First there is this:
President Barack Obama’s climate czar said Sunday the Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue a rule on the regulation of carbon dioxide, finding that it represents a danger to the public.
The White House is pressing Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authority under the Clean Air Act if legislators don’t move fast enough or create strong enough provisions.
Carol Browner, Obama’s special advisor on climate change and energy, also said the administration is seeking to establish a national standard for auto emissions that could mean tougher efficiency mandates for auto makers. The new standard could be fashioned after strict proposals developed in California that would limit greenhouse gas emissions.
But when you go all the way to the end of the article you find this tidbit kind of slipped into the mix:
Separately, Browner said the administration was also going to create an inter- agency task force to site a new national electricity transmission grid to meet both growing demand and the President’s planned renewable energy expansion. Siting has been a major bottleneck to renewable growth, and lawmakers and administration officials have said they’re likely to seek greater federal powers that would give expanded eminent domain authorities.
Expanded?
Translation, we don’t want Obama to take responsibility for the pain he inflicts on the public in the name of fighting global warming, so we want Congress to take the lead.
Why are 1990 levels so important?
Obama Administration as viewed by historians 2050: FAIL
I’m not a big fan of eminent domain, by any stretch of the imagination. But, we do need to take some very swift and decisive action that really works. I’d prefer a carbon tax, since we’ve recently proven how effective and immediate it is, by a sneak preview of high gasoline prices. Everyone drove less and stopped buying SUVs, at least while the price was high.
#2 – MikeN,
Any baseline would work. Environmentalists picked 1990 levels as that baseline for whatever reason, probably because it was 1990 at the time, or something.
The point is to get emissions 80% below 1990 levels. If we picked some other year, like 1970 for the unix fans, we would simply have a different percentage by which to reduce.
The important thing is the absolute number that is derived from there.
#3 – brendal,
Your comment is the very definition of trolling.
#5 And, Obama is the very definition of corrupt, incompetent politician…
@#4: “I’d prefer a carbon tax” – So how much are you prepared to pay for the carbon you exhale? How much do you think China will tax their coal power plant stacks? By UN study, US and Western Europe are not even minor players in carbon emissions by the next decade (they estimate US at 9-10% and Europe with 4-6% total with NO new measures for carbon reduction here. So even if we cut our carbon emissions 100% there is remaining 85% Worldwide in countries which won’t do anything about it).
Much simpler measure: ban all imports from countries that do not at least accept our current clean air standards. Two benefits: a) those countries want to sell us goods so we will be encouraging major global polluters to stop (and address above mentioned 85% of the pollution) b) creating level playing field for Western companies who produce under stringent rules and 3rd world countries who now have great advantage by being able to produce with next to no clean air regulations. Good for air, good for business, solves the major polluting sources.
My next door neighbor exhales carbon dioxide all day. So I will perform my civic duty and murder him and his family.
I love eminent domain. Last year they closed a trailer park full of tenants paying their rent and taxes but said the city just wasn’t getting enough money from them. They could squeeze any more blood out of the turnips so they took the land and destroyed all the trailers on the spot and hauled it all away.
Builders put up a few homes and looky there, on a couple of them sold and no one wants to build in that development. LMFAO as the city now gets even less in taxes.
Serves the city right.
Yes let’s blame global warming for everything now. Sort of like saying that the ice is disappearing in the arctic and then finding out the dumbasses put their sensors on ice that floated away and it was all bullsh$t to begin with.
Finally, it will now cost you to pollute the environment! This will now bring the cost of clean energy up to par.
No more dumping pollutants into the environment because it was “free” to do so.
I next propose that the cost of having a military presence in the Persian Gulf to be added at the pump. No more subsidizing the price of gas with zero cost military protection.
Eminent domain is a dangerous weapon that the government holds over lawfull property owners. If the government wants to build something themselves or they want someone else to build something, they use eminent domain to force you out. If anything we need to make it harder for government at all levels to use eminent domain, not easier.
Global warming is a political agenda, not a scientific fact.
Stop wasting my money!
My only question is whether CO2 is the cause. Because the temperature record since 2001 is flat and went down last year. So, does C02 really have that much to do with temperature or is there something else that’s more powerful?
There is only one question; is CO2 the major cause of warming. The temperature record since 2001 is flat and went down last year. So, does C02 really have that much to do with temperature or is there something else that’s more powerful? Remember that all of the computer models showed the last 7 years as rising. If you’re really about the science of the matter don’t you have to pause and consider?
# 13 gooddebate said, “There is only one question; is CO2 the major cause of warming.”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XDI2NVTYRXU
#6, Cow-Patty,
#5 And, Obama is the very definition of corrupt, incompetent politician…
And that is why you are commonly thought of as a troll.
Siting has been a major bottleneck to renewable growth, and lawmakers and administration officials have said they’re likely to seek greater federal powers that would give expanded eminent domain authorities.
I can only assume that there are other agencies that refuse to allow alternative forms of energy to be sited on their land.
For example, and I’m assuming here, an Alternative Energy Commission could set up a thermal heat generator in Yellow Stone Park without going through all the National Park regulations or wind turbines off of Cape Cod.
13, 14: http://tinyurl.com/2phxhd
Ever hear the word “backlash”?
You want to see some politicians out of a job…? Triple everyone’s electric bill and gasoline costs. See, when gas prices spiked last year there were too many places to point the blame: speculators, saudis, big oil, chavez, etc. But under this scheme the blame will be clear…the federal government. Watch as the soccer moms go to the polls and vote for someone, anyone, who says their reverse this plan. You’ll hear them cry “fuck the damned polar bears, i can’t afford to feed my kids now!”
Yup, let’s finish trashing the economy over a piece of political fiction. The one bright spot is the libs might finally be overreaching enough to wake people up.
I want to send Dallas to the Persian gulf before we withdraw and leave Dallas there. Let Dallas make sure people can get enough fuel to get to work or die trying.
About this plan.
So we spend billions and wreck the econonmy.
How is Obama going to balance the budget with his plans?
He said he would but I’d be less surprised if he wallked on water and made objects change to pure gold.
The problem is that according to all the projections it’s already too late to stop global warming. Even if we drop our contribution to 0%, we will not decrease GW by much.
We should forget decreasing carbon (or do it slowly) and work on adaptation, or the third world is going to be hellish while we are only stressed and inconvenienced. Stopping C02 will only destroy the world economy (or what’s left of it) and force people into even dirtier and more C02 producing activities just to survive.
But that’s heresy; the govt has decided that C02 reduction is the way to go and to hell with the poor people. They will die in droves while we sit back and feel good about ourselves for putting a solar panel on the roof of our house.
#7 – dusanmal,
@#4: “I’d prefer a carbon tax” – So how much are you prepared to pay for the carbon you exhale?
About $100/ton.
By UN study, US and Western Europe are not even minor players in carbon emissions by the next decade (they estimate US at 9-10% and Europe with 4-6% total with NO new measures for carbon reduction here.
Gee, 15% sounds like a significant amount to me. But, you are full of shit. Cite the damn study. go ahead. The U.S. with just 4% of world population emits 25% of world CO2, making us by far the largest per capita emitter. China doesn’t even come close. And, the CO2 that China does emit is for what? To produce shit for the U.S. market. So, even about a third of China’s CO2 is really U.S. CO2 being externalized.
… ban all imports from countries that do not at least accept our current clean air standards. Two benefits: a) those countries want to sell us goods so we will be encouraging major global polluters to stop (and address above mentioned 85% of the pollution) b) creating level playing field for Western companies who produce under stringent rules and 3rd world countries who now have great advantage by being able to produce with next to no clean air regulations. Good for air, good for business, solves the major polluting sources.
But we don’t have any CO2 standards. So, perhaps you should just stop blowing hot air.
#10 – Dallas,
You’re definitely on the right track.
#23 – GetSmart,
Condoms or bullets? The only two long term solutions to all of the problems we’ve caused ourselves. I’m betting on the bullets option myself as the one that gets chosen for us all.
I mean it’s the more, well, traditional of the two.
Plenty of additional options you are not considering:
* Eat out our resource base and die.
* Global epidemic of some rainforest disease that we get from cutting too far into the forest and eating bush meat. (AIDS, Hanta, Ebola, and Marburg are all examples.)
* Global warming reduces arable land and population crashes.
* Global warming leading to sulfur producing bacteria in the oceans, as happened in the P/T extinction, leaving toxic levels of H2S gas in the atmosphere.
* Global thermonuclear war.
* Global civilizational collapse caused by the economy resulting in a massive human die off.
* Lack of ability to transport food around the world due to being past peak oil, leading to massive human die off.
* Ocean fisheries collapse causing a billion people to be unable to get the necessary protein in their diet leading to a large human die off and likely civilizational collapse.
* Exhaustion of our fossil water supply leading to desertification, reduced food production and a major human die off.
* Reduction of top soil leading to desertification, reduced food production and a major human die off.
* Lack of fresh water caused by changing rainfall and reduced alpine glaciers.
I’m sure there are more. Any combination of these types of factors will also likely be somewhat bad for humanity. I think the huge overpopulation in the world today will not be a problem for much longer. Whether we will solve the problem ourselves or have it solved for us remains to be seen. I’m betting on the more painful latter scenario.
I suspect the 1990 baseline has a different reason than random chance, just like how they keep comparing climate data based on the coldest year.
#30 – MikeN,
Well, if you find a hidden motive in picking 1990, let us all know. I, for one, can’t imagine what difference it would make what year they picked as long as they picked the correct percentage by which to drop emissions so that the final number comes out the same.
Peak U.S. fuel efficiency for autos was in 1986. 1990 may be a year before the auto manufacturers discovered the light truck loophole and began pushing SUVs on consumers who didn’t actually want trucks, at least until the overwhelming truck advertising took hold in our feeble minds.
#32, Loser,
Gee, that list sounds like some pretty good ideas. Maybe the best run, wealthiest, and happiest countries around have followed most of those recommendations.
BTW, the issue is alternative, green sources of energy. Not the traditional fossil fuel and hydro electric generation.
Let’s take the first point. Nationalize our natural resources. Hey why not? They belong to all of us. But the might nimrods like the Leibertarians think “private enterprise” can somehow extract them more efficiently. What we really have are the private corporations not caring about how they get their coal or ore to the detriment of the rest of the nation. We call it “raping our natural resources”.
#33, And that is why you are Poison Twin.
32–LL==that is an excellent list. Just add healthcare and oil to the list and “we coulda been a contender.”
I guess the repugs have had their hands full for years making sure all kinds of good ideas have not seen the light of day.
Just what is the LIEBERTARIAN position on “free” enterprise? Interesting mix/intermingling of issues there what with private vs public ownership of:
1. Power Grid
2. Power Sources
Much of the inefficiencies of government run anything are minimal compared to free market fraud. There were no Enron entities motivated to defraud the State of California when the State of California ran the energy grid/sources.
Do LIEBERTARIANS prefer the free market providing electricity at 12 cents a kilowatt when the government can do it for 10 cents?? Is the notion that you “freely pay” the 12 cents but the 10 cents is forced out of you at gunpoint???
Haw, Haw. LIEBERTARIANS.