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Rejecting climate bill
Republicans engage in partisanship as world awaits leadership on warming
Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 | 2:04 a.m.
Congressional Republicans this week continued their assault on President Barack Obama’s agenda, this time by acting like juveniles while world leaders pleaded for leadership.
In the Senate, the environment committee had scheduled a meeting Tuesday to debate the climate-change bill passed by the House in June.
Republican members, making the absurd claim that more cost studies were needed, boycotted the meeting.
This partisan stunt was disgraceful. Senators should show up when legislation is open for debate.
Republicans had another chance Tuesday to show at least some engagement on climate change when German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed a joint session of Congress.
She delivered a passionate plea for the United States to lead as the effects of worldwide warming become more pronounced by the year.
“We all know we have no time to lose,” Merkel said, referring to the international summit on climate change set for next month in Copenhagen. “We need ... all countries to accept internationally binding obligations (on greenhouse gas emissions).”
Democrats stood and applauded. Instead of showing respect for Merkel, most Republicans remained seated and stone-faced.
These petulant actions came on the same day that President Obama discussed climate change with European leaders at the White House, and while international delegates were attending a pre-Copenhagen conference in Barcelona, Spain.
A major topic at both meetings was leadership from the U.S. “We expect the United States to be able to deliver on one of the major challenges of our century,” Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister for Climate and Energy, said in Barcelona.
Instead of helping to meet that expectation, it is clear that Republicans are more interested in hewing to their anti-Obama talk-radio masters and to the climate-change deniers at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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"Republican members, making the absurd claim that more cost studies were needed"
Flat out we do not trust the Obama, Reid Pelosi numbers.
Vice President Joe Biden said that "everyone guessed wrong" then said they "misread how bad the economy was."
If Congress really wanted to do something they could have spent the entire $789 billion stimulus on new clean energy instead of the stealth cap, tax and trade bill which is only going to make Geroge Soros and General Electric rich.
They can still spend what is left of the stimulus.
A simple tax on carbon like at the gas tank would work 100 times better than Tax, cap and trade.
This Congress and Presidency has been one of the most anti-business governments that this country has ever seen and it is in a time when millions of people are losing their jobs.
Private Sector Job Creation is priority number 235,232,383,293 on Dem's list of To-Do's.
FUTURE,
Both taxes are needed, at the pump and also Cap and Trade, if you know what Cap and Trade is all about.
The US gas prices at the pumps are less that half of what they are across the whole of Europe.
What a silly editorial, this isn't about "global warming" it's just the LVSun's childish ranting about Republicans and "talk radio masters' i.e. Rush Limbaugh. As far as "boycotting" meetings, wasn't it the Democrats who were locking Republicans out a few weeks ago from meetings?
Yes our gas is cheaper than Europe, but the Americans are much superior in intelligence than the Europeans. The average European is much too stupid to look after him/herself and needs the government to take care of them just like a mother looks after a toddler. The vast majority of Americans can look after themselves without the aid of some functionally illiterate government employee.
Biden is right. America did guess wrong, we voted for the two biggest fools in history as president and vice president. Bring bck Bush and Chaney. I trust Halliburton more than I do Harry Reid and Pelosi, the Botox Queen.
Anyone who believes that industry causes 'global warming" needs to examine this website: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenh...
Science suggests otherwise. The most absurd aspect to this argument is that carbon only represents 5% at best of greenhouse gases. Any of you libs care to disagree? If that is the case, then why try to limit carbon, why not go after water vapor which represents 95% of greenhouse gases? The answer is simple. We can't control water vapor, but we can control carbon. Will lowering carbon production impact greenhouse gases? Of course not, and these scum bags who are trying to ram this down our throat have their own agenda, a population control agenda, ( http://biblesearchers.com/catastrophes/t... ) a Satanic agenda, that is very transparent once you know 'the rest of the story'.
At least the Republicans are being realistic. Other countries didn't even abide by the last agreement that the US didn't bother to sign -- I'm looking at you Kyoto.
Ude,
Cap and trade is a stupid, utterly stupid idea. If your goal is to disrupt global trade and increase poverty and unemployment then by all means go ahead. Democrats in Congress are rushing into disastrous policies because partisanship, populism and demagoguery are taken more seriously than science and economics.
Oh look! More "green jobs" baloney from a "progressive state":
"Little more than a year after cutting the ribbon at a new factory in Devens built with more than $58 million in state aid, Evergreen Solar said yesterday that it will shift its assembly of solar panels from there to China."
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/ar... 009/11/05/evergreen_shifts_work_to_china/
This is how well this stupid bill will work.
JLB,
I wouldn't say Americans are smarter than Europeans. At least not by any measures on international tests. The Europeans tend to outscore us. However, they do spend far less on education, often allow kids to go to any public school and in some countries, including Ude's "country", the government pays for kids to go to private schools.
That said, their economies are more restricted; meaning that even if they were more intelligent they can't do much with that intelligence. As a sad state of affairs in Europe, especially France, unemployment among the young is in double digits. Unemployment among minorities from north Africa is much higher and has grown to as much as 50% in the not to distant past.
Our free economy allows more room for success, innovation and entrepreneurialism -- for anyone, not just the "natives" (with a caveat, our public education system does not tend to help low-income and minorities, thus they are often left behind). Their economy makes people dependent on the government. People in America are far less dependent on the government -- in fact our welfare system is now better equipped to ensure that people don't remain dependent on the government. We also tend to have 30% more wealth than the average European.
The European people aren't dumb, its just they created a government framework that responds rapidly to the latest populist fad -- some of these fads are stupid and most of them never go away no matter how poorly they perform.
Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."
In other words, Al Gore has paid off a bunch of "on the take" scientists to "sign on" with his "theory" and to rig computer models to show that CO2 somehow causes global warming, WITHOUT ANY PROOF, and despite real science which points the finger to global warming and cooling at the SUN, who would have thunk it! The LV Sun is the cause of global warming, not Al Gore!
I see a great deal of criticism here, but no addressing of the actual problem. It is a scientific fact that the earth's ice caps and glaciers are all shrinking. This applies to the North and South Pole and extends all the way to Mt. Kilimanjaro. Instead of a petty spitting (used in place of a more appropriate word) contest: Why are we not working together to anticipate and cope with the challenges?
jlb101.
How silly of me, of course the Americans are far more intelligent than the Europeans, thats why the US is in such a very very deep hole of S##t, and doing its very best to drag the rest of the world with it, but it wont happen this time round.
And to you Patrick.
Cap and Trade, do you really know what it means or are you as always babbling about things you know nothing of, you havent been taking your tablets, have you??
To comment more on how things are in the USA, with soup kitchens, food stamps, and churches working around the clock to feed the hungry and homeless, this reads more like a report from some 3rd world country in poorest Africa
Sergio,
It is true what you say about the sun for being responsible for climate change in the past, and its true it will be the same this time around.
There is one difference this time. We all know how the Arctic summer ice melts away, thereby the sun which shine 24/7 up there warms the Arctic ocean more and more for every year, so that by 2013 the whole of the Arctic could be icefree during the summer months. The temperature change in these regions is the most worrying, already +6 more than average, and by 2020 it could be as much as +25 above average. Winters then would be extremelt show, the Greenland icecap would enter a melt period unlike what is happening today, when the ice cap is loosing 6 trillion tons of ice every year, just so you know what that is, its enough to cover the state of Nevada completely with 200 feet thick ice, every year
I was very happy to see this editorial from the Sun. The science is squarely behind the need for climate change legislation, and I think every congressperson should recognize that. We cannot have a measure that does not put a market-based price on carbon. We should harness the power of market efficiency with a carbon cap, and grow our green energy sector to create more jobs.
Senator Harry Reid and Senator John Ensign, please support the climate change legislation in the US Senate!