How many Americans Will Follow Obama’s Leadership On Climate Change?

We here at CARE noticed (perhaps you did too) that President Obama repeatedly states, “Few challenges facing America—and the world—are more urgent than combating climate change,” and that “We will make it clear that America is ready to lead."

Building upon the work of CARE Blog contributor Paul Driessen, we’ve decided to raise some questions: How many Americans will support a 1400-page energy and climate bill that will create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry? How many Americans will follow the leadership of a man who is working hard to ensure that energy and food costs “necessarily skyrocket,” killing jobs, and imposing an all-intrusive Green Nanny State? How many Americans are willing to point an economic gun to the heads of their neighbors and to pull the trigger during this economic downturn?

These questions have serious implications and we encourage our readers to delve further into the issue with our friend Paul Driessen.

Leader of None
"Few challenges facing America--and the world--are more urgent than combating climate change," President Obama has asserted. "We will make it clear that America is ready to lead."

The President and Al Gore are certainly ready to lead. But how many will follow?

Even in America, and certainly on the world stage, the two increasingly look like Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. As they tilt for windmills, and against a "monstrous giant of infamous repute"--climate disasters conjured up by computer models and Hollywood special effects masters--their erstwhile followers are making politically correct noises, but running for the hills.

The House of Representatives passed a 1400-page energy and climate bill - by a razor-thin margin, and only after Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman packed it with enough last-minute deals to protect favored congressional districts, buy votes, and curry favor with assorted special interests. Not one legislator actually read the bill--which would create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry, ensure that energy and food costs "necessarily skyrocket," kill jobs, and impose an all-intrusive Green Nanny State.

Republicans want to control what people do in their bedrooms, insists the old canard. Democrats, it appears, want to dictate what we do everywhere outside of our bedrooms. And Sancho Gore wants to become the world's first global warming billionaire, by selling climate indulgences, aka carbon offsets.

The reaction has been predictable--by anyone except House and White House czars and czarinas.

Citizens are livid over yet another attempt to use a purported crisis to justify further expanding the government and spending billions more tax dollars for alarmist research, activism and propaganda, just ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference. Global warming continues to rank dead-last in Pew Research and other polls that actually list it as an issue. Rasmussen puts the President's approval ratings at 46% and falling. Zogby reports that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade bills.

Manufacturing states, which get 60-98% of their electricity from coal, worry that the only thing they'll export in ten years will be jobs. Democrat senators from those states worry that the energy and climate issue will be "toxic for them during midterm elections," says Politico magazine.

Even companies that had eagerly sought seats at the negotiating table are now gagging. ConocoPhillips, Caterpillar and others finally realize that cap-and-tax will severely penalize them and their customers.

Not even the climate is cooperating. Outside of Dallas, 2009 has brought some of coldest summer days on record across the US. Near freezing temperatures nipped at crops, and gas heaters were sine qua non at an August 29 outdoor wedding in Wisconsin. The Farmers Almanac predicts a brutal 2009-2010 winter.

In Europe, every longitude has a platitude about saving the planet. But EU countries that agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels are well above their Kyoto Protocol targets - Austria by 30% and Spain by 37% as of 2008. And despite new commitments to cut emissions 40 years from now, you don't need tarot cards or entrails to predict the more probable EU emissions future.

Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired electrical generating plants by 2020. Italy plans to double its reliance on coal in just five years. Europe as a whole will have 40 new coal-fired power plants by 2015, columnist Alan Caruba reports. The Polish Academy of Sciences has publicly challenged manmade global warming disaster hypotheses. And only 11% of Czech citizens believe rising carbon dioxide emissions caused global temperatures to climb 1975-1998--and also caused them to rise 1915-1940, fall 1940-1975, then stabilize and decline again 1998-2009.
Australia just voted down punitive global warming legislation. New Zealand has put its emissions-bashing program in a deep freeze.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic aid bluntly dismissed any talk of following President Obama's quixotic lead. "We won't sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction," he told reporters at the July 2009 G8 meeting.

Chinese and Indian leaders are equally adamant. China is playing a smart hand in this high-stakes climate poker game, drawing up plans to combat global warming sometime in the future, and gradually improve its energy efficiency and pollution control. However, it is building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on its growing network of highways.

So is India, which will double its coal-based electricity generation and produce millions of Tata and other affordable cars by 2020. "India will not accept any binding emission-reduction target, period," Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has stated. "This is a non-negotiable stand."

India and China have a "complete convergence" of views on these matters, Ramesh added. No wonder: 400 million Indians still do not have electricity; 500 million Chinese still do not.

No electricity means no refrigeration, to keep food and medicines from spoiling. It means no water purification, to reduce baby-killing intestinal diseases. No modern heating and air conditioning, to reduce hypothermia in winter, heat stroke in summer, and lung disease year-round. It means no lights or computers, no modern offices, factories, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals.

Fossil fuels are "gradually eliminating poverty in the Third world," observes UCLA economist Deepak Lal. Any call to curb carbon emissions would "condemn billions to continued poverty. While numerous Western do-gooders shed crocodile tears about the Third World's poor, they are willing to prevent them from taking the only feasible current route out from this abject state" - oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric energy development. The situation is intolerable, unsustainable, lethal and immoral.

The only way India and China would agree to cut their emissions is if the United States cut its emissions 40% by 2020, says Ramesh - back to 1959 levels and pre-JFK living standards, when the US population was 179 million (versus 306 million today). No way will that happen. So Asian energy and economic development will continue apace. And rightly so, to foster human rights and environmental justice.

All is not bleak, however, for Canute Obama's impossible dream of controlling global temperatures.

British politicians remain committed to slashing CO2 emissions and replacing hydrocarbons with wind power. Unfortunately, the biggest UK wind projects have been abandoned or put on indefinite hold--and a growing demand/supply imbalance portends still higher energy prices, widespread power cuts, rolling blackouts and energy rationing, the Daily Telegraph reported on August 31. Brits may soon trade their stiff upper lips for contentious town hall meetings and ballot-box revolution.

The Democratic Party of Japan's landslide victory in the August 30 election will likely create a new coalition government tilted strongly to the left. The DJP has pledged to cut carbon dioxide gas emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 - though this will likely strangle economic growth and job creation, especially if one coalition partner's opposition to nuclear power becomes DJP policy.

Then there is Africa, where leaders appear ready to support curbs on energy use--in exchange for up to $300 billion per year in additional foreign aid, "to cushion the impact of global warming." That will be nice for their private bank accounts, but less so for Africa's 750 million people who still don't have electricity. Those people will simply be sacrificed, to prevent natural or fictitious climate disasters.

Of course, the real goal was never to control the climate. It was always to control energy use, lives, jobs, economies, transportation and housing--and usher in a new era of high tax global governance. The American people are increasingly saying they're not ready to grant that power to Obama Gore & Company.


Paul Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power ∙ Black death (http://www.eco-imperialism.com/) and senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose new book (Freezing in the Dark) reveals how environmental pressure groups raise money and promote policies that restrict energy development and hurt poor families.

Keeping Energy In The Discussion: Questions To Ask At Town Hall Meetings

We had a lively conversation with Paul Driessen during CARE’s July Conference Call. As we were discussing energy and policies in Washington DC, the conversation naturally went to cap and trade legislation. Paul began giving us some ideas and we asked if he would, from his background on the subject, please give us some comments/questions that we could ask our representatives when they are home for August Recess that would keep energy issues in the dialogue. He promised to give it some thought and the following is what he created.

It suggests a number of important, substantive questions that members of Congress need to address, before proceeding further on energy and climate legislation. It could help inspire and energize people to participate in those sessions--and exercise their First Amendment rights to be fully involved in an informed democratic process. Indeed, many are questions that people all over the world should be asking their elected officials.

Demand Answers From Your Senators And Congressman During Their August Recess
Americans are justifiably wary about Congress rushing to overhaul our healthcare system--17% of our economy--with little debate, analysis or bipartisan input. They worry that the legislation could affect their costs, free choice, doctor-patient relationships and access to quality care.

They should be even more concerned about complex, thousand-page legislation that would overhaul 100% of our economy--the energy system that powers and enables everything we eat, heat, cool, grow, make, transport, drive and do--to prevent hypothetical manmade catastrophic climate change.

Energy is the Master Resource that makes life possible. Without abundant, reliable, affordable energy, opportunity, progress, job creation, health and civil rights are hobbled and rolled back.

And yet, global warming bills are being rushed into law at warp speed, not just without debate, but with debate vilified as climate holocaust denial, criminal acts and treason against the planet.

Proponents insist a planetary crisis demands instant action. The truth is that President Obama wants to present a US commitment to draconian reductions in plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide at the December Copenhagen climate conference. He wants to pressure China, India and other nations to sacrifice their economic growth to the specter of alleged climate disasters. Copenhagen is the last chance for eco-activists to implement a UN-centered system of global governance, global taxes, and global control of energy, economies and living standards.

Open, robust, unfettered debate is absolutely essential. It is our inalienable right, the foundation of democracy and a free and prosperous America. A good place to start that debate is the town hall meetings that our elected representatives will be holding during their August recess. Here are a few questions that concerned citizens might want to ask.
1) Congressman John Conyers said he didn’t bother reading the bill, before he voted on it, because he would need two lawyers to explain the passages to him. Did you read and understand it? All of it? Then how can we be expected to do so? Why should we be expected to obey it? Why should we let congressmen who can’t understand their own bills control 100% of our economy?

2) Global temperatures are not increasing. Thousands of scientists say humans and carbon dioxide are not causing a climate disaster. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and heat waves are not increasing. Emissions from China and India will quickly replace any CO2 reductions the United States might achieve by taxing and restricting fossil fuel use, crippling our economy, and hurting seniors and poor families most. Why does Congress refuse to allow real debate? Why does it simply assume and decree that we have a global warming crisis and must enact legislation immediately?

3) House Speaker Pelosi recently said “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” so that America can slash energy use and emissions, and prevent dangerous climate change. This can only lead to a massive, intrusive Green Nanny State; the end of affordable, reliable energy; a coerced switch to expensive, unreliable wind and solar power; and skyrocketing energy costs that will hammer families and businesses and cost millions of jobs. Why would you support such legislation?

4) Cap-and-trade is a huge tax on the energy we use for everything we make and do. It’s a massive wealth transfer, from consumers to the government, to pay for unprecedented spending increases and more pork for favored businesses and voting blocs. It violates President Obama’s pledge not to tax anyone with incomes below $250,000. It will cost families $1000 to $4,600 per year in extra energy and living expenses. How can you justify voting for such punitive legislation?

5) The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50. Temperatures would have to increase 85 degrees 24/7/365 for a century or more, to melt South Pole ice caps and raise sea levels 20-50 feet. Can you explain how a 0.02% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 285 ppm in 1850 to projected 485 ppm) can overturn basic laws of thermodynamics, replace the powerful natural forces that caused Ice Ages and other climate changes in the past, and produce ice-cap meltdowns?

6) Replacing hydrocarbons with “green” energy will require millions of acres of land for turbines, solar panels, geothermal facilities and transmission lines. Do you support relaxing environmental study, endangered species and other laws, to fast-track approval of these projects, despite their impacts on habitats? Or do you want them subjected to the same rules that have stymied thousands of other energy projects, so that renewable energy projects can’t be built, either--and we have a huge “energy gap”?

Do you support protecting the rights of land owners? Or do you favor eminent domain, so that government can seize people’s property and expedite construction of these projects?

7) Replacing hydrocarbons with “green” power will also require hundreds of millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and rare earth minerals for turbines, solar panels and transmission lines. Do you support opening our lands for renewed exploration and development, so that we can produce these raw materials and create American jobs? Or do you intend to keep US lands off limits, allow eco-activists to file lawsuits to prevent development, and force us to depend on imports for renewable energy, too?

8) The United States spent $79 billion on global warming programs between 1989 and 2008. The vast majority went to scientists, bureaucrats, alarmist groups and propaganda campaigns that say we face a climate disaster. Do you support a law requiring that future spending be split 50:50 between researchers who think humans are causing a climate disaster, and those who believe climate change is mostly natural and cyclical--so that we can have honest, unbiased science … and sound public policy decisions?

9) Claims that we face a climate disaster are based on selected use of questionable temperature data, short-term temperature trends, and scary computer scenarios that even modelers don’t call predictions--but merely possible futures, if numerous assumptions about climate systems, energy generation, carbon dioxide and global economic growth 25-100 years from now turn out to be true. How can you justify transforming (and risking) America’s energy and economic future, based on computer models?

10) The White House and EPA suppressed a government report that said scientific evidence does not support claims that we face a global warming disaster--until after passage of a House bill that would send US carbon dioxide emissions back to 1868 levels. Why did you ignore this dictatorial and fraudulent action? Will you now demand a new debate and new vote? Demand that this report be reviewed and debated fully, before the Senate acts on similar legislation? Penalize EPA for suppressing free speech?

11) The economic pain, job losses and government intrusion into our lives under the House-passed global warming bill would reduce projected global average temperatures in 2050 by an imperceptible 0.1 degrees. That’s largely because 97% of the projected increase in CO2 emissions between now and 2030 will come from developing countries that are building new coal-fired power plants every week, according to the International Energy Agency. Why would you support legislation that is all pain, and no gain?

12) Over 1.5 billion people in China, India and Africa still do not have electricity, for even a light bulb or tiny refrigerator. Almost 2.5 billion people around the world live on less than $2 a day. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated with electricity for refrigeration, sanitation, clinics, and industries that generate greater health and prosperity. How can you justify telling them global warming is the biggest threat they face, and they need to get by on wind and solar power, and give up their dreams of better lives, because you are worried about global warming? Doesn’t that violate their most basic human rights--including their right to improved living standards, and to life itself?

Exercise your constitutional rights. Write to your legislators. Attend town hall meetings. Ask questions. Demand answers. Demand debate. And safeguard your future, and your children’s future.


Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – black death.