Sunday - August 17, 2008

US gets ready to blow its economy away .  Christopher Booker, reaction to his visit to USA.

Doesn’t need any comments from me. He already has it nailed.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/08/2008

Visiting America last week to talk to audiences across the country about “global warming”, I was struck by television commercials for the two presidential candidates.

Senators McCain and Obama were each shown in front of film of the same giant wind farm, to lay claim to virtually identical “green” credentials. Since America has already built five times as many wind turbines as Britain, covering thousands of square miles, I checked out how much electricity all those 10,000 turbines actually produce. The answer is around 4.5 gigawatts - not much more than a single large coal-fired power station.

After years when America was vilified for not taking “global warming’ seriously, it was a shock to find how “environmentalism” is now threatening to transform what is still the largest and richest economy in the world.

Both candidates favour a version of the proposed “cap and trade” scheme to slash US greenhouse gas emissions to 63 per cent below 2005 levels, at an estimated cost by 2030 of more than $600 billion a year - representing a cumulative loss to the US economy, within 22 years, of $4.8 trillion.

Although America is still dependent on coal for around half its electricity, with reserves estimated as likely to last 200 years, state after state is proposing to ban new coal-fired power stations.

Environmental groups, with powerful political support, are now lobbying equally fiercely against natural gas or any new nuclear power plants.

Most dramatic of all are the implications of a Supreme Court judgment in the case of Massachussets v the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which ruled by a single vote that the EPA must treat any greenhouse gases as “pollution”, to be regulated under America’s Clean Air Act.

The EPA is thus mandated to impose drastic new limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from pretty well any source, not just industry and transport but schools, hospitals, even lawn mowers.

The implications are so immense for almost every sector of the US economy that government departments -commerce, agriculture, energy and others - have been queuing up to protest, arguing that the effects of such regulation would be so damaging that it should be regarded as unthinkable.

But politicians of both parties, led by the two men vying for the presidency, are so carried away in the rush to appear “green” that it seems there is no longer any national voice powerful enough to question the sanity of such measures.

All the fashionable talk is of how fossil-fuels must be replaced by massively subsidised sources of “renewable” energy, such as vast arrays of solar panels, even though a recent study showed that a kilowatt hour of solar-generated electricity costs between 25 and 30 cents, compared with 6 cents for power generated from coal and 9 cents for that produced by natural gas.

What is terrifying is the extent to which America’s leading politicians seem oblivious to the economic realities of what they are proposing. The readiness of Messrs McCain and Obama to posture in front of pictures of virtually useless wind turbines symbolises that attitude perfectly.

Here, in the EU we are only too sadly familiar with politicians floating off into cloudcuckooland over our future energy policy, with the virtual certainty that before many years this may leave us with a colossal shortfall in our electricity supplies.

But “the lights going out all over Europe” is one thing: if they go out in the richest economy in the world - while China cheerfully continues to build one new coal-fired power station a week - we may look back on the US presidential election of 2008 as a time when history really did reach a watershed; the moment when the nations of the West finally signed up to the most bizarre suicide note the world has ever seen

http://tinyurl.com/5j2q9p

Posted by Drew458     on 08/17/2008 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner