Partisan Acrimony Is Stalling Cap-and-Trade in the Senate

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If wind, solar, and alternative energies could deliver the goods in terms of cheap, renewable energy, the Chinese would be using them. They are an emerging economy just building their infrastructure. Instead, they've got 1200 new coal plants on the books to build.

Brook of IN 2:23PM August 05, 2010

Obama says obamacare will save big bucks and help the people.

Why the 4 year wait for all the savings and the help ?

Could it be that it is not true ? Full effect after Presidential election. Gee great health care would make him a shoe in for second term. Make Congress packed with democrats.

Bill Hedges of MO 5:02PM July 21, 2010

The comments posted here are the reason we will never pass a meaningful tax or cap on carbon. Yes, you are right, the government and Obama want to destroy jobs, our planet and our economy. That makes SO much sense. What a great way to get reelected.

Leaving that science fiction posted in the comments above and moving back to reality, as a business person the UNCERTAINTY of climate change, energy prices, energy supply, and future legislation that may restrict carbon emissions does in fact hurt business, jobs, investment, and growth. Thus, if the US, like Europe, passes a meaningful cap and trade or tax on carbon, it in fact will increase energy prices (by design, by the way), and spurn growth in energy efficiency, innovation, create new jobs, and end the uncertainty our economy currently faces. It may even spurn a whole new generation of industries and businesses that help us transition to a more stable energy economy, in the way Silicon Valley grow up around the internet. That is a future I want a part of.

Aaron of CA 2:10PM July 21, 2010

I heard this week that China has just passed the US as the world’s largest energy user. There have been energy savings in the US, but one reason is all of the jobs that were in the US that now are now in China. So now to get a warm feeling in the heart of Al Gore we are going to try and pass laws that will increase energy costs and send more jobs overseas to a country that has less regulation than we do. And if I hear green jobs one more time I am going to scream. I believe it was Spain that found for every so called green job that was created, two other jobs were lost. So is Cap and Trade to help the environment or one more Obama plan to drive our economy further in the ditch, as destroying the economy more seems to be the only thing he is good at.

This administration is going to kill our economy, and till the end say it Bush’s fault.

By the way right now Al Gore is thinking how he got a bunch of idiots to watch and believe his movie about how global warming was going to melt the polar ice caps raise the ocean level, put miles of shoreline under water, sell carbon credits (and who knows what those even are?) make $100,000,000, and then use $9,000,000 of the money idiots made him to buy a beach front home. Sounds like he is really worried about rising water levels doesn’t it.

khwal of GA 8:00AM July 21, 2010

Thank God this immense tax increase socialist agenda tool is stalled.

gail of PA 10:37PM July 20, 2010

The reason that climate change theories can be considered a religion is that like many old religions, climate change theory is based on a social and governmental agenda which will distort facts to meet its ends.

Wasn't that fun. Let's do it again sometime. Until then, happy "parroting".

R.L. Schaefer of CA 10:36PM July 20, 2010

Why not “parroting FOX” . Far, far ahead of other news media. People like Fox.

Prove what he said is wrong. Can’t ?

Science does not agree.

Yeah, and thin ice at poles will flood the earth. Well it happened and it didn't happen.

Gore said he would not profit from climate change or global warming whatever it is. He made $100's of millions off it.

His film has to carry a disclaimer in England by Court order.

He went to Congress about warming and Congress man proved Gore's personal house had big energy usage on the grid.

Bush home in Texas has energy saving equipment.

Go figure.

Teddy stopped wind mills because he could see them from his house with binocular.

Climate changed long before man…

Bill Hedges of MO 10:12PM July 20, 2010

The reason that climate change theories can't be considered a religion is that unlike religion, climate change theory is based on science.

steve of IL 8:28PM July 20, 2010

It is plain that Environmentalism, and its cousin, "Climate Change" has evolved into Neo-Pantheism - Simply an old religion with a new set of clothes. These new religions are particularly appealing to progressive elitists, communists and socialists as they provide instruments of control through their dogmas of "social justice",cap and trade, global warming, green jobs etc.

For decades liberals struggled against reality to build a wall of separation between church and state. These progressive humanists toiled endlessly expanding its shadow over the land. The knights of the ACLU and their liberal men-at-arms (uh-oh, a p.c. boo-boo alert - of course I mean to include Rad-Fems as "men-at-arms", after all, the Earth Goddess is ah... a "goddess") manned the great wall and were ever vigilant against the threat of Christianity. Then one day they spied a giant, green horse, bedecked with flowers and cute, fuzzy animals and singing birds outside the wall. Charmed by the innocent and soothing sounds, they threw open the gates and welcomed the Gaian Horse of Pantheism inside the walls. Slowly, our stalwart protectors have themselves been seduced and transformed into intolerant, religious zealots - the very thing they once feared.

Neo-Pantheism controls politicians, the media, courts, schools and the bureaucracies of government. Unfortunately, it is far too late to rid ourselves of, what has become, our "State Religion". It has swept through our states, cities and towns like a whirlwind over the past 3 decades... Its propaganda and intolerant dogma are now accepted as truth and science. Global Warming - a man caused hell - used to coerce and whip us into submissive, penitent servants of Government and nature.

Their creed is simple;

"All forms of human endeavor are evil.

Man's only purpose is to serve the Earth and the governments that protect her.

The only permissible interaction between man and nature is restoration, conservation, preservation and veneration."

I see vast areas of our nation’s oceans and shoreline being closed, wild places ringed with gates, “Closed” signs and fences - Barriers that keep us, we the people, confined to our prisons of concrete and asphalt. Of course, exceptions are made for government officials and scientific acolytes of Gaia - they are trained in the theology of Environmentalism and know how to interact with the Nature Goddess and so are allowed inside these sanctuaries.

Energy production, mining, food production, industry, transportation - even civilization itself, is considered an insult and injurious to Gaia.

Our future reveals a sterile veneration of nature - without actually living in, or experiencing it. A dull, sullen time when gray, grim, flaccid people worship “climate models", worry about how to mitigate their perceived sins against nature, consider their carbon footprint their soul and seek the indulgences of "cap and trade" to erase their "eco-sins".

Welcome to our “Green, New World Order."

.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 8:19PM July 20, 2010

and democrats fear of Nov. elections has nothing to do with it I suppose .

Hunter of WI 6:37PM July 20, 2010

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Matthew Dallek

Matthew Dallek

Matthew Dallek, a visiting scholar at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, teaches history and politics at the University of California Washington Center. He is author of The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics. He worked as a speechwriter for House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt and Federal Communications Commission Chairman William E. Kennard.

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