Calculate your one-day Carbon Belch !
Posted on 06/05/2008 1:12:28 PM PDT by .cnI redruM
Not all environmentalists are evil. Some truly believe in what they do and genuinely feel that Anthropogenic Global Warming is one of the greatest threats to human existence to ever emerge. Once I get over my misgivings that this concern is colossally overblown by some and pathetically manipulated by others, I can see why the people at Climate Progress, are seething at their “Progressive” Senators.
It seems that these individuals have figured out that someone actually has to pay for reductions in CO2 emissions. Given that this activity is far less enjoyable than insulting Republicans for not caring enough about Blessed Gaia, Captain Planet’s Lefty Legion has balked precipitously from supporting The Warner Lieberman Climate Despotism Act.
Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week he was holding out in his support for the Lieberman-Warner bill because it did not do enough to protect his home state’s manufacturing jobs while still stimulating investments in alternative energy. “I have serious concerns about any climate-change bill that doesn’t take into account energy-intensive industries like we have in Ohio — glass and chemicals and steel and aluminum and foundries,” Brown said.
Senator Brown was specifically elected to destroy jobs in other states as a mode of combating global warming.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said in an interview that she is also pushing for changes in the Lieberman-Warner bill to benefit her home state’s abundant supplies of hydropower. “We want to make sure people who are already good at reducing CO2 emissions will continue to do that and not be penalized,” she said. Cantwell explained that she has not joined the bill as a cosponsor because she wants to keep working on it.
Yes indeed, Senator. Everybody is different for some reason. Hang on a minute while my legislative aides track down my excuse to mail that bill right back to lush, ecotopic, Seattle.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he wants a more beneficial emission allocation system for his state’s rural energy producers.
“Obviously, I represent a state that’s a significant power producer,” Conrad said. “Most people don’t think of North Dakota that way. But we produce electricity for nine states. We have the largest coal gasification plant in the country. We have very large reserves of lignite coal.”
In contrast, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) maintained that he is a long way from backing the Lieberman-Warner bill. Instead, he is taking a close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030.
“It’s a more realistic approach to what technology is going to be required,” Nelson said. “Just legislating it, doesn’t get you there.”
Kudos go to Senator Ben Nelson. With Joe Lieberman consigned from the Democratic Party, Nelson holds the final bastion of sanity in that outfit. He’s the only person in the room to say what all of these balking “progressives” must really be thinking. He tactfully points out that Warner Lieberman is a stupid bill that deserves to be taken out back and killed with an axe.
This also tells the world how concerned our wise and sagacious legislators really are about the catastrophic doom that hangs over our sweaty, warming planet. They are so concerned that someone else’s constituents should pay up: now!
If the science truly stood settled and if the facts no longer brooked any logical dispute, this bill would find a greater audience. No one would be gauging out there own exceptions.
Perhaps the real reason Mitch McConnell had the affronting gall to force some poor Senate clerk to read the 500 page Senate Amendment was this. He wanted everyone who was wavering on this to see exactly how many “Good Old Boy/Girl” exemptions the Browns, Cantwells, and Conrads were sneaking into this bill. McConnell used the judges as a fulcrum. He wanted the fulsome, scurvy, backroom truth out there for all in its sickening glory.
So many US Senators voice their desire to combat Climate Change. A seriously hard-cased proposal gets drawn up by a serious man. For all of Joe Lieberman’s faults, I have no doubt he undertook this with all intents and purposes of bringing down the hammer. The man brings it. He never legislates in jest.
If this bill stinks so badly and would lay waste to the rust belt, shut off the lights in South Dakota and make the fair denizens of Seattle yuke-up in their Starbucks Yuppie Lattes, why does it ever reach the floor of the chamber? Why can’t we just go back to the halcyon days of Hagel-Byrd days of resolutions slamming these sorts of schemes as crack-pot fascism and a road to bankruptcy?
At the professional apex of his Senatorial career, Senator Chuck Hagel wrote the following:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--
(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or
(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States; and
(2) any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification should be accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol or other agreement and should also be accompanied by an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the protocol or other agreement.
Perhaps the reluctance of today’s Senators stems from the opprobrium cast at all those who oppose the supporters of anti-global warming legislature. It comes from all directions, even the pulpit of The Anglican Church. An Anglican Bishop offered the following classy homily to his flock.
"Josef Fritzl represents merely the most extreme form of a very common philosophy of life: I will do what makes me happy, and if that causes others to suffer, hard luck," the Very Rev. Gordon Mursell explained to his Diocese of Lichfield. "In fact you could argue that, by our refusal to face the truth about climate change, we are as guilty as he is - we are in effect locking our children and grandchildren into a world with no future and throwing away the key."
The Enviro-preacher reacted with good, Christian decorum when his lunacy attracted opprobrium of its own.
“Surely if we could have done something to save lives we would have done it?” the bishop querulously asked. Answering his own question, he sarcastically responded: “Well, maybe not.” He archly observed that his pastoral letter likening Global Warming skeptics to the Austrian child abuser had received “widespread media attention and criticism.”
The Rev. Mursell insisted: “I am not saying that people who refuse to accept the reality of global change are child abusers.” He wanted to “set the record straight” and was not suggesting that, to quote the BBC News website’s headline: ‘Climate deniers are like Fritzl.’ And he apologized for “being unclear” to “people who are offended because they think I have said that people who deny climate change are like paedophiles.”
Thus, Democratic Senator Ben Nelson actually displays what passes for moral courage in today’s political world. He fights to prevent the economic Sword of Damocles from crushing the dreams of the Middle-Class American family. This man may work quietly, but he is, at least, sticking up for those of us who don’t feel like paying $7.50 a gallon for gasoline that has been made artificially scarce for the sake of socio-political engineering.
I can only wish him, GOP Senators Voinovich and McConnell and everyone else fighting to keep this guerilla off of our backs Godspeed. It’s not easy to stand up for the good when the media, and fashionable moral, hurl their invectives. Eventually, calling everyone who disagrees with this approach child-molesters and denialists may very well lead to victory through intimidation. Mourn our great country on the day this sad state of affairs comes to pass.
There. Fixed that. It is time we called them what they are: Marxists.
And it is such people who are the greatest threat to human freedom to ever emerge.
Instead, he is taking a close look at an alternative climate bill circulated from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) that opens with tax incentives for new energy technologies but falls back on cap and trade if the other ideas have not worked by 2030.
Hey, that’s a great idea. A LOT can happen by 2030 to permanently derail this type of pending legislation. I think that people need to get behind Voinovich’s plan; it may not be perfect but at least it gives us a lot of time to look at this thing and for the evidence to settle the debate.
I guess it was inevitable, the bill was held up just long enough for our august senators to get it through their own pointy, little heads that it would derail the economies of THEIR own states.
Then climate change suddenly lost it’s lustre.
And it is such people who are the greatest threat to human freedom to ever emerge.
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Lenin called them “Useful Idiots”.
You can try, but you're on your own 
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