The Environmental Spectator
Of Two Minds About Cap and Trade
Montana’s governor was for the national energy tax before he was against it.
(Page 2 of 2)
This was only three months after WCI produced its design recommendations for a cap-and-trade agreement among its members, including Montana. The plan provided for emissions allowances, carbon offsets, and auctioning permits — all vital elements for such a system. According to WCI’s website, the member governors announced they “have designed a pioneering stand-alone regional cap-and-trade program that will immediately begin to address climate change in the absence of broader national or international standards.”
In February this year Schweitzer and his WCI partners released their work plan for the next two years. “Over the past few months as we have seen the world economy falter, questions have been raised as to whether this is the right time to be moving forward with a cap-and-trade program,” they said. “We believe that it is important to move forward with the cap-and-trade program, while acknowledging the need for flexibility in the short term due to the current economic situation.”
And then last month the Montanan who promotes himself as moderate — now chairman of WGA — vigorously defended WGA’s oversight of WCI. The National Taxpayers Union had challenged Schweitzer and his gubernatorial colleagues to provide an accounting of its work and demonstrate that all WGA’s members approved participation in WCI, as its rules require.
Considering that Schweitzer has poured so much passion into Montana’s participation and development of a cap-and-trade program, why shouldn’t Maher (and the rest of us) be confused?
Meanwhile the Democrats still adhere to global warming as a signature issue, with cap-and-trade as their definitive means to solve the “problem.” With 18 incumbent governors facing potential re-election in 2010 (not to mention two this year), it might not be the best time for the flip-flopping Schweitzer to be out front of the their Governors Association as promoter and fundraiser.
About the Author
Paul Chesser is executive director for the American Tradition Institute and a senior fellow for the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives. The views he expresses do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.
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Jim O'Brien| 8.3.09 @ 6:57AM
The depth of ignorance about this is astonishing. Ask almost anyone if he thinks "greenhouse gases" are bad, and he will respond with a knee-jerk "Yes". But in fact, greenhouse gases are essential to maintain the earth at its current temperature, warm enough for life as we know it. Most people don't even realize that a major greenhouse gas is water vapor. And most don't realize that CO2 is only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts - currently about 380 parts per million. The earth has gone through periods of warming and cooling for millions of years, before homo sapiens arrived, and long before cars and factories. Changes in cycles of the sun and the earth's orbit are the keys.
Yet Obama and his Socialist Party are willing to further wreck the economy based on pseudo-science. If Obama's Cap & Trade taxes are enacted, more businesses will leave and take millions of jobs with them. The average consumer will see his electric bill skyrocket. Cap & Trade, along with Obama's decision to let the Bush tax cuts expire, will result in a depression.
owyheewine| 8.3.09 @ 10:43AM
Schweitzer is the best used car salesman on the block. He'll tell you what you want to hear and convince you that he fervently believes what he says. A couple of years ago he was vigorously promoting coal gasification as the secret of secure energy. Montana is a very large producer of coal. The CO2 could be sequestered for only a few trillion dollars. Now lots of traditional natural gas is being discovered and produced in the whole Rocky Mountain area. Someone obviously took the Guv aside and explained to him the economics of Montana energy production.
Michael Tomlinson| 8.3.09 @ 12:42PM
"Flip-flopping Schweitzer" is a Democrat so being hypocritical and disingenuous is congenital. Anyone who trusts a Democrat deserves to be disappointed and confused.
To the paranoid and moronic Obama-like anti-Semite kiss my Israeli loving buttocks.
Marc Jeric| 8.3.09 @ 3:05PM
1) There was first in the 1970's the global cooling scam (see e.g. Newsweek April 28 1975 on the Internet); the government-paid scientists (90% of them are rejects of private enterprise) recommended to fight the new ice age by sending our war planes to cover the polar ice with soot in order to increase solar heat and so prevent crushing of New York skyscrapers by the new glaciers;
2) When that did not work we had the global warming hoax in the 1990's, proclaimed by mainly the same government-paid scientists (Dr. Hansen of the NOAA, for example); to prevent the massive heating, fires, flooding of coastal cities, disappearance of Florida, California, and Caribbean islands, massive hurricanes, global famine, and other catastrophic events we should nationalize oil and gas and coal and electricity companies;
3) after 11 years of considerable cooling we are now faced with the climate change flimflam where whatever happens with our climate we should nationalize oil and gas and coal and electricity companies; and why not our banks, car and insurance companies while we are at it. To prevent this catastrophe the best vehicle presumably is international agreements enforced by the United Nations world government.
As for the influence of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas: on a normal day the atmosphere contains 10,000 ppm (parts per million) of water vapor and about 300 ppm of carbon dioxide. The government-paid scientists say that an increase of 100 ppm of CO2 over the next 50 years will result in a catastrophic warming. The thermal absorptivity of water vapor is 4 times larger than that of carbon dioxide; it follows that the CO2 increase will increase the overall thermal absorptivity of the mixture by about 1/4 of one percent. The production of methane from livestock flatulence and the rotting swamps (called "wetlands" by the environmentalists) vastly surpasses the influence of human-produced CO2.
There is the Global Warming Petition Project (see Internet) where 31,478 US independent scientists declared that there is no anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming; of these 9,029 are scientists with PhD degrees. Our environmentalists tried to sabotage this effort by submiiting phony names with phoney degrees - and then claimed the whole effort by the Petition scientists was a fraud. It took us 3 years and a lot of private money to verify the credentials of all the signatories and clean up the Petition of those saboteurs. See also Manhattan Declaration with more such signatories, plus a large number of scientific groups from other countries who state the same.
I am one of these signatories, MS and PhD degrees from UCLA, with majors in thermodynamics and heat & mass transfer.
I think to fight this communist attempt to secure a permanent hold on power should not be fought on the narrow grounds of more taxes - that is the losing proposition; where about 50% of the population is on some kind of welfare we will always be outvoted. The battle should be fought and won on the firm scientific basis.
SCAM - HOAX - FLIMFLAM!!!
cnc| 8.3.09 @ 4:23PM
The whole problem could rapidly become moot. A company named General Fusion is getting some good press in the technical journals about a new method of nuclear fusion. If it works, still a big if but there are no apparent defects in the physics, it will do more to defang russia and cripple the middle east trouble makers than any political policy has.
jr| 8.3.09 @ 4:36PM
Yes there will be a health care program and cap and trade program in order for the socialists and communists to achieve their goals of free everything for the peasantry. There was never any doubt after "I won" was elected and the media fell at his feet.
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