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The Nation's Pulse
Religious Blessings for Cap and Trade
When the Religious Left testifies about global warming, even sympathetic congressmen don’t much care to listen.
Global Warming alarmists, especially on the Religious Left, love to cite the purported impact of catastrophic climate change on the poor. In the favored apocalyptic scenario, rabid heat waves will scorch the crops, evaporate the water, and fan the diseases prevalent among the Global South’s impoverished millions. Selfish consumers in the industrialized West must drastically reduce their consumption or, literally, millions will die.
Early in March, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce convened hearings on “Consumer Protection Provisions in Climate Legislation.” A spokesman for the National Council of Churches tried to steer the committee away from the impact of mandatory carbon reduction on consumers and instead on the supposed “devastating impact of inaction.”
“Rising sea levels, more intense storms, floods, droughts, and spreading disease vectors affect those living in poverty, communities of color and other vulnerable communities first and hardest,” warned John Hill of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. “The Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2004 demonstrated all too painfully the devastating consequences that occur when storms of nature interact with the storms of poverty and racism that batter communities in the United States and around the world.”
Hill cited the feared impact of “inaction” about Global Warming on “brothers and sisters in Africa,” such as a Ugandan farmer friend, who claimed to him that her growing seasons are shifting because of climate change. “For most of us, if the rains fall a few weeks late there is little impact on our lives,” Hill bemoaned. “For Rosemary, that shift means crop failure and famine.” He emphasized that the National Council of Churches supports “mandatory emissions reduction targets in order to prevent catastrophic impacts for the people and planet we are called to serve.”
Unmentioned by Hill or most Global Warming activists who claim to defend the Global South is the further impoverishing of already poor nations if climate alarmism compels foreswearing economic growth and its inevitable carbon emissions. Hill’s “brothers and sisters” in Africa can have no hope of refrigeration, electric lighting, air conditioning, or heat not generated by burning wood or cow dung under the scenarios that Global Warming activists insist are necessary to “save” the planet.
Hill eventually acknowledged the congressional hearing’s focus, which was the impact of a potential federal emissions trade and cap plan on American consumers. He suggested saving American families from being pushed “deeper into poverty due to higher energy-related costs” by offering an “electronic benefits transfer card and an expanded earned income tax credit” to offset increased energy prices that carbon caps would necessitate. He emphasized government subsidies for low income consumers without recognizing the economic impact of higher energy costs on middle and high income Americans.
Apparently none of the listening congressmen had any questions for Hill after his testimony. They were much more interested in Steven Hayward from the American Enterprise Institute, who pointed out that proposals to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 would involve returning to levels of usage not seen since about 1875. He also noted that estimates about the potential cost of emissions trading range from about $600 to $1,500 per American household. Hayward warned that rebate programs to compensate consumers for their increased energy costs would lead to an “income transfer from high energy using states to low energy using states, and especially from high carbon energy states to low carbon energy states.”
States that already rely on hydro and nuclear power would probably not suffer higher electricity costs under mandatory emissions trading, Hayward pointed out. Meanwhile, states that rely heavily on coal would pay much higher costs under a cap and trade regime. A simple rebate scheme would result in massive income transfers from high coal using states, like Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, to low coal using states like California, Oregon or New Jersey. The low coal using states already tend to be higher income states, who would potentially be further subsidized by lower income states. Efforts to ameliorate these disparities will result in additional bureaucracy and may ultimately stifle the “capital formation necessary for technology upgrades,” Hayward warned. “If our goal is to replace fossil fuel energy rapidly,” he concluded, “emissions trading with equity protection may not deliver satisfactory results.”
A representative from one of those coal reliant states was more blunt. Michael Carey of the Ohio Coal Association told the committee that coal fuels 50 percent of America’s electricity, 90 percent in Ohio. By 2025, America’s electricity needs will increase by 40 percent. “Some climate change legislative proposals would force us to limit the use of coal and yet, there is no source of power that can replace coal at the same cost,” Carey said. “The same groups who oppose the use of coal also oppose the use of nuclear power.” Natural gas is three times as expensive as coal. And renewable energy has “limited capability and high costs.” He closed: “This is a human issue as well as an environmental one.”
Despite ostensible concerns about the poor, Religious Left protestations about Global Warming almost always prioritize environmental concerns over human ones. Claims that human activity will warm the planet to apocalyptic levels almost always demand reductions in human consumption that would keep poor people poor and reduce living standards for the non-poor. This potential vast erasure of human wealth is itself a moral and religious issue that groups like the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Board of Church and Society would prefer not to address.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (40) | Leave a comment
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David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 7:03AM
Mark Tooley demonstrates that faith in a book filled with lies, myths and absurdities combined with blind faith in capitalism leads to some really bizarre ideas.
What does your Bible say about wealth, Mr. Tooley?
What does your Bible say about humankind
s future?
God isn't at all optimistic about humankind's future: "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth ... " (Revelation 8:13).
Yes, this is the same god who threatened to drive the Homo sapiens extinct (Genesis 6:7):
"The Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land ... for I am sorry that I made them."
Of course, given God's many mistakes and silliness throughout the Bible it is easy to understand that God even messed this task up. God saved Noah and since then humans have behaved foolishly and destructively and violently.
So the first destruction of humankind didn't get the job done. What this means is that a second destruction of humankind is coming. Ask any fundamentalist.
The United States of America is already a zombie nation. Those who worry about economic growth and the "need" for increased coal consumption in 2025 and 2050 are fools. The United States of America isn't going to exist in 2025 or 2050.
Those hypocritical mammon-loving Christians who care more about their own wealth than the survival of impoverished people in Africa (who, incidentally, will not ever have electrical appliances) should begin worrying about the survival of their own grandchildren.
Why should they worry? Because their grandchildren aren't going to survive. After the United States of America collapses the American people are going to become as impoverished and deprived as the people of Africa are right now.
You people are going to lose everything and it is very likely that many of you will not survive.
JP| 4.1.09 @ 7:40AM
"You people are going to lose everything and it is very likely that many of you will not survive. "
Thus saith the Prophet from Flickr Dave Mathews....Now David, please turn off your iMac, leave your mother's basement, and return to the desert from whence you came.
A Balrog of Morgoth| 4.1.09 @ 7:49AM
The article: The author's opinion, presented cogently.
The first comment on the article: Gibberish, presented incoherently.
I hesitate to even call the commentor a troll-I would be giving him too much credit.
stu.b.con| 4.1.09 @ 7:52AM
What a shock! Davey boy once again with his drooling drivel. Zip up your knickers and quit soiling yourself...
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 7:55AM
Hello JP,
* "Thus saith the Prophet from Flickr Dave Mathews....Now David, please turn off your iMac, leave your mother's basement, and return to the desert from whence you came. "
blah blah blah ... the conservative party is as Biblically illiterate as it is scientifically illiterate.
Have you people even read the Bible?
If you did you would know that God isn't at all optimistic about humankind's future. To extinction you go.
A Balrog of Morgoth| 4.1.09 @ 8:16AM
Walks away, shaking his head.
Stephen Brink| 4.1.09 @ 8:16AM
Hey Dave - ever *finish* reading the Bible? It doesn't say extinction. It says many will die, but in the end that Jesus will reign with those who not just said they believed but lived like it.
Oh wait, that's in the Book of Revelation, at the end. I guess you just stopped reading where it suited your (moronic) purposes.
Speaking of finishing, mommy needs you to dry the dishes. Using a dishwasher to dry them is not ecologically friendly.
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 8:30AM
Hello Stephen,
* "Hey Dave - ever *finish* reading the Bible? It doesn't say extinction. It says many will die, but in the end that Jesus will reign with those who not just said they believed but lived like it. "
Yeah, you are right, Stephen ... the Bible is pure bunk. The people who wrote the Bible believed a lot of absurd things such as Jesus returning and giving good little Christians eternal life in Hell and eternal torment for everyone else.
* "Oh wait, that's in the Book of Revelation, at the end. I guess you just stopped reading where it suited your (moronic) purposes. "
The book of Revelation has driven plenty of generations of Christians insane because of the books many absurdities and contradictions. I discourage people from taking that book seriously.
stu.b.con| 4.1.09 @ 9:32AM
I discourage people from taking anything l'il davey says or writes seriosuly. Seriously
Stephen Brink| 4.1.09 @ 9:56AM
I'm sorry I got sucked in by the troll.
Besides, it's hard to take some of these ministries seriously when you see the pastors driving fancy cars.
I wonder how many of them showed up in black-paint limos?
Just more liberal hypocrisy - "we have to help the poor in Africa, but don't expect me to donate my time or money - the government should take everybody else's money and do it".
Save the world - ignore a liberal.
Skep41 | 4.1.09 @ 10:52AM
The reward for the faith of these pastors is a reduction in the tax deductability of donations to churches by the Christian-phobes in the Obamunist administration. Other measures to curb excessive Christianity will follow. These left-wing churches serve the same function that the 'official' churches in other one-party socialist democracies like East Germany and the Soviet Union served; lapdogs and spies for the state. The hilarious thing is that the atheists they suck up to have such a loathing for their boring reformulations of Christian doctrine and lump them in with the 'excess population' who are creating Global Warming.
Bill| 4.1.09 @ 11:20AM
DM.... man in his own wisdom becomes a fool... now where is that found?
Seems to fit your perspective on the issues and on life.
Did you get a job yet or is mother still dong your laundry and cooking your meals?
larrydalooza| 4.1.09 @ 11:30AM
Thank AGW we have a real religion now. AGW bless you all. It would be a AGW damn shame to see the world turn to ash. Oh my AGW, that would suck.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 11:38AM
Mark Tooley is one of the great voices in the United Methodist Church, a voice of sanity in a denomination that is declining because of its pursuit of the fashionable over the eternal. His opposition to the AGW hysteria is a greater defense of the poor in this country and in the Third World than all the blather of the liberal pastors, whose concern for the poor has taken forms that guarantees that they will stay poor and thus be an object of charity for eternity. Pursuit of the AGW chimera will erase more wealth than a major war would, and the liberal religious leaders are cheering on the warhawks.
The secularists who loathe religion must be delighted to have religious stooges to echo their foolishness.
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 12:18PM
Hello Stephen Brink,
* "Just more liberal hypocrisy - "we have to help the poor in Africa, but don't expect me to donate my time or money - the government should take everybody else's money and do it".
Boo hoo hoo ... the conservatives are bitter losers, aren't they?
Instead of worrying so much about Africa (since you people are incapable of caring about the fate of nonwhite non-oil-owning people) you should worry about your own self.
The world which is ending is your own. The nation which is dying is your own. The empire which is crumbing is your own. The life that you are going to lose is your own.
When this civilization dies you will have nothing and no one is going to help you ... you will be treated with the same sort of disdain as you have for the dying people of Africa.
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 12:20PM
Hello Larry,
* "Thank AGW we have a real religion now. AGW bless you all. It would be a AGW damn shame to see the world turn to ash. Oh my AGW, that would suck. "
Incoherent conservative idiocy at its finest!
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 12:22PM
Hello Big Leo,
* "His opposition to the AGW hysteria is a greater defense of the poor in this country and in the Third World than all the blather of the liberal pastors, whose concern for the poor has taken forms that guarantees that they will stay poor and thus be an object of charity for eternity. Pursuit of the AGW chimera will erase more wealth than a major war would, and the liberal religious leaders are cheering on the warhawks. "
It is unfortunate that your science education ended back in the 1960's and that your Talk Radio "education" never ended.
You know ... you might come across as an uneducated scientifically illiterate talk radio drone if you keep on talking in this manner.
Marc Jeric| 4.1.09 @ 12:27PM
Here is our looney David Mathews spewing his invective all over! I see that the 1960's radicals have invaded not just our universities but also certain marxist "churches" and are now flooding us normal people with their stinking effluvia.
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 12:29PM
Hello Marc Jeric,
* "Here is our looney David Mathews spewing his invective all over! I see that the 1960's radicals have invaded not just our universities but also certain marxist "churches" and are now flooding us normal people with their stinking effluvia. "
Conservatives are such unhappy losers, aren't they?
The world has passed you by and all you have left is your own anger and irrelevance. Keep on crying, conservatives! There is no sound more beautiful than that of bitter conservative weeping.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 12:50PM
Marc,
Your remark about Marxist churches is on the mark. I have been a member and active participant in the United Methodist Church for fifty years, and have spent the whole time fighting against exactly that line of thinking. During this time, I have seen the UMC decline while churches that promote traditional Christian values grow. And there is always some 'idealist' talking about how the moderates and conservatives are dying out when it is they who are going into the ash bin of history.
The UMC established an African University and located it in Zimbabwe, because they were starstruck over the inspired socialist leadership of Robert Mugabe. Tasty choice. At every turn, the leadership has betrayed the people in the pews, and now there are less and less people in the pews every year. I'm staying to call them out on their errors like Jeremiah. Mark Tooley is another UMC leader who does the same thing. And perhaps, we may even win.
David Mathews | 4.1.09 @ 12:58PM
Hello Big Leo,
* "I have been a member and active participant in the United Methodist Church for fifty years, and have spent the whole time fighting against exactly that line of thinking. "
Oh ... you are a Christian fundamentalist ... who could have guessed?
* "I'm staying to call them out on their errors like Jeremiah. Mark Tooley is another UMC leader who does the same thing. And perhaps, we may even win. "
And you might even spend eternity in a mansion up there in Heaven with Sarah Palin, too!
Joe| 4.1.09 @ 1:51PM
The Dave Matthews luncy continues. Ignore the idiot and he will flee. Just don't response. He will get bored and run to another site and bore them for a while.
King David | 4.1.09 @ 1:56PM
Proverbs says to rebuke a fool invites hurt and that a wise man appreciates rebuke and tries to learn. So I'm trying very hard to learn from David Mathews when he tells me I'm a sore loser and a crybaby. Keep up the rebukes Mr. Mathews, they are helpful.
BTW, the article is enlightening.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 2:05PM
I like bitter invective and character assassination as much as the next guy, but can't we get someone to give us a cleverer and more entertaining raving?
Dustoff| 4.1.09 @ 4:12PM
Here it is April first and it's still snowing in Seattle... Were still waiting for that warming.
LOL
Jeff| 4.1.09 @ 8:55PM
David Matthews...
"Those hypocritical mammon-loving Christians who care more about their own wealth than the survival of impoverished people in Africa (who, incidentally, will not ever have electrical appliances) ..."
Those impoverished people live in socialist countries, DM. As long as they live in those systems, you will, sadly, be right. They will not only not have electrical appliances, they won't have much else either. As the population of North Korea could attest. Envy is a bad thing, and you need to get a grip. You believe in providing poverty to all and feeling good about yourself as a result. Somebody made the computer you are writing on. Hint: it wasn't a socialist. And if you hate the products produced by capitalists so much...why are you using them?
Gerry| 4.3.09 @ 1:37AM
Dave helps his cause (whatever that might be) by insulting Christians and telling us our faith is false. And in the process, he is saving the poor in Africa from...something or other. Keep up the good work Dave. Twerp.
Hwy11| 4.4.09 @ 9:06AM
Ever sit back and observe how the left wants to force feed everyone their top quasi-religions (Warming, abortion, Big Govt/HighTax, Obamaism, Unions) .......but wants to remove actual religions from the scene, as well as remove the rights quasi religons (Gun rights, free speech, ) that just happen to be outlined in the Bill of Rights.......
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