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damn Viva is so damn bitter.
I feel the same way. It would be one thing if the government would allow the 20 something planned nuclear plants to begin construction... but what's the point of trying to change our infrastructure if you're going to drag your feet on something that could really ease our use of coal?
I'm not gonna like a baby now like some are doing in this thread... I'll start ing when the empirical evidence starts popping up that this was a supremely -tacular piece of legislation. If sizable moves aren't made in the construction of new sources of energy early on... it's gonna be apparent that companies won't be prepared for the deadline and things will get a lot worse.
Either we'll make a transition to a completely restructured power infrastructure... or the dems just guaranteed GOP rule for the foreseeable future.
I think a better policy would have been to reward companies that retrofit/upgrade existing plants or build clean sources of energy rather than this road to punishment they think will work better.
101A, you have addressed your personal fear.
hang in there, i'm pulling for you.
to everyone else.............prove something beyond the whine.
and it HAS to be more than "I'm moving my company somewhere else".
Coercion is a horrible way to do business. It only breeds animosity.
Anybody who has taken a simple management course knows that.
Where does this 2.3 million estimate come from?
It should get through the senate, remember McCain supported cap & trade also.
This is a democracy so I feel the people should get what they voted for, for better or worse. Have an open mind folks, consider the possibility that you are completely wrong about how things work and this will create jobs and make the world a clean wonderful place. If your not wrong, well the progressive democrats (and the progressive repubs) will pay a heavy price.
Hey dumb , Obama's spending more this year than we did on the war in Iraq.
Pull your head out of you liberal ass.
It's a bad bill no matter who authored it. If it were Bush and the Repubs doing it four years ago when they actually had control of Congress, it would still be the worst bill in the history of this country.
I believe the number mentioned today in debate on the Hill was that we've already lost 1.4 million this year. Republicans were holding that up and asking the Dems if they were comfortable with piling another million jobs lost on top of the disaster that has been this year so far.
oh good. i knew stupidity would soon take over in this thread.
I think I've already explained how all this ends.
At least I can take solace that the carbon trade markets will probably be centered around Houston, that is, unless the General Secretary dictates they be in California or some other more politically amenable state.
Well, you have made a post in it...
Hey, here's a fun one... explain to us how this is going to benefit this country. How is it going to be jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs as Pelosi put it, when all the manufacturing moves out of this country? Or was she talking about jobs in other countries?
The Dems just signed an economic death sentence for America, and you're beating off about it. I honestly hope all the ignorant libs such as yourself are the first ones unemployed because of this crap. You deserve it (but not the extended unemployment benefits that will not cost us anything according to the Dems).
Last edited by Aggie Hoopsfan; 06-26-2009 at 11:37 PM.
Just out of curiousity, what happens if the dems are right on this one? What will people like you do then? All we have at this point is the Republicans throwing around psuedo facts and bumper sticker slogans The question was asked where the 2.3 million lost job figures came from and not one of the accusers could back it up. Instead they call liberals stupid when they cannot support their argument against this bill.
I'll go out on a limb and say it's from one of those awesome emails they're known to get.
The theory is that it will jack up the cost of using fossil fuels higher than the cost of "green" energy. Thereby encouraging the growth of green jobs. I haven't heard any real explanation for how the green job growth will offset the loss of jobs because of cap & trade. I also haven't heard them explain that it will result in the permanent increase in energy costs for the average american.
In the larger cap & trade world theory, manufacturing won't leave because they'll get every country to do the same thing so there won't be any financial incentive to relocate. Makes perfect sense and is completely realistic right?
Oh well, Obama made no secret about this plan and the majority of americans want it. So stop whining and let them get what they asked for. Would you feel better if McCain had won and pushed cap & trade like he said he would? I guess you'd have to say the majority of republicans want it too since they picked the only candidate who supported cap and trade to represent them in the election.
Last edited by SnakeBoy; 06-27-2009 at 02:16 AM.
When it fails they'll blame it on capitalism and call for more regulation.
Just watch.
@ all the people in here with the fear of Boehner.
How's this straight from the horses mouth. Is this defendable?
On Jan. 17, 2008, Obama was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle and said:
“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it -- whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
"Let me sort of describe my overall policy.
What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.
I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.
That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.
The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.
It's just that it will bankrupt them."
If they are right then good on their part. I dont have a problem giving credit when its due.
What if theyre not? Are you going to take them to task for it because more often than not its the liberals on this board that usually are the one's foaming at the mouth spouting stupid that cant have a coherent conversation.
sorry for the long read.... there's links in the article, but for some reason they're not differentiating. just scroll over with your mouse. there's quite a few.
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The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.
Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."
The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."
The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change do ent.
Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."
E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.
"I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.
For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted."
Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.
After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."
Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.
If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.
The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.
"The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Compe ive Enterprise Ins ute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.
Kazman's group obtained the do ents -- both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source -- and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to re-open the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.
The EPA also said in its statement: "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the do ent he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that do ent are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."
That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin, the report's primary author: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."
One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2 -- the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.
"All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible yesterday," Carlin said. "In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment." (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)
In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin's report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. "The science is not there to back it up," Barton said. "An EPA report that has been suppressed... raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don't have an endangerment finding, you don't need this bill. We don't need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision." (The endangerment finding is the EPA's decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)
"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on EPA's finding, and frankly, on other analysis EPA has conducted on climate issues."
The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: "I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." Similarly, Mr. Obama claimed that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life."
"All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers -- you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06...y5117890.shtml
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way to keep science in the front seat there, mr obama.
more of the same, anybody?..........
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Group calls bill weak, says Obama choosing politics over science
A day after President Obama threw his support behind the American Clean Energy and Security Act, one of the world’s most prominent environmental advocacy organizations has come out in strong opposition to the bill, which is set to go to a full vote on the House floor as early as Friday.
Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett today released a statement calling the proposed climate legislation “weak” and insufficient to address the severity of the problem at hand. Greenpeace called on Congress to reject the bill and “begin immediate and urgent work on legislation that treats seriously the dire threat of climate change.”
“We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it,” said Muffett.
Greenpeace’s biggest bone of convention was that emission reduction targets in the bill are “far lower than science demands,” and that the giveaways and preferences in the bill will spur the growth of a new fleet of nuclear and coal-fired power plants “to the detriment of real energy solutions.”
“Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation,” Greenpeace’s Muffett explained, “we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest…”
“To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak,” said Muffett.
Mixed support and strange bedfellows
By staking-out opposition to the bill, Greenpeace now joins the conservative-leaning PAC, Americans Solutions for Winning the Future, which just launched a fear-based TV ad about the dire economic consequences of passing Waxman-Markey.
Greenpeace, however, does not represent the entire universe of environmental advocacy organizations. Many organizations and environmental advocates have expressed their concerns with the bill, but see its passage as better than the other alternative of doing nothing at all. The Sierra Club and The League of Conservation Voters, for example, just produced a new advertisement in support of Waxman-Markey featuring the words and images of President Obama.
Although President Obama has not aggressively shaped and pushed ACES, he is expected to sign the bill as it is currently written if it gets to his desk. But that may never happen.
Even if a single Republican does not vote for the bill, it likely has the numbers to pass a full vote of the House. The same cannot be said for the Senate, where getting the bill through with a veto-proof super majority of sixty votes will prove much more difficult.
http://ecopolitology.org/2009/06/25/...-climate-bill/
http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090...-renewable.pdf
an excerpt...............
Europe’s current policy and strategy for supporting the so-called “green jobs” or
renewable energy dates back to 1997, and has become one of the principal
justifications for U.S. “green jobs” proposals. Yet an examination of Europe’s
experience reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive.
This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is
considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians.
This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and
impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style
“green jobs” agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this
in terms of jobs destroyed per job created and the net destruction per installed MW.
The study’s results demonstrate how such “green jobs” policy clearly hinders Spain’s
way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing
into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil.
The following are key points from the study:
1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the
establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has
given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity
through renewable sources. The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s “green
jobs” schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that
massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs. The
question that this paper answers is “at what price?”
2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data1, we find
that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s
experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence,
by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs
on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add
those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would
have created.
3. Therefore, while it is not possible to directly translate Spain’s experience with
exac ude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million
jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million “green
jobs” as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of
private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the
tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome.
4. At minimum, therefore, the study’s evaluation of the Spanish model cited as
one for the U.S. to replicate in quick pursuit of “green jobs” serves a note of
caution, that the reality is far from what has typically been presented, and that
such schemes also offer considerable employment consequences and
implications for emerging from the economic crisis.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it
appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, twothirds
of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in
administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out
of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation
and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity.
6. This came at great financial cost as well as cost in terms of jobs destroyed
elsewhere in the economy.
7. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each
“green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job.
8. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the
destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs
destroyed for every “green job” created.
(..........woopsie)
9. Principally, the high cost of electricity affects costs of production and
employment levels in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing,
beverage and tobacco industries.
10. Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the
economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
11. These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain’s approach but instead are
largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources.
12. The total over-cost – the amount paid over the cost that would result from
buying the electricity generated by the renewable power plants at the market
price - that has been incurred from 2000 to 2008 (adjusting by 4% and
calculating its net present value [NPV] in 2008), amounts to 7,918.54 million
Euros (appx. $10 billion USD)
13. The total subsidy spent and committed (NPV adjusted by 4%) to these three
renewable sources amounts to 28,671 million euros ($36 billion USD).
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it only gets better. looks like facts are getting a front seat as well, mr obama.
Last edited by Viva Las Espuelas; 06-27-2009 at 11:00 AM.
This country gets what it deserves. Let the people fall, and their government leaders make off like bandits raping the country while pissing on the graves of our founding fathers.
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