Obama should call climate bill by appropriate name—Cap and Raid

The UN building must create a large carbon footprint of its own. Alarmists like Al Gore rarely consider their own footprint. [Photo from UN website.]After President Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations Tuesday, Americans will soon see pressure on Congress to pass climate change legislation, HR 2454. The bill is alternatively called ‘Waxman-Markey’ or ‘Cap and Trade’. We prefer the term ‘Cap and Raid’ because this bill will create an economic bubble Democrats are famous for and we believe it will transfer American wealth out of Main Street pockets into hedge fund coffers and developing countries with weak governments. Obama said the U.S. is “determined” to combat climate change, according to Fox News.

Carbon emissions are assessed on a per capita basis. That’s nonsense—if you’re looking at reality, the sum total is what’s important if we’re after a carbon-limiting remedy. The real remedy of course would be wiser management of land and forests and waterways.

Leave it to a leftwing extremist like former vice president and current financier Al Gore to come up with a complicated method to penalize the producers in the world in an effort to get undeveloped countries to stop over-grazing herds and to stop cutting down trees. Gore’s enthusiasm is understandable—global warming gave him a podium he failed at in politics and it has certainly benefited him financially. With Gore it may be all about the power though. He’s part of Democrat royalty—his father was a well-known influential Dem senator himself. Neo-liberals all. And why not? If you loot the public treasury it’s quite logical to spread others’ wealth.

Criticism has come forth because Obama took a less rabid approach to global warming than some of his leftie extremist supporters would like. Still, as usual, he blamed the U.S. and other developed nations for causing all the problems.

The entire climate change debate is rather like the short story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ Ban Ki-moon has his eager hand out—‘Brother, can you spare a billion?’ is, was and always will be the UN approach to removing wealth from America and sending it to places where there’s little justice and a complete absence of leadership. The UN is running a parallel government on a global basis and freedom is not part of the methodology.

What Obama should have said is that while the third world refused to advance its own technology and relied on clans, overpasturing and primitive economies, the developing world was working hard to feed not only our own citizens but those in other countries as well. We even feed people who hate us. One newspaper in the United Kingdom hurled an insult at our president with a term normally related to sexual performance. Talk about stooping low—but that’s typical with global warming alarmists.

Obama is learning a major reason for vitriol hurled at President George W. Bush. If you put the interests of the people who elected you above the interests of international looters, you will pay a heavy global political price. Right now the people influencing the world and our nation do not appreciate liberty—that is as obvious as a yellow Hummer.

What is also obvious—Cap and Raid, as we call it, will transfer American wealth out of the country, hinder the free market (it already has), increase hardships for every income quintile in the nation and will accomplish very little for the environment.

How will Cap and Raid help reforest a poor, witless country like Somalia, where Islamist extremist group al Shabaab controls the southern part of the country, where pirates intercept ships carrying humanitarian aid, where drought is a fact of history dating to antiquity, where clans have never put their own interests aside to achieve peace, where herders have overgrazed? In the September, 2009, issue of National Geographic, there’s an article about Somalia’s bloody culture. There’s a photo of Somali men hauling a huge load of charcoal to market, charcoal taken “from Somalia’s dwindling forests” and then shipped to Saudi Arabia and other countries. During harvest, militia groups raid the crops from small farms. How will Cap and Raid remedy that?

Climate change is as old as this planet. The U.S. Congress and the UN have refused to permit testimony from respected experts who disagree with Gore’s radical science embracing quite a number of errors pointed out by a British court. Politicians are lying about the science they use to justify radical climate change legislation. They've even re-arranged the numbers on the cost.

Climate change legislation is nothing more than a new attempt to derail American liberty and wealth. If ever there were grounds for a bipartisan tea party, Waxman-Markey or ‘Cap and Raid’ should get the kettle going. If you value freedom, you should ask Congress to derail this bill.

Update on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 11:41AM by Kay B. Day, Editor

Like-minded commentary at The Heritage Foundation

The 'Morning Bell' blog at the Heritage Foundation analyzes the current Climate Change fiasco, with this telling passage:

"China’s energy intensity in 2008 is about the same as it was in 2001. Any claim that China’s energy intensity has improved by 20% over the past five years is incorrect. … energy intensity has improved by only about 7.4% since 2005, meaning that it has a long way to go to reach a 20% target by 2010. Can it happen? Sure. But to say that China is “well on its way” does not square with the data. It would be “ironic” indeed if China has figured out how to grow its economy at 9% per year while increasing energy use by only 3% and decarbonizing its economy at an even lower amount. If this were true, then China would have discovered the holy grail of emissions reductions and we can all forget about the challenges of climate policy."

Update on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 3:35PM by Kay B. Day, Editor

One world leader has the integrity to speak out about climate change.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday, Reuters said. Klaus remarked, "It's a propagandistic exercise where 13-year-old girls from some far-away country perform a pre-rehearsed poem," he said. "It's simply not dignified."