THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 114, April 30, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
BACK TO THE "GOOD OLD DAYS": U.S. ENERGY & CLIMATE
PROPOSALS WOULD DRAG US BACK TO 1905 -- OR 1862
By Paul K. Driessen
THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT, THE POLITICAL LEFT, THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY, & THEIR THREAT TO AMERICAN
FREEDOM & PROGRESS: ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES ADVOCATED BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS, LIBERAL
LEFTIST DEMOCRATS, & THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WOULD STOP & REVERSE HUMAN PROGRESS IN THE U.S.A.
THE IMPACT ON AMERICA'S ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT, MANUFACTURING, LIVING STANDARDS, & HEALTH WOULD BE
PROFOUNDLY NEGATIVE. THE DAMAGE TO INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY WOULD BE IMMEASURABLE.
FULL STORY:
Think back to 1905.
The Wright brothers had just made history. Coal and wood heated homes. Few had telephones or electricity. Air
conditioning units were handheld fans. Ice blocks cooled ice boxes. New York City collected 900,000 tons of vehicle
emissions – horse manure – annually, and dumped it into local rivers. Lung and intestinal diseases were rampant.
Life expectancy was 47.
Today, President Barack Hussein Obama wants to prevent “runaway global warming,” by slashing U.S. carbon
dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory data, this
reduction would return the United States to emission levels last seen in those halcyon days of 1905!
But America’s 1905 population was 84 million, versus 308 million today. We didn’t drive or fly, or generate electricity
for offices, factories, schools, or hospitals. To account for those differences, we’d have to send CO2 emissions back
to 1862 levels.
The Civil War was raging. Nine of ten Americans were farmers (versus 2% today). The Industrial Revolution was in
its infancy. Malaria halted construction on the Washington, D.C., aqueduct. Typhus and cholera killed thousands
more every year. Life expectancy was 40 – half of what affordable hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power
helped make it today.
None of this seems to matter to the Obama administration or to Liberal Democrats. The 648-page Waxman-Markey
climate bill -- the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) -- would compel an 80% CO2
reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-tax restrictions on virtually every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist,
and family.
That’s making some legislators nervous, as they ponder the health, economic, and employment effects of restricting
energy supplies and driving up the cost of everything we eat, drink, make, and do – especially in 20 states that get
60-98 percent of their electricity from coal.
So, to prod Congress into action, or achieve the 80% target via regulatory edict, the Obama Environmental Protection
Agency has decreed that natural, plant-enhancing, life-sustaining carbon dioxide “endangers human health and
welfare.” The authoritarian actions it is contemplating would regulate cars, trains, boats and planes; pave the way for
regulating farms, factories, hospitals, schools, malls, apartment buildings, computer servers and lawn mowers; and
send energy prices skyrocketing.
It is astonishing how casually activists, bureaucrats, politicians and even some corporate executives advocate
arbitrary CO2 reduction targets and timetables – as though they were possible, desirable, or necessary.
The targets reflect worst-case scenarios generated by computer models. But the models assume human CO2 now
drives climate changes that have been occurring for eons. They ignore many natural forces, and inadequately analyze
incomplete data, based on our still limited grasp of complex climate processes.
They cannot accurately replicate last year’s regional climate shifts or predict changes even one year in the future.
They ignore Earth’s history of repeated climate changes, and failed to anticipate the slowly declining global
temperatures of 1995-2008.
Thousands of climatologists and other scientists say there is no climate crisis, and CO2 plays little or no substantive
role in climate change. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 48% of registered American voters now believe climate
change is caused by planetary and other natural forces. Only a third still believe it’s due mostly to humans.
Climate realists also recognize that, even if America eliminated all of its greenhouse gas emissions, increasing Chinese
and Indian carbon dioxide emissions would promptly offset our draconian cuts.
This alarms Climate Armageddonites. They fear it’s now or never to wrest control over energy and the economic,
manufacturing and transportation activities it fuels. Now or never to profit from cap-and-tax laws, renewable energy
mandates, and a forced shift away from hydrocarbons that now provide 85% of US energy.
“Socially responsible” corporate groups like the Carbon Offset Providers Coalition are banking on passage of the
Waxman-Markey bill or similar legislation. They want to ensure that any CO2 regime is “rigorous and efficient,” to
foster high carbon prices, maximum subsidies, and strong profits.
President Obama says cap-and-trade will “raise” $656 billion over the next decade. The National Economic Council
and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. The wealth will be extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and
family.
The intrusive energy rules and taxes will clobber households, manufacturers, farmers, truckers, and airlines. The
poorest families will get energy welfare, to offset part of their $500-3,000 increase in annual heating, cooling,
transportation, and food expenses. Everyone else will have to trim health, vacation, charity, college, and retirement
budgets to pay for energy.
Every increase in energy prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs
sent overseas, more families forced into welfare, more school districts, hospitals, and churches into whirlpools of
red ink.
Exactly how will they, your family, your business eliminate 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050? Exactly how will you pay
those skyrocketing fuel bills?
The Nature Conservancy predicts that, by 2030, “eco-friendly” wind, solar, and biofuel projects will require extra land
equivalent to Minnesota, to produce the energy we now get from oil, gas, and coal. Interior Secretary Salazar’s
proposal to have offshore wind turbines replace gas, coal, and nuclear electricity generators would mean 336,000
3.25MW behemoths off our coasts, if they operate 24/7/365. Far more, if they don’t.
Where exactly will we site those turbines – and get the billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, and fiberglass it will
take to build and install the expensive, unreliable, subsidized monsters?
My grandmother used to say, The only good thing about the “good old days” is that they’re gone.
Few Americans will be enthralled by the prospect of returning to that era. Fewer will relish the hefty price tag, and the
damage to their freedoms, budgets, jobs, and living standards.
The White House, EPA, and Congress need to take a chill pill.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Committee For A Constructive
Tomorrow.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity