New study documents harmful effects of “cap-and-trade” and “endangerment” schemes
Guest post by Paul Driessen
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?
The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.
Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.
Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.
As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.
I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)
Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.
Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.
They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.
Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.
“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.
Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.
In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.
Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.
Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.
The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”
However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.
Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.
Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.
We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.
If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.
We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.
We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
To Paul Driessen, I could not agree more.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/ab-32-hypocrisy-vs-health-and-poverty.html
I don’t think Lisa Jackson want’s ‘justice’ for the inner cities. I think she wants ‘privileges’.
The new phrase or crime is environmental justice. Whites have placed polution sources near poor black communities and every thing hurts. Higher crime, more sickness and lower IQ’s.
Why should health and welfare be interesting to the current administration. They are concerned with change and change they are achieving. A stagnate economy with business afraid to hire for fear of more regulation and higher energy costs is the change they have achieved. The voters that swept this administration may not have known what change was coming into their home. Cap and trade as China and India economies soar, that is change you can count on. America has shifted with this change from what is possible to how to deal with the latest regulation or tax. An administration of fear.
Good luck getting the PTB and major media to listen to you, Paul. It’s an uphill fight against entrenched interests, as I’m sure you know. Get Drudge to run it, as well as the WSJ, and every other media outlet you can think of.
Environmental justice, like social justice, is a touchstone of the Marxists. Too bad people are waking up to it. I see the end of the EPA within two years—it will be gutted like a fish, and all the eugenicists/AGWers/enviro-facists removed and publicly shamed.
There’s nothing as blind as an AGW zealot when it comes to anything that might cast their mission in less than bright light.
The carbon guilt of rich westerners can only lead to greater misery for the greater mass of humanity that has no future without low cost energy.
I did not see any quantitative analysis in this essay. Here are some more interesting links:
A pro and con exchange:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/18738/cap_and_trades_economic_impact.html#
The CBO study:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10564/05-05-CapAndTrade_Brief.pdf
Liberal Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html?pagewanted=all
James Hansen is against C&T:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html
I first came across the whole AGW thing probably mid ’80s.
I dismissed it & never thought about it again until maybe 5 years ago.
I saw policies being enacted & thought, “WTF? Are they trying to kill off the poor?” I then started to investigate the reasons & discovered I was wrong not to react & become activist against AGW when I first came across it.
I’m sorry, I really didn’t think anyone would take it seriously!
DaveE.
It is their last chance….and the last summer time……a short summer. Help us Gaia!
See the many videos about Cap & Trade and the carbon lies of the AGW brigade at the website http://fraudulentclimate.atspace.com/ where the agenda of the eugenicists is exposed. Al gore is exposed as a buffoon and a charlatan. Additional videos wil be added each week. See Jim Inhofe’s devastating floor speech on this subject.
Mike says:
July 31, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I did not see any quantitative analysis in this essay. Here are some more interesting links:
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Gee, thanks Mike.
You’ve got to love Hansens’s plan. Tax dirty fuel to drive prices up, give people back some of that money to help them pay more until dirty fuel is pushed out of business…
as soon as dirty fuel is put out of business there will be no more tax money coming in to give people back…..
……leaving everyone to pay for green fuel at inflated subsidized prices
Where does the government get the money to subsidize? right now they are borrowing it.
trbixler says:
July 31, 2010 at 4:37 pm
…. America has shifted with this change from what is possible to how to deal with the latest regulation or tax. An administration of fear.
________________________________________________________-
Truer words were never spoken.
I am a small business owner and only a few minutes ago I was trying to decide whether or not to buy another piece of equipment or not and decided not to because I fear the US government is going to put me out of business next year.
A Walter Jefferies post Don’t Kill Your Dreams back in 2006 shows many Americans now view their government as “the enemy” and a change in people in 2008 has done nothing but make it worse.
Here is the real Grass Roots reaction to more regulation:
“I’ve heard a number of people say that “rather than comply they will kill or sell all their animals.” Might I suggest not saying that. It just plays right into the hands of Govi-Corp.
The large producers want that last 15% of the market. They resent that you raise your own food. By being independenet, by producing your own food, you steal pennies from the rich man’s pocket. Thief!
The government resents you because by raising your own meat you are cheating them out of taxes on the food and you are cheating them out of the taxes that they would get from the employment rolls from producers and vendors. It isn’t like its your money after all!…. “
There are 2.1 million families in the USA engaged in growing food, this does not include those running “under the radar” Congressman Markey of Cap and Trade fame wants to regulate them out of business too with his “food safety bill” HR 2749.
Between the huge government debt, the red tape of the “food safety bill” outlawing home grown food and the “Cap and Trade” bill killing our industry, it seems we have a government intent on bring our country down to third world status, killing its people and leaving it ripe for takeover by industrializing China who need our land.
For a bit of humor on the “under the radar farms” read Roosters and chickens and pigs in urban L.A., oh my!
@ latitude
I do not agree with Hansen.
Is anyone really surprised by this? In May 2008 Obama made his position very clear when he said:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
What that means is that we will no longer be allowed to work hard and provide well for ourselves. Instead, we will be expected to work hard and provide for others, in other nations. Obama intends to put an end to the American Dream.
We cannot take this lying down. Speak with your vote in November. Then speak again in 2012.
Unwed teen mothers and high school dropouts are a threat to minorities in America?
A threat?
As in, they threaten the existence of minorities?
Possibly your rhetoric got away from you on this one. To my ear it sounds as over-the-top as the malthusian fantasies of the pro-agw alarmists.
It is all about killing aspiration, you must not aspire, you must become the benign tax paying masses! Now who would want that?
We have created diseases in the form of depression. Now we have discovered anti depressants to make money on disease. Most people can’t define mourning and melancholia. If mourning is called melancholia and then called depression, we have become the Prozac nation. If Docs can stand between you and happiness with a prescription, there is money to be made from fear, sadness and several anxiety disorders. Parents used to build kids with character. Now they work hard to make kids happy.
In the greenie movement, there is a lot of misguided action in the direction of creating happiness, Eutopia and pleasure for everyone.
It will never happen.
If we were all driving electric cars and living in energy star homes, we would have more depression than ever.
Is Algore happy? Is James Hansen happy? Is Joe Romm happy?
Would they be happy if you were suffering?
How would you describe the legacy sex poodle alGore is leaving for his grandkids?
……leaving everyone to pay for green fuel at inflated subsidized prices
Where does the government get the money to subsidize? right now they are borrowing it.
I couldn’t agree more:)
Paul Driessen, well said, sir!
An excellent essay in language that is easy for anyone with a basic education to understand.
The only thing I would like to see added is a challenge. For Lisa Jackson, and others who want to Tax and Cap, to show by positive personal example how it is possible to get from Washington to the West Coast, in a timely manner, using transport with a zero carbon footprint. I mean an actual zero carbon footprint, not using offsets or carbon credits or other cheats. But to do it for REAL. By themselves. With witnesses.
regards
john
Brego says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Is anyone really surprised by this? In May 2008 Obama made his position very clear when he said:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
I wonder what the thermostat at his house is set at?
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/25545/
We don’t even need Cap and Trade to give green energy just remove fossil fuel subsidies. Market distortions and resource overuse (e.g. “tragedy of the commons”) are bad things.
But, no. Instead of *removing* a market distortion leading to overuse, the invent and entirely new distortion and a create an intangible asset market just like CDO’s.
What could *possibly* go wrong with that?
I’d be wary of associations with CORE: From Wiki – – –
CORE since 1968
Since 1968, CORE has been led by National Chairman Roy Innis, who initially led the organization to strongly support Black Nationalism. Subsequent political developments within the organization led it turn more towards the right. CORE supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. An article in Mother Jones magazine said of the modern organization that it “is better known among real civil rights groups for renting out its historic name to any corporation in need of a black front person. The group has taken money from the payday-lending industry, chemical giant (and original DDT manufacturer) Monsanto, and ExxonMobil.”[8] In his book, Not A Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, Donald Gutstein wrote that “In recent years CORE used its African-American facade to work with conservative groups to attack organizations like Greenpeace and undermine environmental regulation. It’s fair to say that CORE was for sale to anyone with a need for visible black cheerleaders in its campaign.”[9]
Recently, on same sex marriage and black health in the U.S.: “When you say to society at large that you have to accept, not only accept our lifestyle, but promote it and put it on the same plane and equate it with traditional marriage, that’s where we draw the line and we say ‘no.’ That’s not something that is a civil right. That is not something that is a human right,” said Niger Innis, national spokesman for CORE, and son of Roy Innis.[10] COREcares, an HIV/AIDS advocacy, education and prevention program for black women, was dismantled due to pressure from Project 21. Innis is on the board of the conservative Project 21 organization.
According to an interview given by James Farmer in 1993, “CORE has no functioning chapters; it holds no conventions, no elections, no meetings, sets no policies, has no social programs and does no fund-raising. In my opinion, CORE is fraudulent.” [11]
[edit] CORE in Africa
During the 1970s, CORE supported Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin, who was awarded a life membership. [11]
CORE has an African branch based in Uganda, with Fiona Kobusingye as is its director.[12] Bringing attention to the malaria crisis is one of the organization’s main activities, and it has championed the use of DDT to fight the disease, and it has partnered with a variety of conservative and libertarian think tanks in this effort.[9] In 2007, CORE organized a 300-mile walk across Uganda to promote DDT-based interventions against malaria.[13] CORE paid university students to participate in the walk, and then left them in Kampala at the walk’s conclusion without means of returning home. “We feel used, dumped and taught to lie,” said one student. CORE staff said the students were exaggerating.[14]
————————————–
Although I agree with Mr. Driessen’s central concepts, alas this is a case where the “message is the media” in some respects.
Although I guess “truth in advertising”, it is better to be up front about that connection. One can be a “senior advisor” and still not be directly affected or have pronounced direct effect on an organization one advises. Please note the odd relationship between the inherently politically “left of the left” Oppenhiemer and the Manhattan project, which he essentially “headed up”. He was pivitol in the success of the project, yet spent years dissassociating himself from the work after the war! Go figure.
@ Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 31, 2010 at 6:51 pm
……………………………
I wonder what the thermostat at his house is set at?
It’s not HIS house. It’s OUR house. He’s just living in it rent free for a couple more years.
We have seen several social justice movements over the last century: the Temprance movement to outlaw alcohol; bussing to improve black students’ educational opportunities; affirmative action to provide job opportunities to black job seekers; medicaid to provide health insurance for low income people; and now climate change proposed legislation is to protect future generations from catastrophic consequences of increased global temperatures. Well, how did we do? Temperance has been repealed having been the principle facilitator for the Americanization of organized crime. Bussing resulted in the disintegration of clustered communities, white flight, and an urban scene dominated by dysfunctional black politics, poverty, educational failure, and as now seen in Detroit, the downsizing of a city, bulldozing entire city blocks to mitigate urban blight. Affirmative action has lifted many into the middle class without the concomittant experiences necessary for those so lift to remain middle class. Medicaid has been co-opted by the middle class to pay for nursing home care for their aging parents, little is spent on women and children’s health. And now, in the name of “getting us off foreign oil” a series of taxes are proposed which will have the immediate effect of raising individual home energy costs by $1700 per year. Social engineering whether off shore as Marxist North Korea, Albania, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the old Soviet Union, or China have borne mixed results to say the least. Our track record here in USA has not been any better. Transition and adaptation are certainly better ways in my mind. No need to invoke alarmism or promote polarization of our population. “Just give me the facts, just the facts” and Dragnet’s Sargent Friday could go from there; and so can I.
Mike says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I do not agree with Hansen.
=======================================================
I didn’t think you did Mike. Only a crazy person would.
Don’t show that to the president or the democrats.
David A. Evans says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Good One!!!
A catch 22 has occurred when industry wants government to pay for R and D and government want industry to pay for it.
This ends up having any good technology sitting on the sidelines instead of being worked on to generate jobs and new products.
EthicallyCivil says:
July 31, 2010 at 6:59 pm
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/25545/
“We don’t even need Cap and Trade to give green energy just remove fossil fuel subsidies. Market distortions and resource overuse (e.g. “tragedy of the commons”) are bad things. ”
Unfortunately this article promotes the myth of subsidies for fossil fuels. If you read the original source you will find that the claimed ” subsidy” relates to China subsidizing the CONSUMERS of oil when the oil price was high to enable China’s industry to continue to compete with the rest of the world when the base price of oil was very high high. Note that the so called subsidy went to CONSUMERS not the oil business.
Furthermore the original article points out that these so called subsidies have ended when the oil prices dropped last year, but this fact is omitted in the link.
This is somewhat like claiming the subsidies given directly to “poor” North east folks who heat their homes (consumers) as subsidies to the oil companies.
These folks will lie about anything to mislead the public.
The distortions about subsidies to fossil fuels is a myth to justify the huge subsidies to the “renewable”, scarse, and costly alternative fuels.
“The wholesale, utopian, social engineer determined to impose his long-term policies no matter what the immediate discontents, is by his cloth precluded from learning from his mistakes. Nor can he take account of the insight that there will always be unintended consequences, whether good, bad, or mixed.” ANTONY FLEW, The Politics of Procrustes, 1981.
Allegedly violent crime is on the drop. Based on my own perception of my own area, I’d say that’s true. I’ve even noticed that some people are letting their kids play somewhat unattended, which was getting to be unheard-of by the time I was a teen in the early 90s.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704113504575264432463469618.html
Driessen’s point is that all the economic strictures placed on society from AGW alarmist policies hurt poor people first. He’s absolutely correct. Poor people do not profit from Exxon-style fiat carbon trading, either. The Liberal power elite talk up their alleged concern for the poor, but it’s a Big Lie. Their policies do serious harm to the most vulnerable in this country and around the world.
Reminds me of the old joke about the New York Times headline announcing an impending doomsday disaster:
World to be destroyed by giant Asteroid – Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit
Climate proposals threaten pursuit of happiness and justice
Not to mention truth, justice, and the American way.
From the essay:
“Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable …”
A few days ago I saved a reference to a page explaining why wind power is not very effective. It has to do with velocity but not the fact that wind turbans can’t handle strong winds. It that sense it is doubly silly.
Have a look:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
Understanding E = mc2
By William Tucker
Posted on Oct. 21, 2009
Duncan says:
July 31, 2010 at 5:58 pm
“Unwed teen mothers and high school dropouts are a threat to minorities in America?
A threat?”
I believe he was referring to their social and financial well-being. Quality of life and all that stuff.
Paul Driessen is right on the money on this one. Even if all the dark fantasies of the warmistas are correct, the cure would still be worse than the disease.
There are political elements at work in the inner cities of the USA that need and require a subject poverty stricken and poor mass of people to be used as a power base. An unhappy mass of people injected with a sense of jealousy and bitterness and handed a series of excuses as to why they are poverty stricken and unhappy and unemployed is a prime political instrument for those with enough cynical opportunism to use it for their own ambitions.
A sharp operator within this community can rabble rouse and agitate and blame others while ensuring his power base remains where they are in the greater order of things. We have seen the rise of the community organiser rabble rouser to the highest political heights, they have nothing of substance to offer but rely on the base instincts of the ignorant baying jealous mob and they use the substance of the mob to achieve their ambitions.
The cynical exploitation of poverty and under achievement by a few sharp operators has given the USA some of its most pressing problems.
I/my family/friends/business associates did no such thing; at one time, however, those ‘sources’ were near my Mom’s and Dad’s (respective) parents neighborhoods though, and through time, things changed (migration of families, groups … and yes, an exodus perhaps, see: Detroit, late sixties) …
.
I’ve been a fan of Paul Driessen for several years. One does not need “quantitative analysis” of his assertions, they are abundantly obvious. And one should NEVER refer to the CBO (name ONE thing they have ever scored accurately) or Paul Krugman as references.
The multi-millionaires of our ruling class will not be even slightly disadvantaged if energy costs were to increase 5-fold. But suppose you had a FT job paying $20/hr and you had to travel 10 miles from your home to your place of work. Assume you only drive your car which gets 30 mpg 125 miles a week. If gasoline prices were to increase to $10 (from today’s prices of about $3/gal), you would spend an additional $1,500 per year for fuel. A tripling of gas and electricity rates could cost you an additional $2,400/yr if your current utility costs are about $100/month. So…you’re fortunate enough to have a job and you’re grossing $41,600/yr. You probably have a net income of under $28,000/yr after taxes. Tripling the cost of gasoline, gas and electricity in the name of “saving the planet” from catastrophic climate which MIGHT happen long after you’re dead (and LONG before Social Security becomes insolvent) will siphon off an additional 14% of your net income.
I earn a decent living and “skyrocketing” energy costs will hurt, but they probably won’t cripple me. However, I’m in the top 20% of all wage earners (you would be surprised to know how little you have to earn to make it into this august club of taxpayers). It would hurt a LOT more for anyone making less than I do. Obama’s plan is to tax carbon and redistribute a portion of this confiscated wealth to offset increased energy costs for “the poor”. Of course, everybody in the top 80% of wage earners gets screwed, but the folks who REALLY get screwed are those in the top 21-79% of wage earners (i.e. “the middle class” and the working poor). This is little more than socialism sold under the guise of “saving the planet”. Saving the planet from what? CO2? An essential trace gas?
Monckton has demonstrated that if we assume the IPCC is absolutely correct and we completely shut down all economies of the world for 30 years we MIGHT be able to prevent about 1 degree of global warming due to CO2. In 30 years those of us left would be living in caves and average life expectancy would drop precipitously. Is this human progress?
What would lift Africa out of poverty faster, climate reparations from the West or the availability of abundant, affordable electricity? Electricity is the lifeblood of modern society and currently we have no viable alternatives to the burning of hydrocarbons.
My grandparents (who voted for FDR) never concerned themselves with the fact that Social Security would inevitably become insolvent (but only before it burdened their grandchildren with unsustainable debt). They left that for us to figure out and suffer through. Personally I think CO2/AGW is a failed hypothesis and an absolute fraud. Even if it is not we can easily wait 30-50 years, collect careful empirical data and see what happens. If we destroy the progress of mankind and the global economy now we will leave our children with a world far worse off than one that’s a few degrees warmer.
Yawn …
(Not even going to expend the energy and ask “cite please?” on that one)
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ7LcplfkgY&hl=en_US&fs=1]
All of the coincidental tragedies you feel are happening for a reason. Small doses of Socialism (Progress) that in effect have regressive tendencies. The only people who benefit are the ones with no apparent ties to America. Just look at Canada, waking up from 30 years of Lieberal Trudeaupia Hell. At least you have a great founding to fall back on. Our crappy Charter was written for Canada to be owned by the world.
Anyone else clock watching 2012 for the obvious reason?
I have been watching this site for a long time and just now feel the need to speak. I took the warmth and comfort of my home into my own hands and got rid of the oil tank and replaced with a far better fuel: A BIG BLACK PILE OF COAL. Now I can keep my home in northern Pennsylvania at 78 degrees fahrenheit for 45 cents a day. It is mined by Americans in my home state not 50 miles from my house. My heating dollars are feeding families here at home. Now on Earth Day I can stoke up both stoves open the windows and laugh.
Jim,
Why don’t you just google it?
Here, did it for you… WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-2749
SEC. 133. AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT OR RESTRICT THE MOVEMENT OF FOOD.
(a) Prohibited Act- Section 301 (21 U.S.C. 331), as amended by sections 110 and 111, is amended by adding at the end by adding the following:
‘(ww) The violation of a prohibition or restriction under section 304(i).’.
(b) In General- Section 304 (21 U.S.C. 334) is amended by adding at the end the following:
‘(i) Authority to Prohibit or Restrict the Movement of Food Within a State or Portion of a State-
‘(1) AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT OR RESTRICT THE MOVEMENT OF FOOD-
‘(A) IN GENERAL-
‘(i) After consultation with the Governor or other appropriate official of an affected State, if the Secretary determines that there is credible evidence that an article of food presents an imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, the Secretary may prohibit or restrict the movement of an article of food within a State or portion of a State for which the Secretary has credible evidence that such food is located within, or originated from, such State or portion thereof.
‘(ii) In carrying out clause (i), the Secretary may prohibit or restrict the movement within a State or portion of a State of any article of food or means of conveyance of such article of food, if the Secretary determines that the prohibition or restriction is a necessary protection from an imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.
‘(2) NOTIFICATION PROCEDURES- Subject to paragraph (3), before any action is taken in a State under this subsection, the Secretary shall–
‘(A) notify the Governor or other appropriate official of the State affected by the proposed action;
‘(B) issue a public announcement of the proposed action; and
‘(C) publish in the Federal Register–
‘(i) the findings of the Secretary that support the proposed action;
‘(ii) a statement of the reasons for the proposed action; and
‘(iii) a description of the proposed action, including–
‘(I) the area affected; and
‘(II) an estimate of the anticipated duration of the action.
‘(3) NOTICE AFTER ACTION- If it is not practicable to publish in the Federal Register the information required under paragraph (2)(C) before taking action under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall publish the information as soon as practicable, but not later than 10 business days, after commencement of the action.
‘(4) APPLICATION OF LEAST DRASTIC ACTION- No action shall be taken under paragraph (1) unless, in the opinion of the Secretary, there is no less drastic action that is feasible and that would be adequate to prevent the imminent threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.
‘(5) NONDELEGATION- An action under paragraph (1) may only be ordered by the Secretary or an official designated by the Secretary. An official may not be so designated unless the official is the Commissioner of Food and Drugs or the Principal Deputy Commissioner.
‘(6) DURATION- Fourteen days after the initiation of an action under paragraph (1), and each 14 days thereafter, if the Secretary determines that it is necessary to continue the action, the Secretary shall–
‘(A) notify the Governor or other appropriate official of the State affected of the continuation of the action;
‘(B) issue a public announcement of the continuation of the action; and
‘(C) publish in the Federal Register the findings of the Secretary that support the continuation of the action, including an estimate of the anticipated duration of the action.
‘(7) RULEMAKING- The Secretary shall, consistent with national security interests and as appropriate for known hazards, establish by regulation standards for conducting actions under paragraph (1), including, as appropriate, sanitation standards and procedures to restore any affected equipment or means of conveyance to its status prior to an action under paragraph (1).’.
Good points raised.
Talk about chickens coming home to roost. After so many decades of folks looking to the government to take care of them and their fantasy needs and desires posing as rights, we’re increasingly paying the price in reduced rights and freedom of action.
So law after law is passed telling us all what we can do, when we can do it, and how we can do it, assuming we are allowed to do it. And who gets to input their wishes to these self annointed protectors and guardians? The small business down on Main Street or large corporations with legions of experts and lobbyists “advising” Congressional critters on how to write the laws and how the myriad regulatory agencies should word the many regulations they draft to manage enforcement of the many laws.
Dorothy Parker nailed it — “The power to do things for you is the power to do things to you.”
Or as Ayn Rand once wrote, “Who will protect us from our protectors?”
This might be a bit off the wall, but has anyone considered the unintended consequences of all the so called “green” energy projects? For example, a windmill works by essentially capturing the energy of the atmosphere as it moves past the blades and spins the generator. Well doesn’t this rob the atmosphere of energy, and thereby cause a change in the available energy to create weather, such as a faster breeze, or perhaps a potential storm front? Surely one windmill has little effect on the afternoon breeze, but thousands of them lined up could cause a disturbance in the fragile ecosystem much as a butterfly flapping it’s wings created Katrina.
Same thing with the equipment that captures energy from the tides, or solar cell arrays robbing the Earth of it’s fair share of solar energy. Just the sort of things that keep me awake late at night…..
Max Hugoson says:
July 31, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I’d be wary of associations with CORE: From Wiki – – –
Thanks so much for the warning – NOT.
Roy Innis is top shelf. An outspoken, black American, civil rights pioneer that refused to drink the red koolaid and broke free of the Democratic Socialist party that still enslaves a majority of his/my people. He is cursed and hated by liberals and treated as if he is a fugitive slave, which is something Democrats specialized in prior to the Civil War.
I wonder how a (white? liberal?) person like yourself so quickly pulls Wiki propaganda talking points to attempt to smear this article? Do they have an app for that?
So Max, your warning has been duly noted and, well, disregarded. Thanks for playing though.
The last thing liberals want is Americans to pursue wealth, happiness, or freedom. That is reserved for the elite. Elite often means glib morons that spout nonsense. Nonsense that intrigues fools with the promise of easy wealth that others have earned and knowledge that is fake but seems trendy.
The real threat to all poor people in the USA would be in the form of higher energy bills for families living in cities that hit below freezing in winter, higher food costs, higher transportation costs etc. How does this help? If the EPA achieves its aims then America will see the “law of unintended consequences” at work. Consider my law that says “cheap energy reduces poverty.” Ask the millions of Africans and Indians who do not have access to electricity and ask them how their children read at night? Candles and toxic pumped fuel lamps.
/end rant
There most certainly is. But that’s not a discussion for this blog.
“they have nothing of substance to offer but rely on the base instincts of the ignorant baying jealous mob and they use the substance of the mob to achieve their ambitions.”
This quote, from an above post, applies to uninformed commentary on all sides.
Before physics had calculus, it resembled this comment section and the blog post that incited this whole pile of commentary.
Social science, which is what’s going on here, in the same way chemistry is being done by peeing in the pool, doesn’t have science, so every person with a keyboard and an internet connection is now an expert.
Bad information will drive out the good information, and like radio, TV and writing, the good will succumb to the ego.
Henry chance says:
July 31, 2010 at 4:30 pm
The new phrase or crime is environmental justice. Whites have placed polution sources near poor black communities and every thing hurts. Higher crime, more sickness and lower IQ’s.
No, Henry: For the largest part, your assertion is untrue.
People live where life is affordable.
A short summary: Back when most industrial projects were initiated, most people who worked at those industries lived in temporary lodging until they found a residence close enough to their work, something affordable.
As it happens, real estate people built tract housing close to the industrial point, and most —if not all— of the employees bought those houses. But as time went on, those employees made more money and moved away to a more distant community to put some distance between them and the industry’s location.
That left the tract housing empty, and reduced the price of the real estate (houses). That situation made having a house more affordable for the lower income groups. Others, seeing an investment opportunity, bought the tract houses and rented them out.
Ultimately those places became rundown and the rest is history.
Now, I should like to remind you that many of the best and brightest people have arrived from rank poverty. Poverty has a way of presenting you with options. That some resort to crime is all a matter morality.
IQ is essentially the intellectual payload of a person’s abilities, and that varies with both education and application.
Finally, let me point this out: Booker T. Washington was a former black slave. He verily pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and became the quintessential American success story. Imagine: A former slave who lived in rank poverty, had no education save what he did for himself, and went on the form the Tuskegee Institute. From the very bottom to very top, and he did it because he wanted to get there.
If he did it, then there’s really no excuse for other’s not doing it. Every human has drive to varying degrees. Failure is the only option for those not willing to apply themselves.
Of course, being paid to remain a failure is a political stratagem used by politicians as a ploy to remain in office and have influence. So, in many cases the black community is told that they can never succeed in a white man’s world, and incredibly, many believe that message. Think I’m kidding? To put an exclamation point on all of that, there’s this: The Seattle school district wanted to drop the GPA for getting a High School diploma to a GPA of 1.0.
That’s D a average. Think about that: It’s essentially failure made to order.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2010007013_grading06m.html
Blade. Yup
Never let a crisis go to waste. Obama’s mob of legislators have been extra-busy cooking up new ways to “punish” those who risk their investors’ money drilling for oil. In its most sweeping response to the gulf oil spill, the House on Friday approved legislation that would impose new environmental safeguards for offshore drilling, remove a liability cap for spill damages, and slap industry with a new tax to fund conservation projects nationwide.
That’s right; now “Big Oil” has been handed a billion-dollar a year bill for land purchases for national parks, forests and wildlife refuges. Environmentalists are already drawing wish lists of projects (the greenies “conservation” rackets) such as “the catalyst to complete our land acquisition plan” for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said Woody Smeck, acting deputy regional director of the National Park Service’s Pacific West Region. “We have 22,500 acres still to acquire from willing sellers.” It must be great when you can send the bills for your grand projects for someone else to pay, even when that someone has nothing to do with your schemes. The investors in oil exploration and drilling companies must be so pleased to be extorted of $1 billion every year on projects that have no connection whatsoever with their business.
The law also removes a $75-million liability cap on oil firms for economic damages caused by spills. The bill would repeal a provision of the 2005 energy law that exempted projects, including the Deepwater Horizon drilling, from detailed environmental analysis. It bars companies with poor safety and environmental records from receiving new offshore drilling leases, and it requires offshore drilling rigs to operate under the U.S. flag, requiring tougher safety rules than those in effect for the Deepwater Horizon, which was registered in the Marshall Islands (and had nothing to do with BP, the contractor). The measure prohibits oil companies from bidding on new offshore leases unless they renegotiate royalty-free offshore oil leases that were approved in the 1990’s. It establishes new ethics rules for drilling regulators; increase fines to $10 million, from $100,000, for willful violations of drilling rules; and establish new procedures for use of oil dispersants.
Some areas have reports of pump prices increasing already by about 7 cents a gallon. This is the future.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
This guy doesn’t drive “a suv” he travels in an armada of them to a personal ” subsidised ” private 747 or huge military helicopter. He uses more fuel getting to New York than his employers could use in a lifetime. Shame on him.
Let’s hope that US voters get it right in November…
And in Britain
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/emission-cuts-threatened-by-economic-recovery-2014118.html
“Emission cuts threatened by economic recovery”
Brilliant post by Paul Driessen. For me this is absolutely the nub of the whole cAGW scam.
As Dr. Roy Spencer puts it in his excellent book “The Great Global Warming Blunder”:-
“While relatively wealthy and environmentally conscious Westerners can deal with the higher food prices that result from diverting some of our food supply into liquid fuels, green energy policies will push many of the world’s poor who are already malnourished into starvation. Many Westerners are able to absorb the extra costs of CO2 regulation that must inevitably be passed on to the consumer, but the war on global warming will increasingly become a war on the poor.”
Even here in the UK (not quite the Third World – just yet. Give the Alarmists a little more time!), the Government’s energy regulator OFGEM predicts that an “average” domestic electricity bill will be £5,000 p.a. by 2020. That is more than 100% of the State Old Age Pension – which the vast majority of the poor rely on for their old age.
And the reason for the skyrocketting energy prices?
You guessed it!
Happiness and justice are greedy pursuits. You must humbly accept your equally rationed place in the socialist machine being brought in through the backdoor. If you complain or continue to live your productive lifestyle, you will be killed by heavier taxes.
“Pat Moffitt says:
July 31, 2010 at 7:39 pm
“The wholesale, utopian, social engineer determined to impose his long-term policies no matter what the immediate discontents, is by his cloth precluded from learning from his mistakes. Nor can he take account of the insight that there will always be unintended consequences, whether good, bad, or mixed.” ANTONY FLEW, The Politics of Procrustes, 1981.”
Darn it! Another book I’ve got to buy.
UK Sceptic says:
August 1, 2010 at 1:02 am
“Let’s hope that US voters get it right in November…”
It’s not that easy. We will see a swing from the dems towards repubs. How much, no one really knows. That being said, all should remember, the CAGW/CC movement thrived quite well under repub leadership. Apparently, total control over energy use is too tempting for all politicians. The fact is, I know of no repub that makes it a cornerstone of his/her campaign to rid ourselves of these global totalitarians. Perhaps there are a few out there. I know Sen Inhofe works diligently for this cause, but we really don’t have anyone making it a campaign issue. So, when the swing happens, there will be no mandate to change directions on this issue. Fortunately, repubs will see it as a repudiation Obama’s agenda of which CAGW/CC is a cornerstone. So they’ll continue to attempt to thwart his agenda, but two years later, where will we be? Hopefully, the world will have seen the fraud for what it is, but I’m not holding my breath.
mod, could you rescue my previous post from the black hole of posts? thanks
Done RT-mod
Too many taxes and over regulation is generating the working poor into starvation.
This allows cheap imports to take over.
Well look at it this way, the EPA in 1972 banned DDT on a pack of lies spread by some idiot Rachael Carson. Real science tried for years to prove anything she said was true, came up empty.
Yet about 1.5 million blacks in Africa die each year over a hoax. So you think the EPA cares about truth? Hah.
“the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.”
It has worried me that attemps to reduce the carbon footprint headed straight for a quite necessary function, the generation of electricity.
Just for a moment, pause to think how much the carbon footprint of USA would be reduce if all organised sports were banned instantly to reduce GHG and side effects. Think of all the sports injuries; the many people doing less than productive work; the gas used by cars going to events; the valuable space taken by stadiums; the night lighting of the latter…….
For that matter, the cosmetics industry could be wiped out overnight and the staff set to making useful things like compact nuclear reactors.
If you want some controversy, ban religious observance and set the buildings to use by the homeless.
Why is the USA so single minded as to want to destroy electricity plants when so many less useful alternatives have not even had a look in?
Look at the title of ‘your act’ above compared to her claim above … in short, you have gone ‘a bridge too far’.
Now, let’s stop cluttering up Anthony’s fine site with Ale x Jone s/prison planet (dot) com class-conspiracy fodder and claptrap like this …
(Maybe the link sanitized ver will post.)
.
I have a grandson and also feel some obligation to future generations who may wonder why rapid burning of the world’s fossil fuels in a few hundred years was thought to be a responible action.
“Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches.”
Actually, the headline-grabbing disaster scenarios are the product of heaps and heaps of Climate Ca$h being gobbled up by climate scientists and their political enablers to support their expensive offices, computers, labs and equipment, travel budgets, and six figure government salaries. And, as I always emphasize, all as we, in the US, pile up MASSIVE DEBT and sustain nearly 10% unemployment! Of course, we will end up paying dearly next year when (if things don’t change this November) all Americans will receive a massive tax increase (not including the proposed “cap and trade” taxes).
But, hey, it’s a great time to be climate scientist!!
Let’s Party in Cancun!!
Those of you discussing government regulation of food products, even those home grown, are on the mark. The Supreme Court upheld, in the 1940s, government mandated restrictions on acres planted by farmers even when the crops were planted and used on the same farm. Those home-grown, home consumed crops were deemed an impermissible interference in interstate commerce. (Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)) The concept was upheld in the Raich case in California, where a consumer of marijuana for medical reasons was prohibited from growing her own because it interfered with an (admittedly illegal) economic activity (the sale of marijuana for non-medical use), in violation of the Commerce clause. (Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005)) Thus, any time do-it-yourself interferes with someone else’s opportunity to do it for you for pay, do-it-yourself is an economic activity that may be subject to regulation, depending on the whims of Congress. If there was ever a good reason to vote this year, this is close to the top.
BillD says:
August 1, 2010 at 6:18 am
I have a grandson and also feel some obligation to future generations who may wonder why rapid burning of the world’s fossil fuels in a few hundred years was thought to be a responible action.
“Rapid-burning?”
I find myself questioning that assertion regarding ‘rapid.’
See here: The geologic processes which produce mineral crude, have been in operation for millions of years. It is self-renewing.
In fact, there are Biblical accounts of leaks in the Middle East, especially in the Dead Sea, where tar was collected and used for mummification.
From where I see things, we are actually doing ourselves a VERY BIG favor by burning the stuff before it actually reaches the surface and commences to incinerates us when it auto ignites!
Here we have a relative ‘blessing’ in the name of a basic fuel source, which may be used when all else fails, and there you are condemning the use of what’s essentially ‘free.’
Your remarks come across as something akin to ‘don’t pump water from a well.’
You just might want to reconsider your stance here …
BillD said:
“I have a grandson and also feel some obligation to future generations who may wonder why rapid burning of the world’s fossil fuels in a few hundred years was thought to be a responible action”
You and your grandson live a comfortable modern life that would seem to be a paradise to those who lived a mere 100 years ago and it was ALL built on the fossil fuels you have been duped into believing are somehow evil.
Read ‘Dickens’ and envisage a life without modern healthcare/machines/cars/computers/safe water and food/freezers/cars/busses/planes/trains/roads from the smallest conveniences like plastic bottles to the MRI scanner you may one day need and the transport to get you to that lifesaver.
Dear Sir,
Everything you take for granted from a ball point pen to the internet would not be invented or available to you if it were not for fossil fuels. Take a pen and write down every item that has fossil fuels products as part of their ingredients or needed fossils fuels to make and deliver them to you, its a very long list! Think of your grandchild and the comfortable life he/she lives and then go back 150yrs and research to find out just bone grindingly hard and soul destroying daily life was for the children of his age. You have been subjected to outrageous lies about fossil fuels, a poisonous campaign against the very lifeblood of our civilisation.
Please think about the facts and rethink your position for the sake of your grandchild and his/her children . If it were not for fossil fuels then there would have been no modern civilisation.
They haven’t even found conclusive evidence that “fossil” fuel comes from fossils, they are sure that dinosaurs have nothing to do with it. There is debate as to where it comes from, there is certainly no evidence that it is a one time process. It is now and will continue to be an ongoing process. Telling everyone that we are running out, without knowing for sure where it comes is chicken little science at best.
A classical case of “It depends on what the meaning of ________ is.”
Home grown – a dozen tomato plants, couple 5′ rows of onions, some beans, a few rows of lettuce – planted on the average city lot or even aside the house in the country, all this sounds reasonable to the average Joe as the definition of ‘home grown’.
Planting and harvesting 11.1 acres * (45,000 sq. meters, yielding about 20 bushels of wheat per acre, ) gives about 220 bushels of wheat – is this on the same scale as ‘home grown’? Sounds like a stretch to me.
A stretch, as the definition of “home grown” is expanded beyond reasonable proportions in order to start this particular cattle stampede …
* Wickard v. Filburn
.
(Sarc On)
The Fall of the West
Theory No: 4697 – Climate Change
“Before The Great Evil Empire expired in 1989 the Soviet Politburo passed, the Supreme Soviet blessed, and the Soviet President signed, the Omega Project Authorization Act. This project was to infect the West via its water supplies with several secretly developed hallucinogenics that would cause crazy thoughts about Climate Change and bring the West to its knees. It was expected that all this would take just over 20 years; at which time the West would begin to crumble like a house of cards due to its incurable paranoia.”
(Sarc Off)
PS: If it were only so simple! People can be dumber than the look.
Mods –
I’ve got a post (or two?) stuck in limbo – could you take a look? Can’t believe it’s for any other reason than a link or some obscure term I’m not aware of ‘triggering’ a post’s placement into purgatory …
_Jim says:
August 1, 2010 at 8:31 am
Home grown – a dozen tomato plants, couple 5′ rows of onions, some beans, a few rows of lettuce – planted on the average city lot or even aside the house in the country, all this sounds reasonable to the average Joe as the definition of ‘home grown’. [–snip rest–]
Who are you to decide what the limits of ‘home-grown’ is/are?
Do you have a large family?
Do you can your foods to last several years?
Do you can foods for those times when there WON’T be any food?
Do you donate the food you grow?
Do you even grow your own food?
Do you live on a farm where you have to grow the necessaries for the animals?
Any such thought as you and the IDIOT USSC might suggest would be COMPLETELY antithetical to what the Founders of this nation had in mind when they formulate the U.S. Constitution and the amending articles.
The human race has derived most of its energy from the combustion of hydrocarbons since man discovered fire. I am loathe to use the term “fossil fuel” because “hydrocarbon” is a more apt description. It doesn’t matter if you’re burning coal, gas, petroleum, ethanol, biodiesel, wood, whale oil or dried animal dung. The basic reaction with oxygen to produce energy is the same. In every case CO2 is an end product of the reaction.
Mankind has only been using hydrocarbon combustion to fuel transportation for a couple hundred years. We have only been generating and distributing electricity for a little over a hundred years. Consider the all the changes in modern society from the dawn of history up until the development of the steam engine. Then consider the societal and technological advances made from the time of the steam engine until we were generating commercial electricity. What has happened to mankind since electricity was made available? Has life improved? The more hydrocarbons we utilize for energy the better our standard of living.
The quest to limit energy production and utilization is a relatively recent phenomenon. The goal for more efficient utilization of energy is not in need of a “movement”, it is inherent – no central planning required. The free market takes care of this quite nicely. Fluorescent lighting is far more efficient than incandescent lighting. For this reason most commercial lighting in stores, schools, office buildings, factories, etc. is fluorescent. No government edict was required. Incandescent lighting is generally more practical for residential applications. For some reason practicality and desirability is trumped by government edict that states “thou shalt not waste energy YOU pay for by utilizing incandescent lighting.”
What is the fear of energy utilization? I suppose some may argue that we are consuming finite resources. This argument doesn’t hold up too well in light of the fact that we have literally hundreds of years worth of abundant hydrocarbon fuels available. Consider life in 1910. How many technological advances can you think of in the last 100 years? Does anyone honestly believe we will be producing and utilizing energy the same way we do today 100 years from now? But fear of CO2 is an immediate game changer. If one can politically control CO2 emissions one can essentially control energy production and utilization. In essence, control modern civilization.
Personally, I believe it is entirely possible that we might be able to warm the planet by a degree or so within a 100 years. Then again, it is equally likely that some heretofore unknown negative feedback system or natural variation may utterly negate or eclipse such a change. We know far too little to be basing public policy on specious theories. Reducing energy utilization by governmental fiat can only have negative effects on mankind as a whole. All we need to do is look at the world around us. Countries that produce and utilize a lot of energy are prosperous, their people live longer and better lives, their environments are cleaner. The countries that don’t produce and utilize a lot of energy are impoverished, their people live shorter, more desperate lives and their environments are ravaged.
What really need to fear is human nature. That is, the lust by a few for wealth, power and control over the lives of other human beings. This is as old as mankind itself.
regeya says:
July 31, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Allegedly violent crime is on the drop. Based on my own perception of my own area, I’d say that’s true. I’ve even noticed that some people are letting their kids play somewhat unattended, which was getting to be unheard-of by the time I was a teen in the early 90s.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704113504575264432463469618.html
__________________________________________________
And it is MUCH MUCH worse since I was a kid when we left the house unlocked, the keys in the car, you never saw drugs in the schools until high school & college (60’s) and thought nothing of hitch hiking for long distances.
Now I have caught more than half of my “friends” stealing from me and there are at least four drug dealers on my 6 mile back country dirt road and the cops, swat teams and helicopters showed up last year for a big bust in the woods next door.
Just depends on your frame of reference.
BillD says:
August 1, 2010 at 6:18 am
I have a grandson and also feel some obligation to future generations who may wonder why rapid burning of the world’s fossil fuels in a few hundred years was thought to be a responible action.
I have it on good authority that your grandfather was deeply worried about what you would do with the ever increasing amount horse cr*p that was accumulating in the streets. To get a flavor for why he was worried, take a trip to Mackinac Island.
I don’t think you’ve been following the thread of thought from beginning to end on this, therefore, your post(s) is(are) irrelevant.
[reply] Dial it back a notch guys please. RT-mod
.
_Jim says:
July 31, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Gail Combs July 31, 2010 at 5:35 pm
… the red tape of the “food safety bill” outlawing home grown food …
Yawn …
(Not even going to expend the energy and ask “cite please?” on that one)
__________________________________
Here are the provisions care of farm to consumer
New Food Safety Bill HR2749
HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.
HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.
To read a detailed account of the bill, go to: http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm
Alarming Provisions:
Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:
* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times.
* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers.
* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.” Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area.
* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers.
* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food. Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food” would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.” The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods. With all these ambiguities, it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers.
* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here is the citation anyway.
It is called the “commerce clause” from the case of Wickard v. Filburn before the Supreme Court:
“The Department of Agriculture, tasked to enforce the wheat quotas, asserted that the acre of wheat Wickard grew for his family was a violation of the quotas.
Wickard sued. The Department of Agriculture claimed that Congress had commerce clause authority under the Constitution to prohibit Wickard’s practice of growing wheat for his family. Even though it was admitted that the wheat Wickard grew for his family never left the farm, the Department of Agriculture claimed that this practice affected interstate commerce. If Wickard had not given this wheat to his wife, the government argued, it might have traveled across a state line and could have affected interstate commerce. Further, the government argued, if Wickard had not given farm-grown wheat to his wife to feed the family, his wife would have bought bread at the store – bread that might have crossed a state line and might have affected interstate commerce.
Thus, the government argued, Congress had sufficient constitutional authority under the commerce clause to impose the wheat quotas on Wickard and prohibit him from growing extra wheat to feed his family.
When presented with this argument and the Roosevelt threat to expand and pack the Supreme Court, the Court upheld the government’s arguments in Wickard, thereby dramatically expanding the power of Congress to “regulate commerce … among the states.” http://firearmsfreedomact.com/what-is-the-commerce-clause/
The original bill, HR875, most definitely had the Commerce Clause included in the language and created a big uproar so another bill was offered up.
“The Food Safety bill, nevertheless, passed through its final committee action yesterday, June 17th. It comes as a response to the recent food crises and is a product of what Rep. Frank Pallone identifies as 11 years of proposed food safety bills. [That is how long I and others have been fighting this crap]
The bill broadly calls for greater FDA regulatory powers over the national food supply and food providers. Such extensions of authority include quarantine, recall, and search without a warrant capabilities. This legislation also seeks to establish a national food tracing system requiring any and all producers, manufacturers, processors, transporters, and holders must maintain the full pedigree of the origin and distribution history of their food. Other potentially debilitating hurdles presented by this bill are the registration requirements such as a $500 fee.
Waxman’s Food Safety bill is built largely off of the previously proposed Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009, but focuses solely on food, while the other would also seek to address drug and cosmetic safety. It is also an “enhancement” to previously proposed food safety bills as it seeks to up tracing and record keeping requirements, punishments to relevant violations, and extends Federal jurisdiction over any violation of the bill to an extraterritorial scope….” http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/1053-With-Climate-Change-and-Food-Safety-Waxman-s-Got-His-Hands-Full
The addition of the Commerce Clause after the fact is quite easy. It was done to another law on animal welfare and the resulting red tape put several of my friends and me out of business. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 has had over one hundred amendments quietly slipped through Congress and the current economic crisis and bank bailouts were the result.
Gail, you’re seeing things where most rational people don’t (again, populism run-a-muck and too much Ale x Jone s comes to mind).
And since I’m not a qualified shrink I can’t take it any further, plus, the mods want cold water thrown on this discussion. I don’t blame them, I would like (as Anthony already posted back a few days ago) LESS coat-racking of issues too.
I’ll leave it at that. You wanna debate on some board somewhere, name the place.
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Gail Combs,
For what it’s worth, I thought your response in your previous post was brilliant, well researched and well documented. I couldn’t agree with you more. Far too many fail to appreciate the assault on liberty from those who write the laws.
Dr. Dave says:
August 1, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Gail Combs,
For what it’s worth, I thought your response in your previous post was brilliant, well researched and well documented. I couldn’t agree with you more. Far too many fail to appreciate the assault on liberty from those who write the laws.
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Thanks.
Jim has not been in the trenches fighting these laws for several years or seeing friends livelihoods ruined by an amendment to an existing farm law. He has not spent long hours going through a bill sentence by sentence and trying to figure out its meaning. It is very frustrating because much of my info is first hand reports via phone calls or private e-mails and I can not post them. Unfortunately it will take food shortages and sky rocking prices to wake people up and then it will be too late.
_Jim says:
August 1, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Gail Combs August 1, 2010 at 2:09 pm
…
Gail, you’re seeing things where most rational people don’t (again, populism run-a-muck and too much Ale x Jone s comes to mind)…..
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Jim, go to this site and ask these farmers if I am “irrational” http://nonais.org/2010/07/01/house-cuts-nais-funding/
AND who the heck is Ale x Jone s? (I do not own a TV so if he is an actor or TV reporter I would not know him)
We all want to see the plan:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/08/less-power-more-control.html
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M. Simon says:
August 2, 2010 at 5:09 am
We all want to see the plan:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/08/less-power-more-control.html
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Thanks, bookmarked
Well IMHO, anyone proposing to tax carbon; for any reason; should be confined to an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of their life.
BUT ! if the idiots want to do it anyway; then I have a different proposal:- Make it a very HIGH tax; that should get people to stop using carbon very rapidly.
Place a tax on oil (petroleum) and Natural gas of $1,000,000 per barrel equivalent; and place a tax of $2,000,000 per barrel equivalent (energy) on coal; since it is mostly just carbon; while petroleum and natural gas contain a lot of Hydrogen.
Now that should get people swithced over to solar cells real quick; or really quickly if you prefer.
At $4 per Watt; or maybe $1 per Watt; Wattever it is these days for solar cells; that should get everybody making solar cells in a real hurry and rid us of the scourge of carbon.
Man I just can’t wait for the fossil fuels to run out; that is something I really want to see; so the green energy promoters can finally have their free clean green renewable energy from cheap solar cells; will that ever be a day to celebrate; and think of all the new jobs it will create.
I have degrees in geology and engineering, focussed toward hydrocarbon extraction. I work in the industry, and understand hydrocarbon creation, migration, and production. Oil and gas are not unlimited. It will be at least a couple centuries until oil gets scarce. When that happens, natural gas, (which is extremely plentiful on earth) can be turned into diesel fuel, or used as natural gas. Unless polywell fusion or some other amazing technology breaks through, hydrocarbons will be what the world uses. Indeed, you can’t make plastics and chemicals out of solar energy. It isn’t just energy that we use from hydrocarbons.
Indeed I also used to teach a class called “The Geological Record of Global Climate Change” at university level in the earlier part of last decade, and I keep up on the issues. I understand the issues. I am not concerned by CO2 in the least. It is a complete red herring. If people want to be environmentalists (which I applaud), then focus on habitat/ecosystem destruction and human overpopulation in sensitive regions. Not on CO2!
News Flash:
Washington DC, July 2010 — Ice sculpture melts — climate scientists baffled.