American Thinker | John Griffing | July 3, 2009
Masquerading as an instrument of environmental salvation, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill will result in one of the largest seizures of wealth in human history. The legislation will wreak havoc on American manufacturing and industry, and coerce the conformity of an already economically squeezed populace. The bill is a transparent power grab, based on a fictional crisis-the left’s ever-dependable threat of global warming.
But global warming is finally coming under the scrutiny it deserves. Not only are NASA satellites showing a cooling trend, but 700 scientists-to the UN’s 50-have come out in opposition to the patently false claims of the global warming lobby.
Most damning, Harvard meteorologists have been unable to replicate the findings of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) without the use of a technique called “data-padding.”[1] The IPCC actually admitted to engaging in this deceptive practice. Without this padding, the infamous warming trend falls by several degrees. In essence, the IPCC and its primary source manipulated data (dare we say “lied”?) to produce a desired result.
If global warming is a scientific hoax, a fact that now seems incontrovertible, then why have President Obama and Congress advanced such drastic and costly legislation to address this nonexistent crisis? One might conclude that HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act, exists for no other purpose than to destroy the American economy as we know it and bring it all under government control.
It’s not like we don’t know any better. We’ve been through something like this before, narrowly escaping the Kyoto Protocol’s threats to US security. In its non-partisan report to study the implications of implementing Kyoto, the US Environmental Information Agency predicted a loss of between $100-400 billion in US GDP and skyrocketing energy prices. Moreover, the Kyoto Treaty’s effect on our national security due to reductions in military training and operational tempo would have been staggering.
But Kyoto will seem like a walk in the park compared to the Obama plan, which will result in cumulative losses in GDP of an astounding $9.4 trillion. To put this in perspective, that’s over half current US GDP. In other words, half our economy. By 2035, unemployment losses will average 1.1 million peaking at 2.4 million some years. Families will see energy prices rise $1,200 per year. Electricity prices will rise 90 percent. Gasoline will be up 58 percent.
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If Obama has his way, manufacturing, refining, chemical, coal, steel, metallurgical, and other energy-driven sectors will come increasingly under government control or be completely replaced by imports. In the wake of this deindustrialization, people will look to government for provision, an expectation which is at the core of all of Obama’s economic policies. Obama has “reluctantly” accepted the breathtaking and unprecedented power of managing our nation’s businesses and dictating wages. Now he wants to control a free nation’s energy consumption.
Cap-and-trade is Marxism clothed in environmental righteousness. If Obama’s plan goes forward, America will be doomed to economic ruin. When the President of the United States is appointing czars with impunity and openly bragging about “bankrupting” the coal industry, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate how we got here. Because of the lightning speed with which Obama is brazenly enacting these destructive policies, he is positioned to do what America’s enemies could only dream of doing.
Americans need to wake up. If Obama and the Democrats in Congress really want clean air, there already exist laws to achieve it. But there is one thing that HR 2454 does better than any other piece of legislation: it destroys American economic strength for future generations, capping the American Dream, and trading away prosperity for a scientific hoax. Whatever their real agenda, it is not consistent with the economic well-being of the American people. Let’s stop treating bald-faced lies like topics for polite discussion.
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