“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”—Thomas Paine
Armed with the weapon of reason, Americans who think energy already costs enough appear to have won a battle against the contagion of Global Warming paranoia currently sweeping the nation (and our politicians). Last Friday, senators opposed to the bill managed to muster up enough votes to effectively stop the Lieberman-Warner bill, also known as the cap-and-trade bill, from being passed through Congress.
The legislation, which Majority Leader Harry Reid promptly yanked from the floor of the Senate after Democrats failed to garner 60 votes required to end the Republican filibuster, would have certainly impacted the climate—but we’re not talking about polar bears, greenhouse gases, or ice caps.
Rather, the climate that would have been directly affected by the bill is the economic climate of the United States and the rest of the global market. To further add to the already ridiculous nature of the proposal, the legislation would not even do much for the environment. The Heritage Foundation sums up the troubling absurdity of this dilemma:
“Every credible institution that examined carbon-capping policies concluded it would harm the U.S. economy. On the other hand, claims by environmental activists that global warming will damage the economy have been discredited. But even if global warming were a threat to our economy, carbon capping would do nothing to solve the problem. If the U.S. met the Lieberman-Warner goals, it would result in just 0.013 degrees Celsius of ‘prevented’ warming by 2050 [emphasis added].”
As ALG News reported to you last Monday, had the Lieberman-Warner bill been passed, it would have triggered a disaster on a far greater scale than any supposedly man-made Global Warming catastrophe could ever hope to induce. The proverbial battle has been won.
The war, however, is far from decided.
The Democrats in Congress, after promptly accepting the defeat of their beloved and misguided Earth-“saving” bill, have already vowed to return a year from now and take a second, and perhaps much more successful, stab at the legislation.
As the Associated Press article “Climate Bill Blocked” points out:
“‘It’s just the beginning for us,’ proclaimed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of the bill, noting that 54 senators had expressed support of the legislation, although that’s still short of what would be needed to overcome concerted GOP opposition. ‘It’s clear a majority of Congress wants to act.’”
This should be of great concern to anyone who values both reason and the economy. Consider the political climate brewing for 2009. The man occupying the White House this time next year, regardless of the party to which he belongs, will be much friendlier towards the legislation. Presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama have both voiced their support for the policy, whereas President Bush promised to veto the bill had it been passed.
Likewise, Congress is poised to swing even more liberal that it already is. The probability of Democrats gaining a significant number of seats in both the House and Senate is disturbingly high. The hard truth is that Republicans may simply lose the numbers game when this ugly bill resurfaces.
Although the issue is done for the day, the Democrats and liberal Republicans in the Senate are only biding their time until the climate (pun intended) is better for their offensive against reason.
ALG Forecast: Dark clouds gathering over Washington—and the nation—in 2009 as Congress readdresses the issue of cap-and-trade. While the 36 Senators who voted against invoking cloture, including 2 Democrats, deserve a lot of credit, clearly they still have a lot of work to do next year to stop this economy-killing legislation.
