It started as a typical Monday morning. A group of my limousine liberal friends were sitting in Starbucks, sipping $6 lattes and sifting through the NY times society page complaining how big corporations are destroying the world. (Please not the tremendous irony of sitting in Starbucks and bitching about big corporations). Moments later a historic announcement was made be the US Climate Action Partnership. Ten CEO’s of Fortune 500 Corporations, including three utilities, looked Washington DC right in the eyes and said , “Deal with it!! Deal with it NOW!!!”
Monday January 21st these chief executives, with the support of four environmental groups strongly encouraged congress and the White House to impose a market based caps on carbon emissions. This proposed cap and trade systems will cut greenhouse gas emissions 60% to 80% from current levels with interim targets at 5, 10 and 15 years.The cap and trade approach will not only give private industry the flexibility to cut emissions it will also unleash the capital and inspire the creativity for the private sector to solve this world problem. America will also continue to reduce our dangerous dependency on foreign oil as well as boost our global economic competitiveness by channeling investments into new technologies.
History teachers will not mention them in public schools; they will not be written about in our history books but on January 21, 2007, ten corporate leaders (majority of them registered Republicans) started an environmental revolution. Jeff Immelt, of GE, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, Peter Darbee, of PG & E and the rest of the corporate partners of US CAP join the ranks of Washington, Jefferson, Hancock and the rest of the countries founding fathers as leaders figures that changed the course of history forever.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, Eco-Business Strategies, Oil and Gas . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
I’m sorry but until someone explains why we had global cooling from 1940 - 1970 while the “evil” CO2 was rising I find it hard to believe the hype around CO2 driven global warming. My Mayor Bloomberg is a registered Republican, that means nothing.
Republicans can be just as ignorant about science as liberals. (As this posting and article demonstrate)
Carbon caps on output will hurt the economy no matter who imposes them.
If you want less CO2 in the air then propose CO2 sequestering.
Thats how we are able to still generate 60%+ of our electricity with COAL, you know the really nasty black mostly carbon fuel and yet emit less CO2 today from coal power plants than at any point in history. We generate it but don’t let it out to play. While we can’t add a sequestering muffler to a car, we can and should build huge sequestering plants to remove CO2 from the atmosphere since the technology is mature and cheap. Put A 5 cent a gallon tax of gas to pay for it and we can burn all the hydrocarbons we want.
Yes, we should reduce our foreign oil dependence but capping CO2 is not the sane way to accomplish that.
January 26th, 2007 at 1:59 am
After a good review of the Global Warming Controversy on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Existence_of_a_consensus
I find that there is at least some degree of POSSIBILITY of human-caused global warming. And if so, then shouldn’t humanity bear at least an equal degree of responsibility?
I think perhaps the “burn all the hydrocarbons we want” mentality is a red flag for rampant unchecked excess that we will have to face up to soon in the loom of peak oil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
January 26th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I so love the ego of “environmentalist” who believe that little old us are going to effect the whole of the world. I grew up in the 70’s listening to the “dire” warnings of global cooling (ice age) they all screamed and now my kids are growing up listening to “dire” warnings of global warming (hells fire), I have to wonder which shall it be when my grandchildren are growing up? I believe of course that we should have a policy where by factories, cars are emitting less crap in the air but that would be because Asthma is on the rise, I think humans are more at risk then “mother earth”, ego, ego ego
January 26th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Bryan,
Wikipedia ? ok what does Wikipedia say about the global cooling from 1940 - 1970 ?
I don’t disagree that global ground temperture measurements have not risen in the last 100 years …
I don’t think that CO2 has no effect on raising temperatures … (I will state that its pretty hard to prove higher CO2 raises temperatures, see 1940 - 1970)
I do know that the last time the precautionary principle (i.e. stop all activity that has the POSSIBILITY of possible harm) was applied by enviromentalists and their government enablers DDT was effectively banned.
I know that the bad science that banned DDT has killed (thru Malaria) tens of millions of my fellow human beings and destroyed the quality of life for hundreds of millions more.
I think the REAL harm cause by the good intentions of enviromentalists killed more people than the H guy and Stalin combined.
They should be held accountable not for what they intended but for what they have done.
I believe it is people like you that should think twice before suggesting an economically destructive solution to a poorly understood and complex issue. Thats my precautionary principle.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
*** CORRECTION to above ***
I don’t disagree that global ground temperture measurements have risen in the last 100 years …
January 26th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Why is it necessary for Jim Coleman to make this a partisan political issue? As far as I am concerned, the titans of big corporations are apartisan and anational. They will support any party that furthers the interests of their corporations. They are not loyal to this country, only to their profits. This has been the case for decades. Remember it was the Clinton administration that waived CFTC regulations which allowed ENRON to run amok. History shows that when government says its going to regulate an industry, the titans of the industry fight it. When the government gets serious, these same people climb onboard and “help” the government craft the regulations. The result is that the regulations are written so as to entrench the existing businesses and the manner in which they conduct business and make it extremely difficult for the little guy to get into or stay in the business. This has happened time and again since the inception of state utility commissions and the federal ICC. Log on to any federal regulatory agency web site and check out proposed regulations. Everybody with a financial stake lobbies on one side or the other depending on whether the new law costs or makes money for them. This is why any laws or treaties regulating or limiting carbon emissions are bad. Russia and Red China have already figured out how to make a ton of money from Kyoto. So called American businesses will simply move their factories to countries which are allowed to emit carbon. The same amount of carbon will go into the atmosphere and we will not have jobs.
January 26th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Jeff Carlson: what does Wikipedia say about the global cooling from 1940 - 1970
It’s in the article. The article is a collaboration of people on both sides of the fence. I highly suggest everybody read it for the most clear and objective summary of the entire issue.
I understand that there’s no proof to global warming, but there’s a possibility that we are causing it. The point is we wear seatbelts because of a possibility of a car wreck, right? It’s not a huge change in our lifestyle to put on a seatbelt everymorning just as it wouldn’t be huge burden to the economy to make some small cutbacks in energy consumption.
Rightmom: …but that would be because Asthma is on the rise.
Exactly. That’s ONE problem of many in the realm of health hazards due to air pollution. What i’m saying is that this is just one branch of a multiple branched problem called Fossil Fuel Dependancy. And like any dependancy, what happens when the supply runs out? Read about Peak Oil (another branch of the problem) in the link I posted above. Basically current consumption rates will deplete the earth’s oil supply within one lifetime. Talk about economically destructive! An estimated 70% of the 7 billion people on earth would die if oil stopped flowing today. Who’s gonna be held accountable for that?
January 26th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Bryan,
We wear seatbelts because if we have an accident the possibility of severe injury is KNOWN to he high if not wearing a belt.
Nobody knows what will happen if global temps rise 2 degrees. They make alot of guesses many of which fail to prove out in the near term when measured against the real world.
Apples and oranges comparison … we don’t really know if CO2 is responsible and we don’t really know if 2 more degrees will do more harm than good.
Yes if we ran out tommorrow we would be in a world of hurt.
So what are you suggesting ? Husband what little we have left ? One lifetime ? Is that an American lifetime or an African lifetime ? Weren’t we supposed to be out of oil already ? And out of food …
We have enough coal and shale oil in the ground to power our cars with gas for 200 years. Thats one long lifetime.
So I guess you are suggesting electric cars powered by electricity from nukes … because I know you don’tthink that solar or wind or ethanol can begin to generate enough power …
I agree completely … of course since it will take liberals 20-30 years to allow America to actually build any nukes I suggest we keep driving the cars we have and build the nukes and batteries we don’t so we can all stop worrying yet again about the coming “end of oil” …
January 27th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Global warming could turn out to be a complete farce. There are preeminent scientists who believe the warming and cooling periods on earth as well as the other planets in the solar system are caused by the increase or decrease of solar flares on the sun.
Simply google Sun & global warming and there are plenty of articles that support this hypothesis. Certainly this argument has more validity and offers a greater explanation for the earth’s warming and cooling cycles over the centuries than the current CO 2 from fossil fuels arguement. Simply because CO 2 from fossil fuels does not explain any other warming period in history and they are too numerous to list.
The problem is those that scream the loudest get heard. Those scientists that scoff at the current global warming theories have their credentials questioned and are intimidated by those that demand it fact.
As for the cap and trade approach, it is a scam that will be lining certain pockets, probably those who posture it as a solution. It leads to arbitrary payments enforced by government, but the beneficiary is usually some murky group with connections. A good example would be the current state of wetlands mitigation in the U.S., which is a a complete fraud, in my opinion. It operates like this, you own a piece of land, you decide to build a home, uh-oh problem there is a puddle on that land that the State or Local Government has designated as wetlands. You can solve this problem, make a payment to such and such land bank and they will restore a portion of their land to comply with what was once native vegatation! How the heck is that a solution! You will also find that members of these local land use committees live in what are established environmentally sensitive lands, with an alterior motive that the land near them is never developed and push Government agencies to purchase the land by them, so they have it all to themselves and the value of their land increases. I have seen this hypocrisy first hand.
How will this play out with fossil fuels? Not sure, but the few will have their hands in the pockets of the many!
January 27th, 2007 at 6:12 am
The fossil fuels we burn were once plants. The plants were once CO2, water, some minerals and sunlight. In other words, the CO2 we are emitting was in the atmosphere once upon a time by nature’s hand and the Earth survived. The Earth is always warming or cooling. Global warming brought us the dinosaurs, Vikings and the Dust Bowl and in turn global cooling brought wooly mamoths, drove out the Vikings and gave us the 70’s. In my opinion this alarm over global warming is just another attempt by New Age socialists to raise the standard of living in the 3rd world by lowering our standard of living. I agree with Rightmom on global warming.
Rightmom seems concerned about asthma. Is increasing air pollution causing a rise in asthma? In 1900 businessmen would bring a clean suit to the office because the air was so dirty from all the coal being burned and from horse manure dust that the suit they were wearing became dirty just going to work. It would seem that the air has actually become cleaner since then. Pollution from cars has been reduced drastically and factories are simply vanishing from this country. Take a walk through any cemetary and look at grave sites from circa 1900. It is quite striking how many graves are filled with dead children and adults who barely made it to middle age. A child dying now is tragic but relatively rare. Back then it was routine. The problem with enacting pollution controls is that the environmentalists and EPA bureaucrats belive that any human activity is destroying Earth and this destruction must be stopped at any cost. I do not have a problem with pollution control per se, but the question must be asked: What do you want to accomplish and how much are you willing to pay? It must be realized that the cost of mitigating pollution rises asymtopicaly with the amount of reduction. Cars are a perfect example. For a few hundred dollars more we got catalytic converters and air pumps which significantly reduced pollution. Now we have OBD II which costs thousands of dollars more plus millions more in NRE which makes less and less of a reduction. Was this worth the cost? I recently spent $100 for a silver dollar sized electronic part for my daughter’s car ignition system. $100 would have bought the entire ignition system in the days of breaker points. I wont even go into how bigh business uses government regulation to throttle competition or create markets for themselves.
As to Bryan, I have read Peak Oil and have heard the “whats the harm in playing it safe” argument before. Oil is not just going to suddenly run out. As it becomes scarcer, prices will rise and consumption will fall and other fuels and technologies which become more cost effective will replace it. This happened to the railroads when they burned wood, and again when they switched from coal to oil. Chronic coal shortages caused by striking miners forced a huge segment of home owners to switch to oil heat. And now we have an airline looking at fueling its planes with ethanol. CAFE laws and such are counterproductive because they delay the inevitible. Of far greater importance is the fact that we buy our oil from people who want to kill us.
As to the play it safe argument, if mankind had always followed that strategy we would still be living in caves. For years people have screamed how we are destroying Earth and us with it. Yet we manage to live longer, live better, invent technology which was unfathomable just decades before and learn countless new things in science. Show me proof that we are causing global warming, what harm, if any, it will cause and then I will be concerned. The only way we will solve our energy and pollution problems is to continue to produce enough wealth to be able to afford scientific research. This can only be accomplished if we are a free and educated people in a free market economy.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Digs into the glaciers have revealed that thousands of years ago, global conditions were rather similar to what they are today. This is not to say there were similar temperatures. What it means is that there were similar weather patterns. Weather throughout history, as revealed by the glaciers, was rather violent and rampant, exactly the same as it is today. Completely unpredictable and unstable. In fact, most recent digs have uncovered that the last ice age was not twenty thousand years long, as previously believed, but merely one twentieth of that, only one thousand years. The transition periods into and out of the global ice age were fast, not slow, taking less than a human life time. Back then, there was no human factor involved, and yet the pattern continues today. As my Baba said when we talked about this, “Anyone who thinks humans could possibly affect the world’s weather is flattering themselves.”
January 27th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Another thing that must be noted is that synthetic fossil fuels are under development, and may very well replace real fossil fuels when they run out. The synthetic variety will probably be more efficient and less polluting.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
We must do our best to care for the planet on which we live. Having said that, does anyone remember the book “The Coming Ice Age” from the mid 70’s? What happened to the “ice age” that we were to be in for? Someone failed to recognize that natural events are cyclical. The temperatue goes up, the temperature goes down. That’s just the way it is. (If everything in nature were linear that would be strange.) To pin “global warming” on GM and Ford is just nuts. When it is cooler in 30 years will they be given the credit?
January 28th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
As a librarian . . .
let’s remember that Wikipedia is NOT peer reviewed, nor should it be considered a research-grade information source.
It certainly has its place in the modern world - however, anybody can publish anything on Wikipedia at any time, and we need to bear that in mind when we get our information there.
For information about the way Wikipedia publishes information, read below:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Peer_review_and_the_Wikipedia_process
January 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
From the WSJ, talking about the CEO’s …
http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrasselpw/?id=110009578
What a shocker, their grandstanding had nothing to do with moral reasons … its just a simple con job … just like all the greens …
January 30th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Wow. There are a good many other factors at play in the warming trend. Consider how the substantial decline in the atmospheric transparency, or reflectivity. No, credits and caps mean MORE money shaken out of the already too expensive factor. A wealth transfer of the most obnoxious kind. Are you serious when you say these entities are “free” to engage in this..whatizzit? Sequestration is the only viable method presently for stopping or severely curtailing carbon emmissions and recognizes the uncomfortable reality that nearly all our energy sources contain carbon. An entity should only pay for that carbon released irresponsibly into the atmosphere, rather than subsidize some third-world economy to do it as they please..There are a plethora of unintended consequences in the package. Many times we should remember that of “ten troubles approaching-nine will fall in the ditch”- Government intervention should ALWAYS be the last resort.Especially here.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Why hasn’t someone addressed the fact that the earth has tilted 1 degree on it’s axis. Plus 30 years of sun spot activity????? It affects the whole globe.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:40 am
(Is it “All” or just “Most of”) You are forgetting about Logistical Grace, which doctrine opines that until Yahweh is through with this earth, there will be water to drink and air to breathe, and hey, maybe even a bite to eat (sic), i.e. sustenance. Premise being that we’re not nearly as important as we often perceive ourselves to be, and if that is true of a hang-glider smashing his face into a sharp rock wall, well then maybe it’s true of us too.
“Peace, Out” y’all. Be safe.