Why does the global warming debate matter to AWA members?

This is the central point in the Dean calling out all the global misanthropic warming crusaders.  It matters because the burden of any U.S. action to reverse the cycles of global warming or cooling will land on the shoulders of individual Americans.  And if the past is any guide, it will fall hardest on those who work hard, earn a decent living for themselves and their family, and not the least, those who enjoy outdoor recreation of their choosing.

The advocates of halting the production of green house gases (GHG) would have us believe that it will be heavy industry, powerplants, refineries, oil production, cement plants and the like that will carry the load – not you or me, average joes who go to work five days a week.

As I have pointed out earlier, who is it that buys the end product of industry? It’s us, the American consumer.  So whacking “those big polluters” with taxes/fees/permit costs will simply come crashing down hill to your shoulders and mine.  And for what purpose?

If you were to page through the 2000 pages [yes, that is not a typo – TWO THOUSAND PAGES] of the cap-and-tax bill passed by the U.S. House of (non)Representatives, you would find a lengthy litany of social program funding and the legendary ‘ear-marks’ to be funded with the proceeds of selling the GHG permits.  Yes, it’s a tax with a different name.

Hard hit in the House bill are oil drillers and refiners.  Is the price of fuel for your PWC an issue for you?  No matter what your answer, it would become more expensive with virtually any plan in the government dream of halting global warming.  After all, it is human behavior that is the cause of the problem and today’s government thinks it knows best how you and I should behave in order to save the planet.  Just like they know how to run so many government institutions and programs so effectively and efficiently.

Finally, think of the homerun that advocates of fixing human caused problems will score when they make recreation more costly and less accessible.  Humans (you and I) won’t be out on public waterways disturbing animals and sea grasses and the like.  And we will not be using gasoline or ethanol or anything else because we are staying home playing computer games with our solar recharged battery powered computers.  After all, our solar recharged electric cars won’t have enough power to pull a boat and trailer anyway.

Yes it will be a different Brave New World than Aldous Huxley envisioned – or will it be?

More details about the origin of the global warming dreamscape 

Here you will find the most recently revealed case of the man behind the curtain, to borrow from the Wizard of OZ.  OZ in this case is the global climate change dreamscape that has been concocted by scientists, politician, and folks expecting to make a profit from selling fear.  You see, the science community in their unending quest for taxpayer supported grant money found willing co-conspirators to explain their new dream.  Domestic politicians and misanthropic lockout fanatics of the so called environmental movement as well as the United Nations became the “leaders” in preparing the public for this pending disaster of global warming. The gloomier the predictions, the more money that was likely to flow their way, under their control.  Even to the extent of controlling how US industry operates and developing an entire new tax code called cap-and-trade.

 
The UN’s science crew - those self-righteous people who deliberately suppressed any contrary opinions about global warming - say we need to cut back on various atmospheric gases to slow the seemingly inevitable end of the world that is being caused by humans.  Of course the U.S. has been prominently and endlessly portrayed as the largest contributor to this headlong rush to Armageddon through our industrial production/pollution.  So the U.S. must not only cut back on everything from manufacturing to power generation to save the world, but we also have to send huge amounts of cash to 3^rd world countries to help them cope the global climate change nightmare. 
 
Oh, but wait!!  Now China is the biggest polluter with up-and-coming India jostling for 2nd place.  Suddenly the world isn't ending quite as rapidly due to global warming.  Or maybe isn’t ending at all, especially when those pesky glaciers between India and China are not retreating, but may even be growing.  Note from the attached article that the UN science crew used second hand, idle speculation of a guy from India as part of their dream sequence “proof” for the existence of global warming. 
 
Apparently there will have to be some tinkering at the UN with the "end of the world" pseudo-science scenarios.   This tinkering is necessary in order to reposition the US as the leading cause of a different, yet-to-be envisioned, new and improved world doom dreamscape/nightmare.  Is the change from ‘global warming’ to ‘global climate change’ the kind of change that the American public will buy? 
 
Check back in a few months.  Al Gore with his settled science and Nobel Prize are so 2008.

Too much time on my hands during the season’s holidays translated into reading the papers too much.  This in turn translated into finding more government goofy activities than Christmas lights in my neighborhood.

For example, here is a reading from the Wall Street Journal regarding the carbon tax program that currently exists in France.  The top French court – the equivalent to our Supreme Court threw out their carbon tax rules…which sounds like the French justices had retaining a bit of common sense.  Except…the reason they threw out the tax scheme was that there were too many French companies who were exempted from the tax. 

I can clearly picture the brain trust in congress taking a cue from this.  They wouldn’t make that dumb French mistake, they will tax everyone in their proposed cap-and-tax program that’s up for discussion in 2010.

Remember that carbon taxes or cap-and-tax plans won’t show up on your W-2 form, it will show up in your electric bill, your grocery bill, your gas credit card bill, you heating bill, and every other bill you pay.

The second goofy thing I read was a small item about the delay in permitting of an electrical transmission line from West Virginia to Maryland.  The reason the power company requesting the delay gave for applying for the delay was reduced demand in their service area.  Then a local enviro-whacko organization chimes in saying the transmission line shouldn’t be built anyway because it would enable the expansion of a power plant in West Virginia instead of encouraging so called renewable energy.

How long are Americans going to allow themselves to be pushed back toward the 1800’s by enviro zealots?  Why is it we should suffer another summer of brown-outs and/or ever higher electricity bills because we don’t have the political will to build electrical transmission lines – or new power plants for that matter.

In fact today’s newspaper had a story that China has something like 15 nuclear power plants under construction.  In the U.S. there has not been a nuclear power plant built in 30 years – because of permitting and legal restrictions.  In China many are looking forward to a bright future in 2010.  In the U.S. we may be looking backward to a dark nineteenth century.

The Dean welcomes comments on this column.