As the government seeks to impose magical mandates to reduce carbon emissions, the mechanism by which to do so is being blithely ignored: a concomitant reduction of individual liberty.
David Karki of the North Star Writers’ Group had a very revealing opinion piece on this matter, in which the absurdity of this sort of mandate is fully revealed:
“Sadly, it seems everyone inside the Beltway has gotten knee-walking drunk from the green Kool-Aid chug-a-lug. Even President Bush has come out with a bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, if only to stave off a far worse bill authored by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner.
“Never mind that they haven’t the slightest idea how to make their absurd requirements become reality. Apparently, they’ll just wave the magic wand of government, and poof! We’ll just not emit carbon without any reduction in living standards. This is breathtaking hubris, even by the pathetically low standard of U.S. senators.
“The only way to get where they would force us to go is to simply deny energy to the citizenry. Sen. Barack Obama has already indicated as much in a recent primary debate, saying that the only way to lower prices is to lower demand. In other words, he’ll be a Seinfeldian Energy Nazi: ‘No energy for you!’”
Ironically the problem is not that we have too much energy output, it is that we do not have too little. Continues Karki:
“[W]e have supplies so short and refinery infrastructure so crimped that even worthless environmental regulations requiring winter and summer boutique gasoline blends – which force refineries offline each spring to change over – are enough to cause price spikes. And we have outright bans on any new refinery or nuclear power plant construction, so aging older (and dirtier by comparison) coal-fired plants have to keep running. This in a nation that will add another 63 million people worth of energy demand by 2030, and a world where 2.4 billion Chinese and Indians want to stay warm in the winter and drive cars just as much as anyone.”
In other words, the government needs to lift restrictions on producing and delivering energy, not create more road blocks that will invariably prevent us from getting to work.
There is no magical solution to the energy crisis, and artificially restricting energy output in our nation will only be tantamount to economic – and individual – suicide.
ALG Prediction: Legislation to reduce carbon emissions is wholly unenforceable, because to regulate those emissions is to attempt to regulate – and slow – the growth of our economy. At this critical moment, the U.S. needs to be considering how to increase its output in order to get prices down and prevent shortages. Instead, Big Government wants to artificially create shortages at the expense of individual liberty.
