Dr. James Hansen, hysteriologist and climatemongerer wrote an article slamming the Obama Cap and Steal ponzi scheme. Calling it exactly what it is:
For all its “green” aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like “cap-and-trade” scheme. Here are a few of the bill’s egregious flaws:
- It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.
- It sets meager targets — 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year’s level — and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious “offsets,” by which other nations are paid to preserve forests – while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.
- Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, “has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives.”
- It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, “businesses and households won’t be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense,” thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.
The biggest scam about this bill may be the free pass for insider trading. Unfortunately Hansen failed to mention the obvious ability for manipulation by cooperation with powerful politicians. What happens to carbon credit prices when the repeatedly self labled ‘Most Powerful Woman in the World’ Nancy Pelosi makes a strong statement about tighter regulation or if she surprises everyone with a conciliatory NO intent to increase caps or a potential reduction. Just a few words and her campaign contributors have a big payday. This is Chicago/Moscow/Venezuela politics, brought to you by the Obaminator. Don’t be fooled by your friendly government people, taxation with representation ain’t much better.
Of course Hansen needs global warming to maintain his manly demeanor, expensive travel budget and powerful presence on the world stage. Apparently licensed by Michael Mann’s Real Climate ‘scientists who are allowed to speak’ program, Hansen’s article pontificates about the glorious advantages of economic stimulus by wealth redistribution. Stalin would be proud.
There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the “fee-and-dividend” version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead.
A carbon fee-and-dividend would be an economic stimulus and boon for the public. By the time the fee reached the equivalent of $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton of CO2) the rebate in the United States would be $2000-3000 per adult or $6000-9000 for a family with two children.
There it is folks, take the money from the wealthy and give it to the poor helpless masses and it’s a BOON! for the public. That’s right, manna from heaven. Of course what Hansen in his economic brilliance fails to recognize is those carbon producing miners in an evil plan to make a PROFIT might just CHARGE YOU MONEY TO COVER THEIR COSTS!!! Costs of energy will of course penetrate every product on the market– plus profit of course. Don’t worry though folks, if you drive a shitbox rice burner- like already socialist 1/2 car per household Europe is forced to, you can use less gas. DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A BOON!??
I don’t think we can let go of this other particularly naive comment made by double Oh Zero (a LEADING scientist and agent for change) that the government will RETURN all the MONEY to the PEOPLE. It’s the LOCKBOX in a new wrapper all over again. I’ve never given money to a government and seen it ALL come back, have you??? Doesn’t it cost money to keep track of the money?? Not in Hansen’s superconduction money return system. The money flows straight through, instantaneously available for your own expenditure.
Well the article was carried on the Huffington Post to the adulations of several public comments. I’ll put a few of our communist friends statements here just to make sure we can see the quality of our public education system in action.
dnpvd51
What is the downside to fee and dividend?
Even if this guy is wrong about everything we still will burn less oil and the money will come right back to the people.
It is an idea with no downside that conserves energy.
jbatch
Here’s a wrinkle on the fee/dividend (which isn’t really much different than a cap and dividend as proposed by Congressman Chris Van Hollen). How about returning the money to everybody who earns below $200K, but putting the money from those who make more into a “green bank” that uses credit enhancements to underwrite clean energy investments. Properly structured it could generate hundreds of billions in private capital each year for clean energy.
kbdancer
Dr. Jansen convincingly demonstrates why this bill that so many have praised falls short of the climate progress that we so desperately need. It just goes to show that the public needs to fully understand all implications of legislation, and that the government should greater facilitate such understanding through increased communication.
StopGlobalWarmingBeVegan
How about getting rid of short-lived gases such as methane since livestock production is the #1 cause of climate change, not coal.
zaneblue
It’s scary how effective the astroturf propaganda from Big Oil and Big Coal is. They prey on the ignorant, who then turn around and post ridiculous things like in this thread.
At least cap and trade has a hope of passing. I fear that a carbon tax would never pass, and even if it did, with our government’s history of “regulation” it would be completely toothless. Cap and trade gives powerful corporations an incentive to keep the regulators honest–money talks.
Forest offsets, on the other hand, should definitely be removed from the bill.
Clearly, the government funded US teachers unions are doing a good job.