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Radicals Want to Control Climate Debate
By Randy Parker, Chief Executive Officer, Utah Farm Bureau Federation
In this corner, Al Gore! In that corner, James Hansen! The gloves are clearly off as competing radical environmental interests fight it out for climate supremacy. Gore is pulling for the Waxman (D-CA) – Markey (D-MA) “cap and trade” solution to reign in carbon emissions while NASA scientist Hansen berates it as not going far enough.
The radicals and their legal teams are heading to the combatants’ corners.
In Gore’s corner, the headliners are Audubon, Environmental Defense Fund and Pew Center on Global Change.
In Hansen’s corner, you’ll see Greenpeace, Friends of Earth and Center for Biological Diversity.
Yes, this is the same James Hansen who in 2008 called for trials of climate skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.” He jumped in with Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who a year earlier had already portrayed climate change skeptics as “traitors” and said coal companies are “criminal enterprises and their CEO’s should be in jail for eternity.”
So, what’s missing from this Heavyweight Climate Main Event? That’s easy; we’re still missing the interests of the American public! If Congress embraces the radical climate agenda of either of these heavyweight contenders, the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy Security Act” will be betting our country’s economic future.
Let’s make this absolutely clear, Al Gore stands to make millions if cap and trade becomes the law of the land. He is positioned to become the world’s premier carbon broker under this Congressional redistribution of wealth scheme. Hansen, on the other hand wants a more direct tax on carbon dioxide and the immediate closure of every coal-fired power plant in American. However, he conveniently ignores the fact half of America’s electricity is coal based.
In this ultimate climate fight, American citizens are standing directly in front of an economic knockout punch that could fundamentally alter our standard of living and adversely impact future opportunities for our children and grandchildren.
The first punch has already landed. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recommended (33-25 mostly partisan vote) legislation aimed at how America generates and uses energy through an expensive cap and trade scheme. If enacted, the Waxman– Markey bill will undoubtedly have broad impacts on U.S. agriculture and all American consumers who rely on abundant, safe and affordable food grown in America. Thanks go to Utah Congressman Jim Matheson who voted against the bill.
Agriculture, under Waxman – Markey, is right in the bull’s-eye of a national energy tax, the sponsors want to package as cap and trade. Producing, processing and distributing food is highly energy intensive. Whether fuel for the tractor, fertilizer for the crops, electricity for processing and packaging or gas in the delivery trucks, agriculture uses a great deal of energy. The abundance and choice we enjoy today in our American grocery stores is due to carbon-based energy.
A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of Waxman-Markey cap and trade estimates an additional $1,600 or greater energy tax on a typical American household. Farm and ranch families and rural residents are certainly not typical. The CBO numbers more closely reflect costs to Waxman’s Hollywood constituents or Markey’s Boston suburbs, not rural Americans. Hollywood and Boston lifestyles are different. The $1,600 average will certainly be surpassed as rural folks travel requires them to spend 58 percent more on fuel than average Bostonians. And Hollywood power providers average 35 customers per mile while Utah rural electric cooperatives supply around 7 customers per mile.
Now back into the ultimate climate ring. Utah is surfacing its own stable of radical climate pugilists who are ready to throw their own sucker punch.
Unhappy with the current pace of addressing climate change, an energy blog originating out of the University of Utah’s Economics Department is framing a radical local strategy.
Farmers and ranchers, already potentially the target of an EPA “Cow Tax,” are now under attack by Salt Lake City Physician Brian Moench. Moench, the recognized voice of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (certainly a worthy cause) recently took an abrupt left turn with an attack on the cattle industry.
“We must start attaching the same kind of stigma to eating beef that has been attached to driving a Hummer,” Moench said in a recent blog. “What is needed is an abandonment of the cattle industry and transitioning that land to production of other sources of protein, like nut trees and legumes.”
Possibly even more alarming is University of Utah Economics Professor Hans Ehrbar, a self-proclaimed Marxist, calling for an overthrow of America’s political system. His blog entries advocate a “fight against the capitalist system” to keep the planet inhabitable. Professor Ehrbar asserts we should, “look for forces in the system which have the power to unhinge it...and bring down the system itself,” pointing out “strikes, factory occupations, boss-nappings, go-slow actions and monkey-wrenching can trigger the needed urgent action.”
It’s disconcerting to me that such radical anti-agriculture, anti-democracy and anti-free enterprise advocacy is coming out of a taxpayer funded institution of higher learning here in Utah.
Even if the United Nation’s founded 2,500-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) voted “consensus” that man is the cause of global warming, science is not a popularity contest – it’s about discussions, debate and sound science. There are now more than 31,000 American scientists who have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition stating “there is no convincing evidence man is the cause of catastrophic global warming.”
For starters, let’s use the IPCC’s own forcing formula for carbon dioxide and bring a cost – benefit analysis into the debate. Let’s move beyond the Obama Administration’s politically motivated and economically costly Waxman – Markey proposal and analyze a full-scale James Hansen recommended shut down of all fossil-fueled electricity in America. There is broad agreement the net result, over the next 100 years, is a temperature reduction of a mere 0.07 degree Celsius.
There is an aggressive environmental push that we must do something now and that green jobs can be created to improve the environment and a “green economy” can reduce unemployment rates. These widespread claims are nothing but political posturing. Noting the Obama Administration’s multi-billion dollar green energy gamble, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Congress cannot order economic growth. Government interference – picking winners and losers – that restricts successful energy technologies in favor of speculative green energy technologies favored by radical special interests will damage America’s free enterprise system.
President Obama, who has touted Spain’s green experience, and the United States Congress should take the time to more closely study the Spanish “Green Economy” experience. According to Spain’s University of Rey Juan Carlos, the United States can expect to lose 2.2 jobs in the economy for each government mandated and subsidized green job created.
Dr. John Christy, University of Alabama Climatologist, reports that global temperatures have been declining since 1998, at the same time carbon dioxide levels have increased. If the current trend continues, will global warming alarmists turn to a 1970’s style fear of a man-made Ice Age?
With so many questions unresolved, do we really want the radicals to win this fight and control the climate debate?
America needs to do all we can to expand our energy portfolio for national security. Continued reliance on Middle East oil just doesn’t make sense. We all want clean air. The federal government, struggling to break even with its Post Office, should not be in the business of picking winners and losers including our banks and auto-makers. Americans support energy independence and clean air, but it should not be confused with a radical climate change agenda and Waxman-Markey.
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