In Copenhagen, the elite, in conveyances that showered the world with more carbon emissions than half a million Africans, gathered together to solidify this global religion and ended up with – nothing. Obama walked out with agreements from the “developing nations” of China, Brazil, South Africa and India. China, of course, went home and announced success after agreeing to nothing more than a non-binding agreement to announce its emission cuts every two years.
Russia, meanwhile, brought most progress and European involvement to a halt when it demanded that its carbon credits it has held since the 1990’s, while its economy collapsed, be brought forward beyond 2012. This would make Russia the Saudi Arabia of carbon credits. And back in the United States, the faithful are lining up to create an economy wide market for carbon credits. Did I mention that Ken Lay created carbon credits? That’s right. Ken Lay of Enron fame. The carbon trading scheme that the faithful are lining up for, which has passed the House and is making its way to the Senate, is a new derivatives market for Goldman Sachs and Wall Street. Can you say Housing Bubble boys and girls?
Before a few years ago, before the cooling trend and severe winters of the sort that green activists announced “science said” were things of the past, the common belief was that green was “in” and the public was willing to address climate change, whatever the cost. But Climategate changed that dynamic. Today, the regressive tax of Cap and Trade is on the ropes.
“We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it’s very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,” said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economy-wide cap and trade “unlikely.”
Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.
“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who’ve told the White House or their own leaders that it’s time to jettison the centerpiece of their party’s plan to curb global warming. But what is this piece of legislation making its way through the august Senate?
Enter the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill, the Senate counterpart to this summer’s barely-passed Waxman-Markey House bill. Kerry-Boxer. Kerry-Boxer. (excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth a little).
The chief economist at the Liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, testified that low-income families would bear a “disproportionate burden of the costs associated with effective policies to reduce the use of carbon-based energy because they spend a higher proportion of their budgets on energy and energy-intensive goods and services than higher-income households do.”
Stone’s concerns were echoed a week earlier by CBO director Doug Elmendorf, who wrote on his blog that “households in the middle fifth would see net losses in purchasing power amounting to 0.6 percent of after-tax income in 2020 and 1.1 percent in 2050.” In other words, these economists are warning that it’s not the rich, but average American families and those families who have the least will be hit hardest by the inevitable increase in prices that will result from a bill that’s effectively a tax on carbon-and therefore a tax on everything.
With high unemployment and inflation looming, the moderate, sane voices in the Democrat Party are sounding the need for what the American people really say they want. Attention to jobs and the economy. But for the Warmers, their sin of hubris haunts them. They cannot see a path to setting their faith in stone, yet they don’t have the courage to retreat even though it will cost them politically.
Faith is belief without verifiable evidence. This unquestioned adherence to the theory of Global Warming bears all the markings of what traditionally would be recognized as a religion. Complete with sin (the emitting of carbon dioxide), scriptures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports), commandments (drive a Prius, use Compact Florescent Light bulbs, do not eat meat etc.), indulgences (carbon offsets), proselytism, prophets (Al Gore), priests (scientists), prophecy and apocalypse (floods, hurricanes, dead polar bears), infidels (Warming skeptics), and salvation (the halting of carbon emitting industrial progress) the religion of Global Warming fits the mold.
Great Britain has already recognized belief in anthropogenic Global Warming as a religion. In November, in a landmark case brought before the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal, the court found that under the “2003 Religion and Belief Regulations” “belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives” qualified for the same employment discrimination protections as a traditional religion.
Once everyone figures out what the Warmer Tax will do to their economy, family and lifestyles because of a few flawed computer models, they’re going to need it.
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