Posted on 02/15/2002 11:21:53 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
There is still no conclusive evidence that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise. Yet President Bush is expected to announce today his backing of a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would involve the purchase and sale of emissions rights on an open market.
It is still unclear whether the system would be voluntary or mandatory -- but few expect that it would stay voluntary for long.
Skeptics are suspicious that Bush's move is political -- a chance for him to throw something to the environmentalists -- rather than a bow to scientific realities.
Bush last year withdrew U.S. support for the global warming Kyoto Protocol, calling the treaty "fatally flawed." Even former president Clinton's Energy Department said it would reduce U.S. output by 4 percent, or $400 billion annually.
The Bush administration is still studying any link between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature fluctuations -- with $4.5 billion in its 2003 budget earmarked for climate-related programs, an increase of $700 million and a total greater than any other nation's. Satellite observations over the past quarter century show no increase in heating just above the earth's surface -- and observations going back thousands of years show natural cycles of warming and cooling long before the invention of SUVs and air conditioning.
Economists see permit trading as a far preferable approach to command-and-control regulations. But they warn that it still represents a huge gamble with the U.S. economy -- as well as a threat to developing nations that are dependent on U.S. growth.
If he is trying to placate the environmentalists, he doesn't stand a chance. They will never support him and this only provides fodder for them.
I heard some of the speech and some was okay...economic growth is the key to environmental protection; growth and conservation can go hand and hand, more science needed to study effects and causes of global warming, etc. But by the end, I couldn't help wondering what the point of the speech was.
Vichy Bush <-- is the most apt description.
His father utterly ignored the results of the [environmental] N.A.P.A.P. study initiated by President Carter, in order to have something with which to bargain with the socialists (a.k.a. "Democrats").
The Bushes will give what is not theirs, but all of ours: our Liberty, our Constitution, our individual rights, etc., because the Bushes have no sense Constitutional authority; they believe as dogmatically in the "politics of the moment," as did "President" Clinton.
You might say that the Bushes have some practice in negotiations wherein they give away what is of least value to them and belongs to somebody else and / or what they least understand and thus dismiss the value to others. (Not a "height of arrogance;" rather an ignorance thus arrogance.)
President Bush, Sr., utterly dismissed the decade-long environmental study, National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), so that he could make deals with the Democrats by swapping environmental tits for other-issue tats.
The late Detroit News columnist, Warren Brookes, wrote excellent work detailing the creeping vines of insidious, "junk science" environmentalism, which the Bushes have not had much care to tip, trim, nor cut. (A search through the newspaper's archives would be helpful, here, but I wasn't able to search at the Detroit News website, for Mr. Brookes's NAPAP writings.)
However, because of the technical details of "studies," the Bushes are aware that the public is not aware enough, of same --- and so what is not well understood is thus easily taken from conservatives, and others, by people who we would like to trust --- Republicans --- as you have stated.
By the way, writer, Michael Fumento, is working at filling the environmental gaps created by the liberals' "junk science," with contrasting information which blunts the environmentalistas. His collection of work can be found at:
Environmentalists, Activists, Doomsayers and Other Alarmists
A detailed writeup on how former President Bush and Congressional Republicans chose to ignore the results of NAPAP, can be found by looking up online, William Anderson article, published in Reason magazine in January 1992 (the first appears to be the entire article; I did not find it at i online):
Acid Test (www.sepp.org)Acid Test (www.objectivists.org)
Acid Test (www.gaiabooks.co.uk/environment)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.