Posted on 03/31/2009 11:38:56 AM PDT by Red Steel
WASHINGTON The debate on global warming and energy policy accelerated on Tuesday as two senior House Democrats unveiled a far-reaching bill to cap heat-trapping gases and move the country quickly from dependence on coal and oil.
But the bill leaves crucial questions unanswered and as of now has no Republican support. For those reasons, it marks the beginning, not the end, of debate in the current Congress on how to deal with two of President Obamas top priorities, climate change and energy.
The draft measure, written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sets a slightly more ambitious goal for capping greenhouse gases than President Obamas proposal, requiring a reduction in emissions of 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. President Obamas plan envisioned a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming by roughly 80 percent by 2050.
The Waxman-Markey bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, emerges at a time when many Americans, and their representatives, are wary of wide-ranging environmental legislation that could raise energy costs and potentially cripple industry. The bill also comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is about to exert regulatory authority over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill would pre-empt that effort and create a new cap-and-trade scheme to control carbon emissions.
The new bill would require every region of the country to produce a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2025. A number of lawmakers from some regions of the country, particularly the Southeast, call that goal unrealistic because the natural resources and technology to meet it do not currently exist.
The bill also calls for modernization
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They were told in during the campaign that Obama wanted to take their coal jobs from them. Most of the coal states voted for Obama.
I guess they were willing to take one for the team. Screw them.
These utopian efforts of the leftist Washingtonians are designed to make America more like a third-world entity. It will do nothing more then further undermine the Constitution on America’s road to socialism.
This is clearly the field we want to do battle on. There is no issue on which the Democrats are farther from the mainstream than energy and “Global Climate Change.” Carbon taxes are really a Godsend and rallying point for a disappointingly disorganized Conservative Movement. The fact that the moonbeam pinkos in Congress want to go even farther than the moonbeams in the Obama Administration is just too much for us to ask for. I do not think that Waxman can even get enough Democrat votes to pass this one in the House. This will go down like the Edmund Fitzgerald in the Rust Belt.
PLEASE, Bring it on!
[. . .the bill provides for trade sanctions against countries that do not impose controls on carbon emissions by levying tariffs on certain goods from those countries.]
I knew something was still missing from the list of economic damages the current congress has inflicted: TRADE WAR.
True. However, when energy sources do shoot through the roof, the Democrats will leap into action to "save the working class" from the opportunistic utility companies (working on a razor-thin margin) and introduce price caps.
A year or so after that, the utilities will be declared insolvent and will have to be "bailed out" (they are, after all, too big to fail) and we'll have government owned-and-run utility companies across the board.
It'll be fun.
Read: "Massive Middle Class Tax Hike"
The chances for a Patriot March on Washington are increasing.. rapidly. ;-)
Heck, I have an electric furnace. My electric bill is already in the $500 range. I can just imagine what it will be in the near future, if I already didn't burn wood, and run my two windmills.
Unfortunately, what I do out here in the country isn't possible for urbanites. I could just imagine what towns and cities would look like if everyone had a 50-100 windmill tower in their yard, and the horrible noise they would make, as well as the smoke from a thousands of fireplaces, never mind all the tree chopping that would be going on, no matter how illegal it was.
This is an impossible future that these nit witts are dreaming of, and pity the people of this country when they have to live in the reality of it.
Yipes!!! You’re right! Hadn’t thought of that!
I fully support this notion....
full disclosure I work at a natural gas company :)
I knew something was still missing from the list of economic damages the current congress has inflicted: TRADE WAR.
Of course, it's not those countries that will be paying those 'trade sanctions" (read import levy) it's the American consumer of these goods. (namely Alberta tar sand oil, which really isn't "dirty", but that's the boogy man media has placed on it.)
The price of gas is really going to climb people, and it WON'T be hinged to the price per barrel. When THAT goes up, we will have $10 PLUS gas. And very soon.
The cost on goods because of transportation alone will skyrocket, never mind the price increases due to manufacturing them with extremely expensive oil and electricity.
Obama will simply issue the poor money to pay for the increased costs, from higher taxes levied on the evil rich people.
Most leftists: “Let’s pass this thing and ruin the entire economy of the U.S. forever! Ye-haw!”
YOU can’t HANDLE the A/C.
We have to do without not because we keep others from having these things, but because the American lifestyle is too good and we must be taken down a peg.
CHANGE. Fools voted for it.
These people are undemocratic, authoritarian idiots.
reduce them ....by roughly 80% by 2050.”
-—they will all be dead by then.
And we’ll all be broke, and even if there were
anything to global warming, there is NOT EVER going
to be any accountability for any of that “money”.
If we get to , say, 2040, and emissions readings
can be tricked up to account for , say, FIVE percent,
what would you expect them to say......something along
the lines of .....”oh, don’t worry, the last 75% always
comes in a hurry, in the last several years of the process”. THat’s what I’d expect them to say. I’m almost glad I am most certainly not going to be alive in 2040 to hear that lie.
ping
Once that process actually begins to happen, if it does,
THESE GUYS ARE TOAST. They seem to have NO idea, they evince NO awareness, and are completely TONE DEAF to the resistance that is already bubbling out there. Whatever might happen to them, serves them right; they now seem engaged in throwing so much crap around so quickly, that some of it will sneak by with nobody noticing. They are really inciting to riot, which may in fact be what they want.
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