The real cap and trade

June 26, 1:47 PMNew Haven County Independent ExaminerRobert Casapulla

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Today 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives joined a majority of Republicans in a test vote on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Global Warming Bill (HR 2454), allowing the bill to pass by a margin of only 12 votes (217-205). The bill is being criticized as the largest tax increase in United States History, so needless to say it has the full backing of the White House.

The legislation, which no member of Congress even claims to have read, imposes limits on carbon dioxide and other green house gas emissions from power plants, factories and refineries. The original legislation also included a tax on bovine flatulence (cow farts) which was removed to gain the apparently necessary support of Democrats from agricultural districts.

This legislation marks the culmination and hopefully the beginning of the end of Global warming hysteria in Washington. While the hysterics over global warming/climate change appeared at first to be undisputed and undisputable over time scientists all over the world have emerged to challenge the validity of the claims made by people like Al Gore. However the fanatics still attempt to stifle any and all dissent, such as the suppressed report by Alan Carlin, a senior researcher at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Proponents of climate change legislation claim as President Obama did in his campaign that they wish to lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources. Meanwhile they oppose drilling in the United States to tap the resources we have in this country. Today’s legislation however takes the next step. It enshrines in it a measure that will effectively make drilling for domestic energy more expensive so that conservatives cannot push for domestic drilling as a viable alternative to solving the “energy crisis.” The legislation places a larger tax on domestic gasoline than it does on foreign gasoline. According to a story at Bloomberg News the same amount of gas produced domestically will have $1.00 in carbon costs imposed on it, and meanwhile foreign gas will have ten cents less in carbon costs in it.

This legislation is nothing more than an attempt to take the wind out of the mills sails of the “drill here, drill now” movement that was a rallying point for conservatives in the last election cycle. The predicted fall out from the legislation is includes among other thigns: a reduction of $9.6 trillion in the GDP, an increase of 26 percent in the federal debt, the loss of between one and three million jobs annually, a 90 percent rise in electricity rates, a 74 percent rise in gasoline prices and a 55 percent rise in residential natural gas prices.

Today’s environmental movement behind global warming hysteria is a direct descendant of the movement that defeated the possibility of nuclear power in the United States 30 years ago. In a typical fashion these environmental activists have declared the debate closed and will accept no further questions on the subject. They prattle on about sustainable living with ingenious ideas like the no flush toilet. They brag about living “off the grid” in houses with solar panels without giving a second thought to how the glass, steel and tiles of those solar panels require the very factories and refineries that they wish to see shut down. These people have no idea how the industrial world works. Our lives depend on what fossil fuels can do for us. Our lives depend on the manufacturing of plastic, steel glass, paper plants and pharmaceutical plants. The environmentalists want our lives to depend on what windmills can do for us. That’s right windmills which can’t even produce enough energy to manufacture more windmills are supposed to give us everything else we depend on to live our lives.

This legislation is not about the what is best for the Earth it is about raising taxes and imposing the agenda of the far left environmental movement, and that agenda is no about waht is best for humanity, it is about defeating humanity as we know it.