Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research — untainted and reliable — to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.
Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.
But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.
Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.
Well, yes… that’s true. And apparently it’s an idea that it catching on among Democrats, here at home. Boortz, the other day: [2]
Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is the chairman of the House global warming panel. Next week he is going to introduce a bill that would cut emissions by 85% from 2005 levels. This exceeds any reduction in bills currently before the Senate. Markey’s bill would cut emissions by 85% by 2050. He says that his bill would generate $8 trillion by auctioning off emissions allowances to polluters.
So .. what do we have here? An attempt to help our environment or a scheme to seize more wealth from American taxpayers? Yeah .. like that’s a hard one to figure out.
Under Markey’s scheme the government would collect money from businesses that pay for their emissions allowances. Then the government turns around and spends the money on new technologies like carbon capture and storage, retraining workers in “green-collar jobs” and helping people reduce their energy costs. “Helping people reduce costs” … is that supposed to indicate more entitlement programs for the poor, poor pitiful poor who, we are told, just can’t afford the costs of energy?
Cutting emissions seems like a laudable goal, but the fact is that Markey’s bill is a solution looking for a problem, given that in the EPA’s words [3]
By virtually any measure, the air we breathe in the United States is cleaner today than at any time since we started monitoring air quality back in 1970.
….
In 2003, PM2.5 concentrations were the lowest they have been since nationwide monitoring began in 1999.In 2003, concentrations of a related pollutant known as PM10 (10 micrometers) were the second lowest since nationwide monitoring began in 1988.
Significantly, we have seen the biggest improvements in regions with the worst air quality problems. Between 1999 and 2003, PM2.5 levels dropped 20 percent in the Southeast, 16 percent in southern California, and 9 percent in the industrial Midwest.
So what is the great need driving this effort then, if not the stated?
Boortz nailed it, above:
So .. what do we have here? An attempt to help our environment or a scheme to seize more wealth from American taxpayers? Yeah .. like that’s a hard one to figure out.
This is not about ‘global warming’ this is about growing government.
Again.