First Obamacare, Now Obamagreen
November 21, 2012 by John Myers
Over the next four years, President Barack Obama will try to implement more sweeping changes in America, this time under the pretense of saving the Earth.
In 2009, the President slammed Obamacare down America’s throat. In 2013, it will be Obamagreen — with all the pitfalls of higher taxation, a repressed economy and greater power in the hands of Washington.
This is what the President himself said the evening of his victory:
But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers. A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow.
We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet [emphasis added].
It seems the President has determined that America and the world must face the immediate and paralyzing shock from manmade global warming. During his second term, the President will take expensive steps to remedy the problem.
Superstorm Sandy was a perfect storm for Obama. Its occurrence stripped the momentum of the Romney campaign; it also gave the President and New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie (aka Brutus) a chance to pal around as if they were lifelong friends as they walked among the destruction across the Governor’s home state.
“I cannot thank the President enough for his personal concern and compassion for our state and for the people of our state,” Christie said.
Perhaps Christie saw the writing on the wall and wanted to swing over to the winning side, the Green side. Perhaps the influence of the Green Environmental Machine has begun to influence even good Republicans. The only thing that seems certain is that the environmental movement is almost a religion with its own mantras and even high priests like Al Gore and Obama.
Robert Nisbet, one of the 20th century’s great conservative minds, wrote:
“It is entirely possible that when the history of the twentieth century is finally written, the single most important social movement of the period will be judged to be environmentalism. … Environmentalism is now well on its way to becoming the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history, the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism.”
The President is part of this wave. He launched his re-election campaign in December 2011 by announcing $4 billion in energy conserving upgrades to Federal buildings throughout the country and finalizing efforts to create an ecosystem task force.
Obama has also mandated the first fuel and emissions standards for commercial vehicles and is applying those rules to vehicles built between 2014 and 2018.
The President has also committed $21 billion in taxpayer money to solar and wind energy companies. One of those companies was Solyndra, which received more than $500 million in Federal money only to default on it.
According to Canada’s CTV News, Obama’s re-election has made climate change a “hot topic” in Washington and may lead to a new carbon tax. A carbon tax would force people to pay more for using fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which the Greens claim is producing heat-trapping carbon dioxide and creating storms like Sandy.
As blogged on Washingtonpost.com, Sandy has put global warming back into focus for millions of Americans as well as Congress.
Global warming was also a type of wicked problem that led to gridlock and dissension in the nation’s capital, as nobody could quite formulate the link between public policy and extreme weather events.
That is, until Sandy. After being a non-factor until the last week of the presidential campaign, suddenly people want to talk about global warming.
The Post compares global warming as a crisis as great as the Federal government’s “fiscal cliff.” Really?
First, global warming — if it even exists and if it is truly manmade — is a global problem (I have more to say shortly).
Second, the fiscal crisis is all American, and it is a problem created by two Presidents and 12 years of Congress members who were negligent and would probably be found legally culpable if they were working in the private sector.
We know the Federal government is headed for bankruptcy. Social programs are grievously underfunded, defense spending is out of control and, most likely, tax revenues are going to decline. (Higher tax rates won’t mean more money to Washington; they will mean less money because the economy is most likely to implode.) But we don’t know that global warming is a certainty.
The same day The Post published its article, The Wall Street Journal ran a column signed by 16 scientists of note titled “No Need to Panic about Global Warming.”
This is part of what scientists signed off on in the column:
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
I got my first writing job three decades ago. All these years later, I am not sure if my publisher was teasing the day I started when he said: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” The Greens have made that an axiom. Every time there is a hurricane or a superstorm like Sandy, they jump up on the highest soapbox and yell: “Global warming!”
If Obama bases new tax and energy policies on Sandy, that storm may be destructive for many years after the rains and wind ceased and power was restored.
There is one more inconvenient truth that the Greens I talk to can’t answer, even if I give them two contingencies that they can’t prove (that there is global warming and that it is manmade): How is the United States going to change this?
According to GrabStats, there are more than 2,000 coal plants in China and one new plant goes into operation every four to seven days.
In 2008, Wired Science reported that if China’s carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, the country’s carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by 2030. That will equal the entire world’s carbon dioxide production.
This has implications for the United States because what it means is that if Obama pursues Obamagreen the way he did Obamacare, then it will simply be a continuation of making the United States less competitive.
If Obama wins and gets his way with Green energy, do you know what is going to happen? The United States will develop state-of-the-art technologies that still won’t be as competitive as fossil fuels. Then we will sell the blueprints of those technologies to the Chinese, who will manufacture and sell them back to us, using coal to power the factories that produce these products. There is logic in that.
I don’t understand Obama. He either doesn’t follow this logic because he isn’t very smart or, more likely, he does understand it thoroughly but is still giving the green light to Green energy without regard to the cost and competitive consequences to the Nation which he has sworn to protect.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
Editor, Myers’ Energy & Gold Report
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