The global warming debate continues. The Copenhagen Global Warming Summit is being held this week in Denmark and while world-renowned scientists still disagree on the effects, liberal extremists in Washington are working harder than ever to advance their own political agendas in its name.
Capitol Hill Democrats are now touting the federal “Cap and Tax” legislation as the newest solution to global warming. When you boil it down, “cap and tax” simply amounts to a federal energy tax. Since Texas produces and consumes more energy than any other state, our economy will be hit the hardest. As Texans, we need to remain vigilant to ensure that this legislation does not pass.
A June 26, 2009 opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Cap and Tax Fiction,” explains: “As the cap is tightened (in future years) ... the price of permits will skyrocket ... and the costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers ... The whole point of “cap and tax” is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station, but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.”
“Cap and tax” supporters are guilty of using the same extremist tactics as their counterparts in the “global warming” debate. Here are several excerpts from articles that show just how far those wishing to propagate this myth are willing to go.
From The Sunday Times, “Climate Change Data Dumped,” Nov. 29, 2009:
“Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.”
From The Telegraph, “Climate change: This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation,” Nov. 28, 2009:
“ ... the scandal revealed by the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit ...
Most incriminating of all are the e-mails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
… What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU e-mails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including (individuals) such as Dr. Mann himself … and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally, Dr. James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.”
From Wall Street Journal, “The Climate Science Isn’t Settled. Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted,” by Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nov. 30, 2009:
“At this point, there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.”
These are tough times for all Americans. We must make intelligent, well-reasoned decisions to support our energy policy in order to create a strong economic foundation for our future. We must not allow the politics of extremism to rule the debate. The soundness of our Texas economy is particularly threatened by the fallacious claims of the “global warming” and “cap and tax” alarmists.
u
State Representative Phil King represents House District 61 in the Texas House of Representatives, which includes Parker and Wise counties.
