Pete DuPont has one of the best, though most disturbing, analysis of the recent global warming debate in the Wall Street Journal. Here's the ending:
The core of the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner legislation is that an expanded government, not the market economy, must control our society. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has produced a chart--click here to see it--showing that the bill "contains over 300 regulations and mandates," each of which must go through a federal regulatory process.
The bill does focus on some global warming objectives--although it is an America-only program estimated to lower global CO2 emissions only by about 1.4%--but it is less about that and more a step towards traditional socialism. The government would take control of our economy and regulate everything from electricity, oil and gas to imported shoes, our food, how high we may set our thermostats, and what kinds of light bulbs we may use. The EPA and the Energy Information Agency predict such controls would reduce GDP by "as much as seven percent (over $2.8 trillion) by 2050 and reduce U.S. manufacturing output by almost 10 percent by 2030."
Add to that the fact that Barack Obama and John McCain both support the bill, and that the next Congress is likely to have bigger Democratic majorities, and one can see in the next administration where a very collectivist America will be headed.
The only good news is that it seems that a growing number of people are questioning the science and the logic of such massive government action. Will it be in time? We can only hope.
3 Comments
Ginny DeGrazia | June 10, 2008, 1:49pm | #
That's what all this hype about global warming is intended for: more taxes, regulations and intrusions in our personal lives and eventual exterminations. Global warming, population explosions and whatever else they dream up are the scare tactics used to have us accept the government as our god and savior.
BigMike34 | June 12, 2008, 8:24am | #
On Global Warming:
The never asked question:
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE IDEAL TEMPERATURE FOR LIFE ON EARTH TO THRIVE?
Life (Plant and Animal) on earth has flurshed during warming periods and been all but distroyed during our Ice Ages...
Ron | June 16, 2008, 1:28pm | #
The reason that so much of this planet has had drought for so many centuries is that we’ve been in an ice age, and the water needed for normal condensation has been frozen into glaciers. Glaciers are frozen water needed as condensation for barren and frozen lands of this planet, causing drought and flooding. When glaciers melt, some water runs into the oceans. Some water thaws the ground below where the glacier was, and soaks into the ground. Some water evaporates into the upper atmosphere where it becomes normal rainfall for the whole world.
The heat of the sun, and the absence of cold from glaciers and sea ice will cause more water to be evaporated from the oceans, lakes, and rivers into the upper atmosphere than there presently is; and the winds will blow it evenly around the world, providing normal rainfall world-wide, even where there presently is drought, and barren and frozen land, preventing flooding.
The worldwide rainfall will cause long-dormant seeds in barren lands to sprout and grow into new plants: The best way to go green. The new plants will inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, which we breathe. There will be so many new plants, that we might have to increase the amount of carbon dioxide we generate, to provide enough for all of them
A glacier in Greenland is melting, returning the land to the way it was a millennium ago. Larger crop yields are already the result, and the codfish have returned. Put the UN there.
Snow fell before leaves, and a month before winter started. Parts of the country and the world have record low temperatures and record amounts of snow and ice. We’re entering another ice age. How soon will Greenland be frozen again and the codfish gone? We need global warming as soon as possible.