Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Going Wobbly On Global Warming

There are ten Democrat Senators who are not happy about the "Climate Change" bill. Here is a bit of what they have to say:

As Congress considers energy and climate legislation, it is important that such a bill include provisions to maintain a level playing field for American manufacturing. Manufacturing accounts for more than 10 percent of our economy and nearly three-fourths of the nations industrial research and development. Manufacturing jobs also pay 20 percent more on average than service jobs and have a strong multiplier effect. Therefore it is essential that any clean energy legislation not only address the crisis of climate change, but include strong provisions to ensure the strength and viability of domestic manufacturing. Further, any climate change legislation must prevent the export of jobs and related greenhouse gas emissions to countries that fail to take actions to combat the threat of global warming comparable to those taken by the United States.
Translation - if India and China do not sign on to a similar CO2 taxing scheme then we are against it too. The question is: how will they get a provision like that into the bill? Or will they be forced to vote against it? I have my fingers crossed. The Democrats can engineer a vote so that they only need 50 votes plus the Vice President in order to get a bill passed. Can they get the votes? We will have to wait until September to find out.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

2 comments:

Neil said...

We know now where the public stands--they voted for Obama because they liked him, they thought he was a moderate, and the Republicans screwed up badly. Oops! Turns out he's not a moderate, and there are worse things in Washington than slimy Republicans.

The public demonstrably does not want nationalized health care and CO2 caps. The real question since the last election has been whether the Democrats are willing to pass them over the public's opposition. Put another way, do they see enough power flowing to their party through the new bureaucracies and regulations to keep them in power (though perhaps not in office) even though the voters want them gone?

We are mere weeks away from finding out. I'm really not sure what the answer is.

latent sanity said...

Pop quiz:
Place the following in order according to their relative production of green-house gasses
(carbon dioxide and methane)

1. coal-burning electric generation plants

2. gasoline-burning automobiles.

3. gasoline-burning single-piston engines such as lawnmowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers, snow blowers, etc.

4. ocean-going vessels

5. cows

(answer, of course, is 5,4,3,2,1)