Wednesday, July 01, 2009
It’s right for the planet. It’s right for the nation. And it’s time.
Actually, it’s well past time to confront Earth’s subjugation under the weight of increasing levels of greenhouse gases. Many scientists — among a preponderance convinced that man is rapidly driving up global temperatures — worry that the atmosphere already has reached a tipping point.
Global warming is the biggest issue of our lifetimes. But the “side issues” are just as compelling: the health effects of air pollution, and all else that comes with overdependence on fossil fuels — particularly those we must find in other lands.
House passage of a bill setting up a “cap and trade” system for curbing carbon emissions is a huge accomplishment for President Barack Obama and for Democratic leaders. The Senate needs to follow suit and join other developed nations now taking global warming seriously.
It was disappointing to hear Waco’s Chet Edwards’ rationale for voting against the bill. Sadly, he used the same type of equivocation that has prevented any number of important initiatives from moving forward — be they health care, entitlement reform or figuring a way to start reducing the national debt.
Edwards said that with the economy in its present straits, it is the wrong time for the added costs of curbing carbon emissions.
How many issues can we name? Needed legislation always is stalled by the economy of the moment, or the election cycle to come. So we postpone days of reckoning.
Hyperbole overflows about the cost of this initiative. We heard similar doomsday economic claims in 1993 when, at President Clinton’s urging, Congress raised taxes for the wealthiest of Americans. What happened? Prosperity and a federal surplus.
When this country joined other nations in the 1990s to ban chlorofluorocarbons in an effort to save the ozone layer, catastrophic claims were made about what it would do to the cost of air conditioning and refrigeration.
What happened? Innovation happened.
With a price put on carbon emissions, energy-saving innovation would drive matters rather than the habitual bottom-line quest that has put the planet in peril.
Is this legislation a “jobs killer,” as some critics claim? Not if this economy is what it has always been, an engine that responds to market demands. Now the market will demand cleaner energy and less energy consumption. Jobs will be created in that very way.
Costs? Pollution and energy gluttony have never come without costs. So, too, with smart policies that get out ahead of these conditions. But with the latter, over the long term, we will profit.
Comments
By sammy
Jul 1, 2009 4:08 PM | Link to this
Good God in heaven! Chet Edwards finally casts a vote in the interest of his constituents instead of the lunatic fringe of his party, and the Trib criticizes him for it.
From my memory, this is the first time the Trib has editorially, or otherwise, criticized Edwards for ANYTHING during his entire term in office. This must be Bill Whitaker's doing. John Young would NEVER criticize a fellow Democrat, especially Edwards the Anointed One.
"Global warming is the biggest issue of our lifetimes." What hyperbole! What a crock! You editorialists don't have the first clue as to what might be the "biggest issue" of our lifetimes. "'Our' lifetimes" could encompass 100 years in the future. Our bellying-up economy and the ruinous reaction to it might fit that category, but only time will tell.
If the nuts in Iran or N.Korea or al Qaida unleash nuclear weapons on us or others, what then might be the "biggest issue" of our lifetimes? This breathless, panicky reaction by the global warming alarmists is just as illogical and unscientific as that of the global warming deniers.
It's time for SOMEONE to interject a little perspective in this sophomoric food fight.
By Butch Miller
Jul 1, 2009 11:52 AM | Link to this
Buried within the Cap and Trade bill was a 98 page EPA Study that states that the Earth is not warming but in fact is cooling and will be in this cycle for at least the next 35 years. Experts all over the globe have come out and said that global warming is simply not true. The actual proven facts are that since 1850 the earth's temperature has risen 1^ and that was before 1940. This is simply a huge tax on middle income America to bail out Obama and this Nancy Pelosi led congress that have spent us into poverty! Obama has not done one single thing to jump start this economy because in haste and crisis things can be accomplish that people otherwise would have too much common sense to stand for!
I feel like there was a good reason that the good Lord blessed us with bountiful natural resources, I doubt that He intended for us to ignore them and try and out smart Him with our own plan.
By mec
Jul 1, 2009 8:19 AM | Link to this
It has become fairly well known that "greenhouse" gasses have little or nothing to do with climate change and that the planet has been in a cooling cycle for several years. The plain truth is that the ecosystem cannot support 7 billion people whether they live on primative consumption or and oil based economy.
This legislation that has just passed the house will do nothing but transfer more money from the taxpayer and into the hands of the ruling elite. If this thing gets past the senate, it will be the first distructive act by Obama that wouldn't have been persued by either political party. Nationalization was underway during the previous administration and would have continued under a republican regime but bumping taxes in the name of a leftist pseudoreligion is uniquely Democrat.
The democrat party and obama are already slipping in the popularity polls. This money/power grab should shorten their run considerably
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