Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Real Cost of Going Green


The next extremely important step towards significantly reducing global warming and its effects will soon take place on the floor of the US Senate.  They will debate and then vote on the cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act.  The House passed the bill late spring and now the senators, some of who still think that global warming is a hoax, will engage in a very contentious debate. 


Unfortunately we had to witness and listen to this summer’s health care embarrassing circus like “debate” performed on the Senate Floor, in town hall meetings and blasted on talk radio.  The President’s speech to both houses of Congress finally cooled off some of the nonfactual hate filled possibly racist rhetoric spewed continually in all possible venues.  For the debate on “greening of America” the confused will switch their fear laden protests of governmental takeover and death panels to horrific job loss and economic collapse.  

greenhomexpress.com

Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck will lead the hysteria despite having lost their war supporting the monopolistic medically ignorant grossly unfair health insurance companies. (Unfortunately I have first hand knowledge of this since my daughter is autistic; would be easier to get paid care if she had  self induced heart problems due to poor eating habits than her externally caused or genetically based neurological disorder.)  


The real facts:  We have a “energy efficiency gap”, the amount of our consumption of fossil fuels does not increase our standard of living.  Some of us see the earth as a giant smorgasbord,  leaving half our uneaten food, energy, on our plate and then throwing it in the landfill.  We need to conserve more which automatically saves us more money.  The Congressional Budget office said this bill will only cost the average family $160 per year in 2020, $.44 per day.  Limbaugh and Beck keep citing a study that put the cost at $1767 per year.  But no amount of searching on the internet can produce that study but it doesn’t exist.  There is not going to be any world and/or US economic collapse, the facts just don’t support that catastrophic kind of thinking. 


When the economic argument proves fruitless the talk will most likely regress to the loss of personal freedom fears heard during the health care debate. I read a comment where one person thought he would be forced to drive a Prius and live in a tiny New York Style apartment, live like the Europeans.  Aside from the fact that if everyone who owns a car did drive one that maintained at least 45 mpg the environmental crisis level would be much lower no one is going to loose their choices of how they want to live.  The environmental costs will just directly be translated into the appropriate and fair economic costs.  Massive fossil fuel producers won’t continue to avoid paying for the environmental damage and for related health care costs due to pollution and pass it on to the consumer.  We will actually obtain more personal freedom from spending our money to better our lives and not the lives of the Board of Directors of XYZ oil company.


If the Waxman-Markey Act does not pass or if the Senate dilutes the final law we will all lose.  No one can hide from air and water pollution or the effects of global warming no matter how high their fence is or how far from the city you live.  We will all suffer. 


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