May 16, 2009
Climate Change legislation won't reduce emissions
Not that we needed any more proof that the Climate Change legislation was going to be a sham, but it appears that the compromise reached by Democrats will give a pass to the very industries that it is supposed to target.
Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent has the details:
Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure - Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) - have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation's largest polluting industries. Many environmentalists say the compromise comes at the too-high cost of undermining the bill's very purpose, which is to slash emissions dramatically enough to prevent a warming planet from heating further. Some are asking Democrats either to bolster the environmental protections or to scrap the proposal altogether.
"We are not prepared to ‘give away the farm' just so that we can say that we helped to get legislation passed," Janet Keating, executive director of the West Virginia-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a statement Friday. "There are some costs that are too high to pay when it comes to the environment, clean air and clean water. We urge Congress to either fix the Waxman-Markey bill or dump it and start over."
The saga highlights the thorny congressional climate change debate, where partisan politics takes a backseat to regional interests, and the influence of the energy lobby is king. Indeed, the concessions from Waxman and Markey to this point have been made to satisfy Democrats representing regions heavy with coal, oil and automaker interests.
This is not about protecting the planet but about power and money - big surprise, huh? Even the Democrats aren't stupid enough to buy into the idea that we can cut emissions to deal with climate change and not destroy the economy. Even those who are the biggest believers in global warming can't escape reality.
I'm with the environmentalists on this one - not for their reasons but for the simple fact that if Democrats are not going to deal with a problem they claim is the most serious challenge facing planet earth, why bother at all? It appears that this is going to be just one more corporate welfare project that will earn Democratic politicians gobs of money in donations while making energy more expensive for the average American.