Posted on 05/13/2008 2:50:03 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Senator McCain gave a speech in Portland, Oregon Monday reiterating and explaining his longstanding support for a “cap-and-trade” approach to global warming. He proposes that the government require reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions but allow companies to trade emissions credits, supposedly creating an efficient, market-based distribution of the regulatory burden. Support for this policy is the biggest mistake his campaign has made so far.
Early in this speech, Sen. McCain ran through a litany of woes that we can expect from global warming: “reduced water supplies, more forest fires than in previous decades, changes in crop production, more heat waves afflicting our cities, and a greater intensity in storms.” In other words, we may be worse off in the future because of emitting carbon dioxide today. In the next paragraph, he said that “the fundamental incentives of the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy.” In other words, we will be less materially wealthy, at least in the short-run, if we reduce our use of carbon-based energy.
This means there’s a trade-off, and it raises the obvious question about his proposed policy: How much will it cost us today, and how much better off will it make us in the future?
The Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) estimates that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime like the one discussed in this speech would cause about a one-percent reduction in GDP within five years. In less abstract terms, under that projection, by 2014 something like 1 million people would lose their jobs and the average American family would have about $150 less to spend every month. The costs would ramp up dramatically from there. In short, it would cost a lot. The U.N. IPCC estimates that unconstrained global warming is expected to cause damages equal to about 1-5 percent of global economic output about a century from now. William Nordhaus of Yale has estimated that the net benefit that would be created for the world by a perfectly implemented, globally harmonized carbon tax would be just under 0.2 percent of the present value of future global consumption. That presents a painfully thin margin for error, ignores the fact that costs will be disproportionately borne by the U.S., and does not bear much resemblance to the rhetoric of crisis that Sen. McCain uses in his speech.
It is highly unlikely that we could ever realize this theoretical benefit. Nobody has any realistic plan to get China and India to reduce emissions, and without doing so the costs of cap-and-trade to the U.S. would be dramatically greater than the benefits. Even if we could get the developing world to go along, the theoretical benefits that such a regulatory regime might create would, in the real world, be more than offset by the economic drag that would be created by the side deals required to get China, India, and the U.S. ethanol lobby, among many others, to go along with it.
The scariest sentence in the speech was: “If the efforts to negotiate an international solution that includes China and India do not succeed, we still have an obligation to act.” This is posturing in the place of thought. It puts us in the worst possible negotiating position, and confirms that Sen. McCain is not engaging practically with the costs and benefits of his own policy. It indicates a foolish willingness to sacrifice trillions of dollars on the altar of fashionable, though uniformed, opinion and political expediency.
Once you leave reason behind, there is no logical stopping point, and his Democratic opponent will always be willing to one-up him. Sen. Clinton’s reaction to his speech (literally before it was even delivered) was: “Senator McCain’s proposal simply does not go far enough…”
It’s just so disappointing to hear McCain tack even further to the left.
He’s running neck and neck with Hillary, but he’s not scheduled to move to the left of Obama until September.
Not if he puts the loser of the Dem primary on his ticket.
Or Algore.
Is that the official RINO definition of a representative republic? lol
I cannot believe that we’re stuck with an elderly scientific and economic retard like McCain or middle-aged scientific and economic retards like Obama and Hillary.
I know. I think ADHD must be contagious or something. The country is suffering an epidemic.
ROTFLMAO, now where in the hell did you come up with that BS? That is a sick perversion of the reason why we vote. If that were the case, why bother? Only a rabid RINO McCainiac could come up with a horse apple explanation like that designed to sound principled.LOL, too funny.
Don't waste your time hoping. He's been on this bandwagon for at least 5 years now, along with his buddy Al Gore. This is not a campaign stunt and he has stated it is among his TOP priorities. He has been warned, over and over and over again, that this is junk science and destructive to the economy yet he arrogantly continues. See:
STOP SOROS, GORE AND MCCAIN
our choices, manipulated for us, are the “b*tch”, “the fool”, and “the retard”.
Do the MSM mogul and party bosses think we have not noticed?
And those titles are pretty much interchangeable. ;-)
McCain may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he does know he's being paid off by Soros et.al. to be the back-up guy in case their first choice fails to impress the voters.
McCain needs to be replaced at the convention!!!!
I'm all for that !
I agree on the judges. Just yesterday, USA Today had a long article on the incredible impact of Reagan's judges. So I don't take that lightly.
However . . . although McCain has said he would appoint "conservative judges like Alito and Roberts," do we have any proof? The optimist in me says, he helped get all but three of Bush's judges confirmed through his little "Gang of 14." But the pessimist in me says, "he's screwing us on everything else. Why would this be different?" And moreover, NO judge who is conservative can possibly get by the Dem Senate McCain will face. If Reagan could not get a Bork confirmed, I find it unlikely McCain will get Jones or one of the other staunch conservatives confirmed. Instead, I suspect what we would get would be liberal RINO judges that McCain can get confirmed with a wink and a nod.
J.C. Watts says, "What's down in the well will come up in the bucket." We know what's in McCain's well. I'm afraid when the chips are down, it will come up in his bucket.
If I know Juan McCain like I think I know him he will probably use up any remaining goodwill he’s had with conservatives by June.
I would love for that to happen.
You’re in dreamland. McAmnesty has already on staff Juan Hernandez, the Atzlan lover.
Between amnesty and cap and trade, there will be no America to save from terrorists.
You are correct that only oil matters for the next 40 years. But McNasty won’t even drill for it in ANWR or off the coast. But it’s OK for China to drill off the coast of Florida for Cuba.
If this loser is not replaced at the convention, the GOP will be in the minority for the forseeable future.
His betrayal of Republican and conservative principles is almost complete. Geore Soros must be so proud.
Yeah, but RINOs are better than Ginsbergs aren’t they?
And what about Iraq? With McCain we win, with Obama we lose. That’s HUGE. And I don’t see how we could later redeem the damage done. After 4 years of Carter, it was pretty easy to pick up the pieces. Just lower taxes, increase military spending, etc. These were internal matters that could be corrected through legislation. But how do we pick up the pieces when Iraq implodes and Iran rushes in, and the world sees that we don’t have the stomach to finish what we’ve started? We would never undo the damage. A failure in Iraq would dog us forever.
And healthcare? With Obama we get socialized care, which is a huge win for the Left. Frankly I worry less about the practical implications than the philosophical ones. Once people have accepted the premise that the government is responsible for ensuring their health, well, that’s just very bad for a nation founded on the notion of individual liberty and responsibility. Once we’ve ceded that premise, there’s probably no getting it back. And once healthcare is socialized, it’ll never be reversed. We may get a Republican back in office in 2012 or 2016 but we won’t get our healthcare system back.
McCain is a disappointment on global warming but global warming will ultimately be self-refuting, so the damage he does will not be permanent. The warming trends won’t pan out like the demagogues need them to and the whole thing will fizzle. As an issue it will be self-correcting, and resulting policy will be reversible. It’s not a one-way ratchet like these other things.
Immigration policy is also reversible. McCain might blow it but the next real conservative to come along can change course. Bad immigration policy can have very real bad effects but it’s not a ratchet.
Bottom line in my opinion is that lesser-of-two-evils type choices are the norm in politics. Providence gave us Reagan and Thatcher (and a great Pope) at just the right moment but that is not the norm. Most of the time you muddle through, and in 2008 it makes the most sense to muddle through with McCain. He has qualities that are irritating as hell, but he’s an honorable man who loves his country and has a basic conservative core.
That core orientation is critical because it guides a president when the sh*t really hits the fan. Consider Dubya Bush. He’s no pure conservative but he’s got the core, and as such he knew what to do when the terrorists attacked. We don’t know what might come up in the next 4 or 8 years, but we know that in a broad sense, McCain wouldn’t fumble it the way Obama inevitably would.
And remember this LS — unlike Obama who is basically a Christian-flavored agnostic, McCain is a Christian. He is also strongly and consistently pro life. In fact, this is reason to think that McCain might actually try to appoint conservatives to SCOTUS. If he is sincere about life, which he seems to be, it will be a real factor in his SCOTUS choices.
This demonstrates how intelectually disconected from reality the McCain is.
McCain is Keating 5.
McCain is just as sleazy as all the other financial insiders.
THAT is what this creation of a new market trading system is about.
On judges, I'm not sure Ginsberg is any worse than Souter. Again, I don't trust McCain anyway.
As for healthcare, NONE of the three are addressing the disaster by allowing the market to lower costs. Actually, from a personal standpoint, McCain's "donut" would financially destroy us. My family would personally be better off with Obama/Hillary rationing (which is ultimately what we are going to get anyway) than with a financially destructive McCain plan. With Obama or Hillary, it will break sooner, so that it actually has to be fixed. McCain will drag it out, destroying thousands in the meantime. As to "never get it back," I don't know. Actually, I think we are headed for free-market bastions offshore. That won't help with mundane illnesses, toothaches, and so on, but for serious illnesses, people will do medical "vacations" the same way they go to Disney.
Global warming is more dangerous than even health care, because once it is written into law that pols will be bullied by unscientific blowhards like Algore, we're finished anyway. You're talking Lysenkoism. At least with Dems we can blame the economic disaster on them and start again.
My greatest concern is that McCain will win, and thus "Republican" solutions will be tagged with failure for the unavoidable collapse of SS and Medicare, much the way we are STILL battling the notion that "big business failures" caused the Great Depression. That has plagued us for 70 years, and allowed people to say that a Republican helped cause the GD and that a Democrat "got us out."
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