This past week Democrats presented a bill before congress called the ‘cap and trade’ bill. It was a remarkable piece of legislative skullduggery. The premise of the bill was to stop man-made global warming by ruining the U.S. economy and altering our entire way of life. The stated intent was to stop any increases in CO2 emissions from factories and automobiles (the cap), and then allow ‘clean’ industries to sell their unused government quotas of carbon emissions to ‘dirty’ industries (the trade). The idea is that clean industries – read that green industries – would prosper while ‘dirty’ industries such as power plants, factories, refineries and mines would be severely penalized for screwing up the environment. Big brother government would set quotas on how much CO2 each company could sell or expel. By 2012, a reduction of two percent in emissions would be required from each company each year.
The bill would have put another 57 cent federal tax on a gallon of gas. It would also cost trillions of dollars through lost production, business closures, major industrial overhauls, fines, new taxes, enforcement measures, layoffs, unemployment and higher prices for everything.
And guess who would pay for it?
John McCain said he couldn’t support the bill this time because it didn’t have any provisions for nuclear power. I suppose that means he supports the rest of it. And he’s the Republican candidate for president. Leapin’ lizards, with this kind of bi-partisan collaboration we are doomed as an industrial power and a great nation.
The people who want to inflict this stuff on us might be well intentioned, but they are hopelessly misguided. We can’t solve a global problem (if there really is one) by forcing draconian legislation on one nation, especially while the rest of the world is in the throes of an industrial revolution. Russia and China are building power plants, factories and oil refineries like crazy. Better buy a Russo/Chinese dictionary if you want to do business in the future.
Another bad thing about this type of legislation is that it doesn’t affect everyone the same. Some of us will make much bigger sacrifices in our way of life than others. In the rural west we don’t have mass transit to get to the shopping mall or to work. We’ve got to pay whatever it takes to commute to the store and a job. And it’s our kind of jobs, mining, milling, power generation, etc., that will be most heavily impacted by green legislation. Rural people will pay a much higher price than city folks.
I was cussing about all of this when Uncle Spud suggested that if I didn’t like it, maybe I should write my own global warming bill. So after talking it over, here are some of the things we came up with. Our bill makes more sense than the one that went before congress. Global warming activists should be happy to embrace these measures.
•No family or individual shall be allowed to own more than one house.
•No single-family dwelling shall be allowed to have more than 2500 square feet of floor space.
•No house shall be allowed to have a lighted tennis court or a heated swimming pool.
•The use and ownership of private airplanes shall be prohibited.
•Electricity will be rationed by household. A family of four can use four times more electricity than a single adult.
•Since they are vital commodities, the price of gasoline and electricity will be pro-rated to a person’s ability to pay. That means people like Diane Feinstein, who sponsored the cap and trade bill and is worth a hundred million dollars, will be charged $10,000 for a gallon of regular unleaded, just to make things fair and be sure we all share the burden equally.
Thank goodness the cap and trade bill was defeated this time around, but the libs will surely dust it off and try again real soon. Protecting Mother Earth and fixing global warming has become a religious crusade for the far left. Besides, Al Gore and his buddies own lots of stock in the green companies that expect to sell carbon credits to the bad companies. We’ve talked about that before.
Green is more than a crusade; it’s the color of money and bull s—.
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