Climate Bills and a Green Economy

Controlling Climate? More Like Controlling Humans

October 28, 2009

WorldNet Daily - The proposed “solutions” to scientifically fading man-made global warming fears are set to alter American lifestyles and sovereignty in ways never before contemplated.

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen has warned:

“‘He who controls carbon, controls life. It is a bureaucrat’s dream to control carbon dioxide.”

Washington, D.C., and the U.N. are in a field of dreams right now as they envision one of the most massive expansions of controls on human individual freedom ever contemplated by governments.

Leading the charge is none other than former Vice President Al Gore, who declared in July 2009 that the congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also trumpeted the concept in an Oct. 25, 2009, New York Times oped.

“A [climate] deal must include an equitable global governance structure,” he wrote.

Gore and the U.N.’s call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac’s call in 2000. On Nov. 20, 2000, then-President Chirac said during a speech at The Hague that the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol represented “the first component of an authentic global governance.”

Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said:

“Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.”

Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”

In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent U.N. global warming conferences. In December 2007, the U.N. climate conference in Bali urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

The environmental group Friends of the Earth advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations during the 2007 U.N. climate conference.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

The Obama administration revealed even more controls in September 2009 when it was announced that the State Department wanted to form a global “Ecological Board of Directors.”

But even more chilling than a global regime set up to “solve” global warming is the personal freedoms that are under assault. In September, a top German climate adviser proposed the “creation of a CO2 budget for every person on planet.” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber told Der Spiegel that this internationally monitored “CO2 budget” would apply to “every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing.”

Czech physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, formerly of Harvard University and a global-warming skeptic, reacted to Schellnhuber’s CO2 personal “budget” proposal by citing tyrannical movements of the past.

“What Schellnhuber has just said is just breathtaking, and it helps me to understand how crazy political movements such as the Nazis or communists could have so easily taken over a nation that is as sensible as Germany,” Motl wrote on Sept. 6, 2009.

The movement to control personal CO2 “budgets” and personal freedoms is growing internationally. In 2008, the U.K. proposed a “personal carbon trading scheme” where “every adult in U.K. should be forced to use ‘carbon ration cards.’” According to the Mail article:

“Everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights – anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven’t used up their allowance.”

The U.K. government would have the authority to impose fines, “monitor employees’ emissions, home energy bills, petrol purchases and holiday flights.” The London Times reported in September 2009:

“Rationing being reintroduced via workplace after an absence of half a century. … Employees would be required to submit quarterly reports detailing their consumption.”

In January 2008, the California state government stunned the nation when it sought to control home thermostats remotely. Even the New York Times appeared to be shaken by this proposal, comparing it to the 1960s sci-fi show “The Outer Limits.”

“California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device,” the New York Times reported.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was dubbed the “eco-nanny” in May 2009 when she told audiences in China that “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory” in order to combat global warming.

What is most surprising is that even the granddaddy of global warming treaties, the Kyoto Protocol, would have had barely a measurable impact on global CO2 levels even if fully enacted and assuming the U.N. was correct on the science. The congressional global warming cap-and-trade bill has been declared “scientifically meaningless” by an own EPA is now on record admitting that U.S. cap-and-trade bill “would not impact world CO2 levels.”

Even a cursory examination of the global-warming issue reveals that the proposed climate tax and regulatory “solutions” are more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science or concern for human welfare. Former Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth summed up this view succinctly:

“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

The “right thing” Wirth is referring to is the unprecedented transfer of wealth, power and control to domestic and global governance. Controlling climate change appears not to be about controlling temperatures, but about controlling human freedom. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who lived through totalitarian regimes, now warns that the biggest threat to freedom and democracy is from “ambitious environmentalism.”

Senate Panel Kicks Off Climate Bill Drive

October 27, 2009

Reuters - A Senate committee on Tuesday launches three long days of hearings on a Democratic climate bill in a bid to further convince an international summit in December that Washington is serious about tackling global warming.

The Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee will kick off Tuesday's hearing at 9:30 a.m. EDT with a panel of heavy-hitters from President Barack Obama's Cabinet: the secretaries of energy, transportation and interior and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Joining them will be the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

According to an EPA statement, the officials will focus on "creating a system of clean energy incentives" while "confronting the threat of carbon pollution."

The government estimates that the electric power sector contributes 39 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, while 34 percent comes from the transportation sector and 27 percent from the use of fossil fuels in homes, commercial buildings and industry.

Obama and Democrats in Congress are pursuing legislation that would create a "cap and trade" system requiring utilities and industries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming over the next 40 years. Companies would have to obtain dwindling numbers of pollution permits from the government and hundreds of dollars worth of permits could be traded on a new financial market exchange.

Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer hopes to finish reviewing the legislation and vote on it in coming weeks.

If so, that could be the last major action by the Senate on climate change legislation this year, before countries from around the world meet in Copenhagen in December to try to chart new, tougher goals for reducing carbon emissions to head off worsening droughts, floods and melting polar ice.

U.S. leadership is considered essential to the global talks, since the United States is the leading carbon polluter among developing countries.

At the United Nations on Monday, a senior official lowered expectations of a deal in Copenhagen. Janos Pasztor, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's climate advisor, said the UN head was planning for "post-Copenhagen" talks.

Most Senate Republicans oppose the cap and trade bill, saying it would force U.S. companies to move more manufacturing abroad while also raising consumers' energy prices.

High-ranking Senator Lamar Alexander, one of the few Republicans to declare that "climate change is real," said that during this week's hearings, he and his fellow Republicans on the committee will offer an alternative to cap and trade.

"Before we embark upon a scheme that would send jobs overseas and charge Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year in new taxes ... we might look for another solution," Alexander told reporters.

That "solution," he said, is a four-pronged plan to encourage a huge expansion of the nation's nuclear power, expand offshore drilling for natural gas, beef up research on alternative energies and convert half of the nation's car and truck fleet to electric power...