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?
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.
Why the hell do we put up with anyone who’s title (even if just for descriptive purposes) is Czar?
I say we treat all the US czars the same way the Bolsheviks did.
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.
#20, Loser,
Isn’t this what the Socialist Party Platform of 1928 wanted to do? We’re close now with the all the hydrodams and TVA and the like. Now they want to take over even more?
No, it is closer to what the Leibertarians, commies, and KKK want.
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.
#24, Poison Twin,
Isn’t this what the Socialist Party Platform of 1928 wanted to do? We’re close now with the all the hydrodams and TVA and the like. Now they want to take over even more?
No, it is closer to what the Leibertarians, commies, and KKK want.
ROTFLMAO.
I don’t think so, Scooter.
You must be really desperate for a win right now if you truly think those three go together.
Let’s look at the Socialist Party of 1928′s Platform. Pay particular attention to #2.
1. “Nationalization of our natural resources, beginning with the coal mines and water sites, particularly at Boulder Dam and Muscle Shoals.”
2. “A publicly owned giant power system under which the federal government shall cooperate with the states and municipalities in the distribution of electrical energy to the people at cost.”
3. “National ownership and democratic management of railroads and other means of transportation and communication.”
4. “An adequate national program for flood control, flood relief, reforestation, irrigation, and reclamation.”
5. “Immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all public works and a program of long range planning of public works … All persons thus employed to be engaged at hours and wages fixed by bona-fide labor unions.”
6. “Loans to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works and the taking of such other measures as will lessen widespread misery.”
7. “A system of unemployment insurance.”
8. “The nation-wide extension of public employment agencies in cooperation with city federations of labor.”
9. “A system of health and accident insurance and of old age pensions as well as unemployment insurance.”
10. “Shortening the workday” and “Securing to every worker a rest period of no less than two days in each week.”
11. “Enacting of an adequate federal anti-child labor amendment.”
12. “Abolition of the brutal exploitation of convicts under the contract system and substitution of a cooperative organization of industries in penitentiaries and workshops for the benefit of convicts and their dependents.”
13. “Increase of taxation on high income levels, of corporation taxes and inheritance taxes, the proceeds to be used for old age pensions and other forms of social insurance.”
14. “Appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all land held for speculation.”
#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.
# 35 bobbo said, “There were no Enron entities motivated to defraud the State of California when the State of California ran the energy grid/sources.”
Nope, just the legislature spending the state into BK. Enron was minor compared to that…
Paddy Zero==I’m not surprised. Can’t follow the point of a comment made. The issue here is who provides electricity better? Private Enterprise or the Government? To your tangential and irrelevant comment, imagine how bad off the State of California would be if Enron had run the entire state instead of just the energy supply?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California.27s_deregulation_and_subsequent_energy_crisis
Before passage of the deregulation law, there had been only one Stage 3 rolling blackout declared. Following passage, California had a total of 38 blackouts defined as Stage 3 rolling blackouts, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred mainly as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers.
# 37 bobbo said, “I’m not surprised. Can’t follow the point of a comment made.”
Here was a point YOU made.
booboo said, “Much of the inefficiencies of government run anything are minimal compared to free market fraud. ”
I simply pointed out that you were so wrong as to be laughable.
#38–Paddy Zero==do children cry when they see you coming?
# 39 bobbo said, “do children cry when they see you coming?”
No, only mindless, unthinking zombies like yourself.