Tonight We Get Environmental...

With all the Cap & Tax and Cap & Trade talk fluttering around I figured this would be a good time to put in my 2 cents (plus an additional $.50 to cover Obama's Freedom of Expression Tax).

First a little environmentalist anecdote. My wife and I were in traffic the other day and scrawled across the back of an SUV (with only one person in the vehicle) was the phrase "South American Oil is destroying the Rain Forests"...or something to that effect. Think about that for a second.

It gave us a good chuckle.

Environmentalists like to spout off about how we're "destroying the world". It's one of their favorite slogans. "Shame on you! You're destroying the world!"

Take every aerosol can currently in existence and start spraying. Put every single factory on full-tilt production until the chimneys are belching smoke. Crank up every car in the world and gun the engine until the tank is empty. Guess what? The world won't even blink an eye.

We're not destroying the world. We're just making it really difficult to continue living on it. The world could care less what we do during our brief stay on it's outer crust.

Global warming is a good one. We've been told over an over how our emmisions are causing the world to heat up. This, despite the fact that we've been in a cooling trend for the last 15 years and have just had two years of extremely harsh winters.

By the way, take some time to go through the article I linked above. There is some interesting reading in there. All of which can be researched for authenticity.

Now on to Cap and Trade.

What this silly bit of legislation does is allow companies to buy their way out of the emissions standards set up by the EPA by purchasing waivers from the government. Buy enough waivers to cover your emissions and it's business as usual.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these waivers to go around. They go to the highest bidders first in an online auction. Those who can't afford them must refit their facilities to comply with the government regulations or be seriously fined. For private industries this means they have to cover these increased costs through some other means. Higher prices, layoffs or a reduction in quality of their goods. Many will choose to take the less expensive option and relocate to a more forgiving country.

For companies that provide energy (electricity, natural gas, home heating oil, etc) relocating isn't an option, so they are forced to drastically increase their rates. This is felt first by the individual consumers in higher electric bills and home heating costs. The trickle effect is that the manufacturers...even those with waivers to cover their emissions...have to pay much more for their energy, thereby causing an increase in the price of their product, increased layoffs or moving their operations overseas.

Yeah, a 50-90% increase in your home electric bill is pretty staggering, but imagine how much it costs to power the average auto plant or grocery store. I've personally seen electric bills for relatively small factories that top $100,000 a month.

On a related note, hospitals are huge consumers of electricity. Is there room in Obama's Health Care Plan to cover these increased costs?

All of this to "help the environment" and "reduce our carbon footprint". You can see that it really does nothing at all, environmentally speaking. The environment is just as screwed as ever. More people (or carbon-based life forms to you Trekkies) in the US are without jobs. The economy sinks even further. More people line up for the government bailout.

It's a vicious cycle he's trying to put into effect. One that will surely bring about the financial and political collapse of our nation within our lifetime.

Hmm...maybe we can all cross the border into Mexico. Turn-about is fair play after all.