Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Insanity rules
This is the Waxman-Markey Bill, going through Congress (House of Representatives) on the last day of business before the 4 July recess. Minority leader Boehmer mounted a robust counter but a Republican amendment was defeated. The final vote was 219 to 212. The Bill passes to the Senate.
The response from Marc Morano says it all.
This passage of this bill does not signify any great "green revolution" or "growing" climate "awareness" on the part of Congress. Instead, the methods and manner that the Pelosi-led House achieved final passage, represents nothing more than unrestrained exercise of raw political power, arm-twisting, intimidation and special interest handouts.
The House of Representatives passed a bill it did not read, did not understand. A bill that is based on crumbling scientific claims and a bill that will have no detectable climate impact (assuming climate fear promoters are correct on the science and the bill is fully implemented – both implausible assumptions).
Proponents of the bill made spectacular claims in their efforts to impress the urgency of the bill on their colleagues. Democratic Congressman G.K. Butterfield reported claim that the bill "will literally save the planet" reveals just how out of touch scientifically, politically and economically many of the bill's supporters have become.
To illustrate just how delusional some of the supporters of the climate bill have become, imagine if in 1909 the US Congress passed a bill attempting to predict climate, temperature and the energy mix powering our national economy in the year 2000. Any such attempt would have been ridiculed, but somehow in 2009, attempting to control the economy and climate of the year 2100 is seen as reasonable by many.
Insanity rules.
UPDATE: Have a look at Watts up with that and especially the comments. Particularly noteworthy is the observation that the popular US media was focused entirely on the Michael Jackson death, while the progress of this Bill went almost unreported.
COMMENT THREADFriday, June 26, 2009
Not benefits - but costs
Its has been said before, many times, but now we have a US think-tank, the Beacon Hill Institute, saying it: "green jobs are a cost not a benefit."
The researchers have looked at a number of influential studies, including the UNEP report on "Green Jobs: Towards Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World," and find that they are "critically flawed".
Says Paul Bachman, director of research at the Beacon Hill Institute, "Contrary to the claims made in these studies, we found that the green job initiatives reviewed in each actually causes greater harm than good to the American economy and will cause growth to slow."
The BHI study itself remarks that, if the green job is a net benefit it has to be because the value the job produces for consumers is greater than the cost of performing the job.
This argument is never made in any of the studies examined. Thus co-author of the BHI study, David G. Tuerck, notes that "these studies are based on arbitrary assumptions and use faulty methodologies to create an unreliable forecast for the future of green jobs."
He adds, "It appears these numbers are based more on wishful thinking than the appropriate economic models, and that must be taken into consideration when the government is trying to turn the economy around based on political studies and the wrong numbers."
Closer to home, Poland's Solidarno trade union is warning that some 800,000 jobs across Europe will be wiped out following the adoption of EU climate change legislation last year.
This is from Jaroslaw Grzesik, deputy head of energy at Solidarno, who is in fact referring mainly to Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic - although he says Germany, the UK and Scandinavia will also suffer.
The problem here is their reliance on coal for electricity production.
where the requirement to reduce CO2 emissions or buy pollution credits on the European carbon market, will push coal industries to relocate to countries where they are not regulated.
"In Poland, production will move away to Ukraine, a few kilometres away from our borders," Grzesik predicts, deploring the fact that the Polish government and the European had provided "no analysis" of the impact of the EU's climate legislation on industry delocalisation.
He also pours cold water on the notion that job cuts would be offset by the creation of new "green jobs". His estimate is that there will be 800,000 job losses for the whole of the EU, whereas the best estimate for new jobs is 200,000.
"In Europe, without a doubt, it is a problem," said Philippe Herzog, a French economist and founder of Confrontations Europe. "We have not found a balance yet between the definition of European objectives [on climate change] and the implications for jobs."
But then the objective never was balance, or indeed new jobs. The economic illiteracy expressed in the UNEP report surely cannot be real – no one can be that stupid as to believe that wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs and replacing them with a smaller number is a good thing. Or can they?
COMMENT THREADLet battle commence
Recalling the recent defence debate in the Commons, when, at one time there were only twelve MPs in the chamber of which only one was a Labour backbencher, it is encouraging to note that the much-needed debate on our defence capabilities is nevertheless under way.
In this respect, The Daily Telegraph is to be applauded for leading the way, with a long feature by Thomas Harding, responding to the speech by General Sir David Richards at RUSI.
More on Defence of the Realm.
Saturday, 27 June 2009
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