What is his solution to the “problem” of global warming?

We need to alter the playing field with tax and fiscal polices… Developed countries have made this step with air and water pollution by enacting outright regulations and installing a cap and trade system.

Uh huh. So the new Energy Secretary has no plans on how to create new energy in the United States? Just more regulation and taxes on energy that we already have?

More:

Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work. “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.

The new Energy Secretary is not interested in energy independence. In the strictest sense of the word, he is looking to foster a new energy dependence– not a dependence on foreign suppliers, like in the past. No, Chu’s new energy plan is to socially-engineer the American people towards a further dependence on the government. The state will decide what kind of cars we drive and how close we live together.

The media is taking much enjoyment in pointing out that Obama disagrees with Chu on gas taxes. Its true. In the past, Obama has opposed a raise in the gas tax, but it is likely that his reasons were rooted in political pragmatism (remember gas prices in the summer?). But now that he’s got the top job, Obama can appoint ideologues like Chu to high-level positions in his cabinet and let them make all of the hard decisions for him.

In addition to wanting to dictate to oil companies what they should charge for their products, Mr. Chu has referred to coal powered energy as his “worst nightmare,” and has said that even clean-coal technologies will not be enough. “It’s not guaranteed we have a solution for coal,” he said.

Take a look at this graph of where our electricity came from in 2007. As you can see, coal power makes up about half of all of it. That’s a good thing; and Steven Chu wants a “solution” for it.

In summary:

President Obama can define his legacy in the first 100 days by laying the groundwork for a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions that is effective, efficient, equitable and enforceable. An effective, harmonized tax on C02 emissions must stabilize the growth of atmospheric concentrations of GHGs by no later than 2020. The tax must also be adjusted annually, by a global body, according to this objective.

I’m glad that I did not misunderstand Mr. Nader; for a moment I was concerned that he wanted the United States government to tax carbon emissions– I can take a small solace in knowing that under his plan, CO2 usage will be taxed by a foreign body that does not represent me. But don’t worry! You’ve heard of it; its called the United Nations! Who ever heard of “No Taxation Without Representation,” anyway?

Let’s get specific. What are your plans?

The most efficient way to apply a carbon tax is at a relatively small number of major carbon bottlenecks, which cover the lion’s share of GHGs. The key points where flows of carbon are the most concentrated include: trunk pipelines for gas, refineries for oil, railroad heads for coal, liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, cement, steel, aluminum and GHG-intensive chemical plants.

I’m not entirely sure, but what Nader is asking for here might be entirely without precedent. Nader is seriously suggesting that the United Nations send an army of bureaucrats into the United States. These men will busy themselves measuring the emissions of all of the above industries. They will then convene, most likely in secret, to decide exactly how high a tax they will impose on each industry, a figure which will be based on how much said industry has produced. This is something that Nader wants done every year.

In case you’re wondering what the goal of such a plan could possibly be, here’s this:

Nader’s final sentence:

If President Obama hits the ground running fast in the direction of a global carbon tax, he can usher in a new dawn that might finally make peace between man and climate.

Nader betrays himself. He views man and the environment in the same way that Karl Marx viewed the bourgeois and the proletariat. Oppressor, oppressed. There is nothing new about the environmentalist movement. Yesterday it was a Class Revolution, today it is the Green Revolution.

This is the new Marxism. These are the new Marxists.

]]> http://autonomy.blogivists.com/2008/12/05/the-inhumanity-ralph-nader-wants-a-global-carbon-tax/feed/ 0 http://autonomy.blogivists.com/2008/08/08/change-the-climate-change-debate-reality-is-not-a-democracy/ http://autonomy.blogivists.com/2008/08/08/change-the-climate-change-debate-reality-is-not-a-democracy/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:50:27 +0000 bpoi http://autonomy.blogivists.com/?p=103 I’m tired of the global warming debate in this country. It isn’t any fun at all. Nobody on either side of the argument knows how to properly discuss an issue, and I’m just about fed up.

First, let me be clear about what is being argued. The only thing still up for debate today, it seems, is how and why climate change is occurring. One side believes that global warming is occurring because of some natural force outside of man’s control, the other side believes that it is entirely man’s fault.

Now, pretend I’m the average American.

I’m not an expert on climatology; I really have no idea why global warming is occurring– I can’t be too sure if its happening at all. There are pundits and politicians on every side of me, yelling at me, telling me to take action, that its the biggest hoax in the history of mankind, that if I don’t agree I’m on par with Holocaust deniers. What am I supposed to believe? The whole issue just seems so political; who can I trust to be impartial? I can’t be called upon to know, or to think about it myself, thats for sure. So who do I turn to? Who knows? The scientists, of course!

But the scientists don’t agree either.

You are probably aware that in 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes released a study of peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003. She found that the majority of the work published during that period supported the conclusion that global climate change exists, and that it is man made.

What you probably did not know is that recently, Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte updated her research. From DailyTech:

Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, [Schulte] examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.

This is hardly a consensus, especially considering that of all the papers that were reviewed, only a “single one” accepted the view that climate change could lead to “catastrophic” results– the dominant view held by Al Gore liberals.

So even the experts don’t agree. In fact, most of them admit that they don’t even know.

So here’s my question: if the majority of scientists are undecided about climate change, how can folks be so gung-ho about diving into regulating industry and levying carbon taxes?

Let us quit obsessing over majorities and consensuses. Let’s slow down, take a deep breath, and remember that science has nothing to do with what percentage of people believe what. Just ask Galileo. We can chill out a little bit, and have a real debate about this issue; we can come to real conclusions– you know, scientific, objective ones…

Listen to both sides of the argument, and whichever one seems most rational to you, that is where you should throw your hat. Hear what the scientists have to say, but do not let them decide for you. Science has a long history of political motivation. Finally, if you listen diligently to both points of view within the scientific community and you believe that major catastrophe will occur if we do not act immediately, recognize that you are in a small minority within the scientific world. Recognize also that there are other ways of reducing the effects of said global warming without the need of such a vast reduction in carbon emissions.

Personally, I believe that the reason that we are experiencing climate change is because of the increase of sun spotting; I think that the problem is solar.

But hey, that’s me. What do you think?

There are other issues out there; issues that are more pressing, that affect our country and our world much more directly– like Iran’s nuclear program, or the fact that they’ve been launching test missiles capable of striking Israel. But so often I choose to write about the Environmentalist Movement over other things for a very specific reason, which is:

The choice to accept environmentalism or not is the choice between industry and inactivity, civilization and primitivism, comfortability and suffering; it is the choice between life and death. Many may disagree with this claim, citing the good intentions of the environmentalists: taking care of the earth couldn’t be bad, could it? After all, not all environmentalists are nut jobs like Eric Pianka, a noted ecologist who wants to kill off 90% of human life; most are in fact quite moderate, and simply believe that humans have a responsibility to look after the earth.

Such people are not evil, but they are misguided. They accept the two basic premises of environmentalism: that the environment is good because it is the environment, and that the smallest human interference in the natural ecological structure is a desirable goal. The logical conclusion of these premises, of course, is that human activity must be restricted as much as possible in order to prevent such interference. If you accept these premises, chances are good that you would not be in favor of a mass culling of the human population. The danger is that men like Pianka also accept them, and they desire to see their logical ends carried out. Since you’ve already accepted their premises, they can use the power of guilt to get you to accept a gradually more oppressive environmental policy. Case in point:

Yesterday, the leaders at the G8 Summit agreed to cut their countries’ carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a radically anti-industrial move that will dismember the economy and stunt the standard of living for the global population. No one can claim that such an act was motivated by anything other than a hatred for mankind. Last week, a measure was put up for conideration in the British Parliament that would institute a personal cap-and-trade policy for every resident of England. Was this act considered because its proponents love the earth, or because they hate humanity? You be the judge.

With the basic premises of environmentalism so common today, it won’t be long before such cap-and-trade proposals are made in the United States. Do you really believe that such a measure would be beyond the scope of a Barack Obama environmental policy? Maybe not now, but what about four years from now? This is why the environmentalism issue is so important to me.

But there is another reason I frequently choose environmentalism over other topics. Throughout history, the war against man’s productive faculty has been waged under the banner of countless different names and movements; tribalism, monarchism, feudalism– more recently communism, socialism, and fascism– and of course, there’s always been the monstrosity that is organized religion. All of these have been a part of an overarching war on Individualism and a hatred of humanity; environmentalism is no exception here– it is merely the newest leader in the same war, the latest manifestation of the same hatred. However, environmentalism is different from its ideological ancestors in one, very important way.

In the past, movements that sought to destroy humanity (the modern ones anyway) have disguised their hatred for man’s virtues, proclaiming them to be the immoral while holding up their own standards as the moral alternative. With the broad base of society accepting altruism, their unpracticeable moral code, they guilted people into embracing their own self-destruction in the name of the love of mankind. Environmentalism is different because it makes no attempt to disguise its contempt for humanity.

Now, I won’t run through my whole spiel on environmentalism again because I’ve already blogged on it and have stated my opposition to it in as clear terms as I can, both here and in other places. But I will say this:

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Nominee, has said that if elected, he would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. It is said that companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobile have made an “unfair profit, ” and that they should have to give the excess money that they made “back to the American people.” Obama himself has said:

“I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.”

Other liberals have spouted similar rhetoric. Here’s Hillary Clinton:

She wants to “take” their profits.

Obama and Hillary aren’t the only ones. Every Democrat in the Senate– as well as two Republicans– voted for such a windfall profits tax, which– thankfully– did not pass.

If you take away the windfall profits of oil companies, they will be unable to reinvest in new supply; they will be forced to slow their own production of crude oil. Where will they go for crude oil then? Ah, yes, the Mideast; where else? But buying their crude oil from the Mideast will be much more expensive than it would be if they were able to process it themselves. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to because Obama will have “taken” the money that they would need. But what does all of this mean for the average American?

As George Will notes in a video that is viewable here, Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just raise their prices, and the consumer pays them. Taxing away gas companies’ profits will only hurt the American consumer. That’s what happened in the 80’s under Carter’s profits tax, and it will happen again under a similar Obama tax– only this time it will be much worse. Why? Because this time around supply is being even further restricted by environmentalist congressmen–Democrats mostly. What exactly are they doing to restrict the supply of oil? First, a bit of history.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation that would have allowed oil production on a small fraction– less than one tenth of one percent– of ANWR. With this land designated for oil production, America could have produced an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. Such a measure would certainly have been a huge step toward relieving America of its dependence on foreign oil, but the bill was vetoed by Clinton. Why? The same reason that the Democratically controlled Congress opposes the same drilling in the present day– Environmentalism.

Democrats today want the same things they wanted in ‘95: A complete and permanent halt of all development on ANWR, as well as a ban on offshore drilling on the east and west coast of the United States. The men who draft such proposals talk about the devastating effects that such acts, if taken, would have on the affected ecosystems. Not only are these claims unfounded (offshore drilling has actually been fairly clean since the ’70s, and as I said above, the ANWR drilling in question would be over less than .01% of the reserved land, thus affecting little of the wildlife, if any), but it is my sincere belief that the men who make them do not believe what they themselves are saying, and their motives are sinister in nature.

Think hard about what the liberals in Congress actually want.

First, they want a huge windfall profits tax of at least 25% on an industry that already has 45% of its income taxed, an action that will cause a decrease in supply, a rise in demand, and ultimately, an increase in gas prices. Next, they want to ban oil exploration and drilling everywhere. But thats not all: liberals want heavier taxes on coal companies, as well as the continuation of a very heavy tariff on ethanol from Brazil, which is a de facto ban. And it doesn’t even stop there: most liberals, including ‘Bama, do not support nuclear energy, the cleanest, safest energy source known to man, because– guess why? Environmental hazards.

If Barack Obama is elected president, this kind of supply restriction will occur, and it will result in a kind of perfect storm for the American consumer. Over time, gas prices will hit an unimaginable level, and the American economy will be devastated. But just as always, the guilty parties will receive no blame. The blame will fall on “greedy corporations,” and like fuel onto a fire, more harmful restrictions will surely be put in place.

If liberal Congressmen actually wanted lower gas prices for Americans, they would take the opposite position on all of the above issues. But they don’t. Why not?? These men are not stupid; they are not misguided; they are elected officials; they all have been well educated, and have a significant amount of experience in the world. They know what they are doing. They want our gas prices to go higher. George Will put it well when he said:

“On the left in this country what they want is a manufactured scarcity so that government can have the rationale to ration [oil supplies], which gives the government what the left wants: an ever more minute supervision of our daily choices.”

And while this is what the left wants on the surface, it is only a means to an end, which is, ultimately: the destruction of all that is good. The Dems in congress hate the profits of the oil companies, not because they are evil, but because they are good. They hate the production of oil refineries and drilling for oil, not because those things represent ruin, as they claim, but because they represent production. They consider that which is good to be evil because it is good. Ayn Rand wrote about this view of life in her book, Atlas Shrugged:

They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

How can we defeat this kind of evil? As believers in Capitalism and the free market, we have historically put ourselves at a disadvantage. We must start believing that we are right, and that what we believe in is virtuous. We cannot win a fight in which we consider ourselves to be evil, and our opponent good.

We allow these men to escape from moral judgement by accepting that the cause that they say they fight for– environmentalism– is virtuous. As I have said before, to hold nature as an end in and of itself is not a moral position, it is an immoral one. All of that which is anti-mind is anti-life. By accepting the premise that environmentalism is a fundamentally positive ideal, we are giving them a moral sanction that they do not deserve. It is for this reason that we get candidates like John McCain, who compromise progress and pay lip service to “stewardship of creation.” McCain tentatively supports offshore drilling, but only recently, and only because it has become so politically convenient in the last few months.

Proclaim Capitalism to be your moral sanction, and that each man’s right to his own life is an absolute that cannot be superseded by any legislature. This is the truth they fear, but will never admit.

Tell it.

Liberty Tree sent Senator Herb Kohl an e-mail admonishing him to relinquish land for oil drilling that has been delegated by the government (without any constitutional authority) for the “National Wildlife Refuge,” thus stripping it of any productive use that it may have.

Liberals will often dismiss drilling on this land, which was stolen from us by the government for the sake of polar bears, as well as offshore oil drilling, on the grounds that it does not have enough resources in it to even put a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. I am tired of hearing this. They don’t know how much oil is on that land– no one knows; there are estimates that range from hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil per year to hundreds of millions. All that anyone can be sure of at this point, is that these men are artificially restricting our supply of crude oil.

Traditional conservatives and most libertarians view this as a mere political difference, just another case of dumbliberalitis.

I know better than that. The following is an excerpt from Senator Khol’s automated response to Liberty Tree’s email:

I oppose drilling for oil and gas in the ANWR because of the irreparable damage that would be done to its fragile ecosystem.

Senator Khol, it seems, is a true believer in environmentalism, a topic I blogged on just the other day. But that is not all! Kohl continues:

I co-sponsored Senator Lieberman’s (I-CT) bill, S. 2316, which was introduced on November 7, 2007 that would designate a portion of the ANWR as a wilderness, placing a permanent ban on development (italics mine)

Sounds to me like Senator Kohl is a humanity hater in the first degree. Heaven help us if we actually developed something– we might interfere with an ecosystem! Sounds like we need a permanent ban to make sure no productive individuals slip through the cracks and start… developing… (insert Senator Kohl’s evil laugh…)

By now, you the reader must be wondering: what about Kohl could be so bad that I would desecrate his name with a post title? Well, Kohl has earned my ire just by virtue of the fact that he is the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Kohl’s contribution to the business of government mainly consists of wrecking the American economy with harmful regulations of business, while attempting to justify his useless, bureaucratic position by holding hearings on things that few care about, but for which all have to pay. Kohl’s record is so long, and shows so much promise for continued growth, that I’m starting a category dedicated solely to him called Kohl Watch; every time he does or says something stupid, I’ll be sure to blog on it. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Some of you are probably aware that last month, Senator Kohl, along with the rest of his gang of thugs, publicly made a mockery of the United States Government when they demanded to know what oil company executives had to say for themselves, insisting that they defend their right to their own, freely earned profits, what George Reisman, noted economist, called an interrogation of the innocent by the guilty. The high point of this sham of a proceeding was by far and away when Khol made an utter fool of himself, lashing out at the VP of Chevron, screeching:

People listening just don’t get it … when demand isn’t going crazy, why are prices going crazy?

The stupidity is almost palpable. Demand is not the problem at all; just ask David O’Reilly, chairman of Chevron:

On the supply side, there’s still a lot of concern. The world isn’t running out of resources — the biggest risk for expanding production is restricting access to new developments.

Herbert Kohl has been complaining about the profits of Big Oil for years– since he was elected in 1989. Talk about a hatred of the good for being good. What he doesn’t mention– what nobody cares to mention, in fact– is that with all the tax on oil in the United States, the government actually gets more money per gallon than oil companies. Unbelievable, but true, and it doesn’t stop there. Congress has also slowed the import of clean ethanol by imposing hefty tariffs on the imports from Brazil in order to “protect American jobs.” If by “protecting American jobs” you mean eliminating market competitors for fossil fuels, thereby forcing us all to pay more for gas, then you’re doing a great job, Congress. What about nuclear energy? You know, the cleanest, safest form of energy ever discovered by man? No, no serious talk of that in 20 years… I know! We can really stick it to the evil oil companies by riding our bikes to work like we live in Columbia! Come on, people.

If they really wanted to lower gas prices, they’d cut the taxes, and open up the restricted areas. But they won’t. They want the prices to be high so they can foster a positive public sentiment about their Marxist agenda to nationalize the US oil refineries.

You see. In the end, its all about empowering the weak at the expense of the productive. Don’t buy into their nonsense. If you’re an oil company executive, and you’re reading this, please shrug.

The film revolves around a man named Elliot and his wife, who are trying to flee from an apparent biochemical terrorist attack in the form of a toxin in the air, which, when people are exposed to it, causes them to kill themselves in unusual and gruesome ways. We soon find that it is not a terrorist attack at all, but a pesticide released into the air by plants— all plants. Apparently, the plants become sensitized and release the pesticide when large groups of people come near. The audience is left utterly clueless as to why all of this is happening until the very end of the film, when (after the event mysteriously ends) a scientist speculates that the plants were taking defensive measures to wipe out a virus that was infecting them, and is infecting them still— humanity.

This kind of attitude about human kind does not exist in isolation within this film; this anti-human sentiment has existed for years in the Ecology movement, and it is not a laughing matter. There are serious groups dedicated to the extinction of humanity– some of them are passive, like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which says on its website that an earth without humans

sounds like paradise, doesn’t it? …Without us meddlesome humans, all other species would get their fair chance at survival.

They ask us to

envision an impossible dream: all human sperm suddenly and permanently loses viability – no impregnated human egg begins meiosis to form a zygote – none transforms from embryo into the sacred fetus, is carried to term and sentenced to life. Zero conceptions, wanted or un.

In their defense, the VHEM only calls for what they call a “voluntary extinction” which means no forced population control, no nuclear weapons, no mass graves; they simply want us all to stop breeding, and they want us to do it right now. But these crazy folks are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hatred of mankind.

In April of 2006, Professor Eric R. Pianka, noted ecologist, gave a speech (to a packed audience, no less) in which he called for the extermination of 90% of humans now living with an airborne Ebola virus. No further comment is needed.

The entire driving philosophy behind environmentalism is flawed, and must be checked. Environmentalists believe that nature is an end in and of itself, that it must be upheld and protected above all else. This is why some of them (the ones that are consistent, anyway) will say things like, “You’re looking at the world with a humanity bias,” which means, of course, that you are brutish and selfish for valuing human life above a tree frog or dirt. If we accept that nature is good because it is nature, and for no other reason, it makes sense to desire human extinction; such a desire is merely taking the saying “Leave the Smallest Footprint Possible” to heart. Man survives by manipulating the environment to suit his needs– there is no other way. If we accept that we should leave the smallest impact on the world as possible, why not just wipe ourselves out?

The environment is not an end in and of itself, it is only an end so long as it serves human ends. I want clean air, not because I love the earth goddess and want to see her restored to her natural state, not because of some nebulous responsibility that I feel I have for nature, but because I like clean air, it feels good in my lungs, and it serves as a major value for me to be able to breathe. I want clean water for similar reasons. I want trees around, because I know that, instead of attacking me and forcing me to commit suicide as M. Night Shyamalan would have it, they produce Oxygen for me to breathe, and as I said above, I consider breathing to be important to me. But I will not stop myself from cutting down trees to make room for my house for any reason other than that those trees are, for whatever reason, of more value to me than the house. I refuse to act in discordance with my values, and so should you.

Proclaim once and for all that your own life, not nature, is your standard of what is good and evil, and renounce environmentalism forever.