Last night Barack Obama told his supporters that he won the Democratic nomination for president ”because you decided that change must come to Washington.” If Obama’s plan to address global warming is anything like the Lieberman-Warner bill being debated by the Senate (and it is), then he will have completely failed. In order to forge a coalition beyond hardcore environmental activists, any carbon-capping legislation will have to resort to the exact same classic, Washington vote-buying being deployed by liberals in Congress. At the core of Lieberman-Warner’s corruption is the trillions of dollars …
The proposed global warming bill, the America’s Climate Security Act (S. 3036), would cost trillions of dollars and impose significant job losses and energy price increases, according to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation. But is it worth it in terms of global warming damage prevented? Not even close. Even if one assumes the worst of global warming, this bill would hardly make a dent in the earth’s future temperature. According to Pat Michaels, climatologist and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, the impact would be minimal. …
Even under very conservative assumptions, Lieberman-Warner will cost the US economy 500,000 jobs by 2030. Traditionally union heavy sectors like manufacturing and energy production are the hardest hit. So how did environmental activists get unions like the United Association of Journeymen of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry to support carbon capping? The answer hearkens back to the world’s oldest profession: cold hard cash. Unions are signing on the the Lieberman-Warner bill because it is the largest tax increase in the history of mankind and liberals in Congress can’t wait to …
Michigan is the fourth state we’ve highlighted in our “Lieberman-Warner State of the Day” series, yet we have so far failed to mention that the job loss numbers assigned to each state are conservative estimates of the costs of carbon cap legislation. Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis forecast assumes that the bill works perfectly … exactly as Congress hopes. This includes the development of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. If CCS is not commercially viable within 10 years, the job losses in each state will be much much higher.
Any honest economist will tell you the Lieberman-Warner carbon cap bill being debated in the Senate this week is a massive energy tax that every government agency that has studied the issue says will drive up the cost of energy — hurting American consumers who already are feeling the pain of $4 a gallon gasoline. And any honest scientist will tell you that unless India and China vastly cut back on their own carbon emissions, Lieberman-Warner will do nothing to slow global warming. So how do liberals defend this all-pain-and-no-gain …
The Bush Administration may have struck out on their decision to list the polar bear as “threatened” pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. But they hit a home run with their promise to veto what ever carbon cap bill comes out of the Senate’s debate on the Lieberman-Warner legislation. Heritage scholar Ben Lieberman summarizes the White House’s statement: Not only did the White House threaten to veto this economy-damaging bill, but it spelled out all the right considerations that should remain central to any future debate over climate change. Economic …
Cheerleading for the Lieberman-Warner carbon cap plan being debated in the Senate as we type, the Washington Post editorializes: “The foundation of the legislation is a cap-and-trade system that would put a price on carbon by having a declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions permitted for each year between 2012 and 2050. Emission permits could be bought and sold; this would promote increasing energy efficiency with a minimum of government prescription.” If the Washington Post thinks carbon caps are “a minimum of government prescription,” they’ve been in Washington too long. …
A big reason why the otherwise very liberal Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has not endorsed Lieberman-Warner is because of the huge hit Ohio’s economy will take. The massive energy tax at the core of the bill will cost OH more than 21,000 jobs by 2025. Here is where the losses will come from by congressional district:
Environmentalists and their allies in Congress are already conceding defeat on the Lieberman-Warner global warming legislation that will be debated this week in the Senate. The Washington Post reports that “even supporters of the complex, extensively negotiated 494-page bill say that there is little chance that it will win Senate approval.” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) told the Post: “In some ways, this is a dress rehearsal for next year.” Dorgan is correct. Because all three remaining presidential candidates support plans similar to Lieberman-Warner, this issue will be back in 2009. …
Smaller states like Montana are often the hardest ones hit by the Lieberman-Warner global warming legislation. With a population under 1 million, and a work force hovering around 500,000, Montana is expected to lose almost 2,000 jobs in 2025 if Lieberman-Warner becomes law.
