those that succeeded. Companies that failed to cut back would pay a penalty; they’d buy permits from the companies that no longer needed them.
But that’s not how the bill approved last week works. Most permits would be given away, many to utilities like Ameren that generate electricity by burning coal.
Giving away permits reduces the financial impact on consumers. But it also substitutes political considerations for market forces to determine who gets to pollute. Favored industries like electric companies get lots of credits. Less favored industries like oil companies get very few.
Despite those drawbacks, the cap-and-trade bill represents an important advance because it has a realistic chance of being approved.
If we do not start reducing our global warming liabilities now, we will be overwhelmed with the debt later. We can’t do that by wallowing in denial.
We must take action and fight global warming/cap and trade scam with all our might, particularly if there is a chance that such abomination be imposed on us.
Cap and trade represents huge taxes and cost increases, which will hurt mostly the poor and the middle class. Cap and trade will give dictatorial powers to Obama and will further enrich his billionaire friends (Gore, Soros, Goldman Sachs, Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange friends, GE, etc.) — all at our expense and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.
Cap and Trade “would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb directed at the U.S. economy—all without any scientific justification,” said famed climatologist Dr. S. Fred Singer. It would significantly increase taxes and the cost of energy, forcing many companies to close, thus increasing unemployment, poverty and dependence.
Those brainwashed to the point of wanting to destroy the economy to “prevent global warming” are behaving like the most primitive human beings who were duped into believing that human sacrifices would ensure them good weather. Human beings don’t have the power to control climate! And killing the economy will not help the environment. Poor countries can’t protect the environment. Just look at Haiti!
More and more scientists and thinking people all over the world are realizing that man-made global warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. More than 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims. They are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3562/218/
Additionally, more than 30,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” http://www.petitionproject.org
We pray that honest leaders – both Democrat and Republican - are able to save us from Obama’s criminal global warming/cap-and-trade scam.
It’s funny that so many detect climate change by viewing puny bumps in segments of graphs, yet don’t detect economic climate changes that are pouring over us from every direction, that will surely destroy any hope of a happy future for the children. The wild spending in printing is right there in your face, jumping in orders of magnitude.
http://www.mises.org/markets.asp
Global warming is already occuring. The earth heats up, the earth cools down. It goes in cycles. Al Gore can’t stop it. The PD can’t stop it (the PD can’t even run a newspaper much less control the weather). Nothing is static. Everything is always changing. Eventually the warming will end and the cooling will begin. Man has no say in the matter.
Cap and tax is only the latest strategy used by globalists to ensure the US does not retain its leadership position in the world. This will force millions out of jobs and drive industry to countries which are not falling for it. A fully implemented cap and tax system is estimated to cost midwestern homeowners $4000 a year.
Congrats to the Post, however, for not using the NYT’s new policy of changing “global warming” to “climate change” since global warming isn’t panning out as predicted. It is this kind of dishonest reporting that is causing the media to lose credibility and readers.
Like the rest of the global-warming alarmists, the Post tries to push its agenda by distorting the truth. Contrary to the editorial board’s claim, man-made global warming is far from a proven phenomenon. Those supporting a remaking of the economy in order to shift America away from fossil fuels could at least be honest about the cost and logistical challenges.
With our country already in debt to the tune of 63 trillion dollars, where will the money come from to pay for the massive infrastructure changes in converting the US to some combination of solar, wind, and nuclear power? How many trillions will be spent on unproven technologies that will eventually prove impractical? Will the same advocacy groups who have blocked the construction of nuclear generating plants for the last 4 decades now embrace this non-fossil-fuel energy source? How many tens of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs in the energy sector on the promise that new technologies will offer them alternative employment?
If the Post truly believes in the free market, global energy costs and scarcity will drive innovation and conversion to newer, cleaner sources of electricity and other fuels. In the meantime, development of domestic coal and oil deposits, along with expansion of nuclear power, can provide less dependence on foreign energy sources and prevent shortages and severe cost shocks.
Destroying the current system without a viable alternative to advance a political ideology through a concocted “crisis” is criminal.
- Obama’s Inflation Tsunami is coming
- Social Security remains broken
- The no-tax-increase-if-you-make-less-than-$200,000/yr scheme is unraveling
- Universal Health Care (single-payer plan) with its health rationing is on the horizon
- TARP funds improperly re-directed to prop up UAW employment
In light of these unintended government screw-ups,
what makes the P-D Editors believe Cap-and-Trade
will do anything beyond bringing punishing
energy increases to employers & homeowners.
Something like 30% of electric is used each summer for air conditioning. And air conditioners release all sorts of nasty mean old things into the air that have made that big hole in the ozone that was supposed to have killed us all 15 years ago.
Therefore, let us go back to the days of my youth, when my old man was too cheap to turn on the AC. We can save the world by sitting on the front porch sweating.
Let’s do it for America, and our wonderful Mother Earth.
I’ll turn off my air conditioner just as soon as they turn it off in the White House and the various buildings which house Congress. Of course, that isn’t what will happen. Instead, President Obama and Congress will implement a scheme that will drive up the cost of energy in the United States, which won’t affect them at all since WE pay their electric bills. Meanwhile, as people in China and India move from bicycles and huts to cars and air conditioned apartments, our efforts won’t make any difference.
Scientists believed that the sun rotated around the earth. Scientists believed the earth was flat. Sceintists believed the earth was the center of the universe. Obama believes he has visited most of the 57 states. Scientists believe that man is causing global warming. I see a trend developing here.
I put links in these pieces so you can see what they’re based on. It’s obvious that some of you either don’t follow the links or don’t understand even the simple version of the science, which can be found here: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
Specific criticism of the science, anyone?