Stoopid Stuff

Genuinely Stoopid Stuff

Waxman Markey.

Simple Cap and Trade.

Glenn Beck says it's either ignorant or treason.

Broun calls it a "Hoax".

Gingrey says its just the same as North Korea and Iran.

Boehner says it will cost millions of jobs, Bishop says passage will be "tragic" as the death of Michael Jackson.

Really? Do any of these idiots know what they're talking about? Or perhaps more to the point, how stupid do they think we are? Yes, I understand they're counting on the disinterest and ignorance of the American electorate, but at what point will they actually get called on their lies and demagoguery?

Underneath the economic complexity of it's implementation, this is what we're arguing about: Industries that burn a great deal of fossil fuels have, up until this point, had access to a critical public resource for zero cost. The atmosphere. Although the environment belongs equally to all human beings, and it's degradation carries the same costs for all in terms of health and quality of life, it has for centuries been used as a dumping ground by industries around the globe. And yet the costs of this resource, upon which these industries depend for their profits, has never been valued, and the costs to human society have never been assessed. For global business to assume this resource has no value and to utilize it at no cost is ridiculous, and outside of the most basic understanding of how business works.

A so-called "Cap and Trade" bill, at it's root, is nothing more than a methodology for factoring the costs of the "negative externalities" of burning fossil fuels, while at the same time seeking a way to implement these costs without either excessively hurting the profitability of these industries and protecting consumers from the cost increases.

Of COURSE there are costs associated with recognizing the costs of greenhouse gas pollution, and while a Cap and Trade program does a pretty good job of mitigating the costs to both business and the poorest segment of the population, this isn't a sudden decision to "tax" greenhouse gas polluters. It merely brings the cost of burning fossil fuels into a more realistic realm, where it is not artificially subsidized with the lives and livelihoods of the human population of the planet.

And suddenly, when you have a realistic cost structure around burning fossil fuels and dumping the waste into the atmosphere where it has global consequences, other forms of energy, from renewables like wind and solar to alternatives like nuclear are not anywhere near as comparatively expensive and a more realistic mix of power generation can be implemented that is substantially less destructive to the future of mankind.

Waxman Markey isn't a solution. It doesn't begin to address the problem in the US, let alone globally. But it's a start. And the fact that American business is so greedy and so shortsighted that they are frantically opposing, along with their republican lackeys, the implementation of even a watered - down and limited beginning is appalling. They are essentially demanding the right to destroy the ability of the planet to sustain human life on it's current scale in order to ensure their own short - term profits.

I cannot even conceive of a deeper evil...

posted by mikey @ 5:49 PM