On July 22, the United States Senate decided to drop the climate portion of an energy bill this year in the wake of the largest environmental disaster in our history. In June of 2009, the United States House of Representatives passed a robust, economy-wide cap on the greenhouse gas emissions found to be harmful to human health. The House bill would have reduced our dependence on fossil fuels, improved national security, created millions of green-collared jobs that could not be outsourced and significantly decreased climate changing pollution.

Now that the Senate has failed to produce similar legislation, in part because of Senator McCaskill's fence-sitting, the United States is kicking the energy problem down the road, creating a bigger burden for our children. Well I don't buy it! At the same time politicians are squealing that the cost of clean and climate legislation is going to hurt consumers through an "energy tax", Ameren UE is raising rates on customers in Missouri for the third time in four years, without a return on our investment. We know fossil fuels are dangerous. We know fossil fuels are finite. Yet we do nothing? In the words of Twisted Sister "We're not going to take it, ANY MORE"!

 

Ed Smith

St. Charles