By Myron Ebell, via Globalwarming.org
The chance that the Senate will pass a comprehensive energy-rationing (a k a climate) bill this year remains close to zero. BP’s big oil spill in the Gulf changes very little.
The global warming movement peaked last June 26 when the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill. When members went home for the Fourth of July, many who voted for it discovered that their constituents were angry and mobilized.
Seeing the public reaction, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dropped plans to move a cap-and-trade bill before the August recess and turned to health care reform. It’s been all downhill since then.
The Kerry-Boxer bill, which is very similar to Waxman-Markey, passed the Environment and Public Works Committee last fall, but it was clear that it couldn’t get 51 votes, let alone 60, on the floor. That’s when Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) began working on a “middle-of-the-road” package with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.).
Even if he does finally release a draft of the measure this week, it’s still not going anywhere. Whether Graham is on board doesn’t matter because he doesn’t bring any other Republicans with him.
Kerry’s draft has restricted cap-and trade to electric utilities only. And he’s stopped calling it cap-and-trade because the American people have figured out that it is an indirect tax on them. Now it’s “pollution reduction and investment.” Similarly, a gasoline tax has been renamed “linked fee.” Call it whatever you want, it’s still a tax that consumers will have to pay. Adding some offshore oil or nuclear incentives or clean coal research can’t hide the fact that prices will go up when energy is rationed.
What’s become increasingly apparent is that this legislation no longer has much to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric.
(This piece by Mr. Ebell originally appeared on the New York Times’s Room for Debate web site as part of a collection of responses to the bill)
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All we can say is they better get that well capped or their global warming ‘drill baby drill’ bill is goin’ down the TUBES!
toby says:
China has already moved ahead, and the jobs will go there. Some will probably come here to Europe, so Thank You, Mr. Republicans!
Has nothing to do with republicans. Has a lot to do with pennies per hour wages and a lack of punishing laws on businesses. ALL manufacturing is going to China.
It is the notion that somehow solar cells and windmills will be different that is broken.
The notion of “green jobs” is just bunk and hokum. The lowest cost place to manufacture is where the jobs will be, and that lowest cost place is now China (with honorable mention to India). Solar cells have a lot of toxic materials in use. The various OSHA and EPA regulations along with the liability issues drove most of the semiconductor work overseas years ago ( I worked at semiconductor manufacturers some decades ago as we moved ever larger parts of ‘fab’ overseas…) and solar cells are mostly just large semiconductors ( whizz bang non-manufactured new bright ideas aside…)
Look, you can’t even buy effective de-greaser spray in California anymore due to CARB. You would have to be a massive masochist or ‘intellectually challenged’ to put a semiconductor fab here. Similarly, I’d not do any resin casting here. And forget metal plating operations.
All thanks to the Democrats who’ve run this state the bulk of the time.
So whoever sold you on the notion of USA as competitive with China on “green jobs” sold you a bill of goods…
rbateman says: and the dark-ages tax …
America is significantly different from Europe. We have nearly all the people, resources, machinery and knowledge needed to produce food in huge quantities, and the energy to do so. The USA has the largest fossil fuel reserves of any nation, more than enough for the next 100s of years, according to the EIA.
They will not do to America what was done to Europe. The liberals will be thrown out way before that.