Daily Archives: 1 July 2009

Cap & Trade Skepticism

“Two weeks after his election as president, Barack Obama said, ‘Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.’ Shortly thereafter, more than 100 scientists signed a newspaper advertisement responding, ‘With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.’ The scientists, from places as varied and esteemed as Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American Physical Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, said the ‘case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.’

But even many who are not skeptical about global warming found things to dislike in ACES. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted against it, said, ‘It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.’ Kucinich faulted the bill’s ‘Enron-style accounting methods’ and allocation of $60 billion for Carbon Capture and Sequestration, ‘a single technology which may or may not work.’ Kucinich faulted the corporate welfare embedded in the bill, saying that the “trillion dollar carbon derivatives market will help Wall Street investors,’ with any benefits ‘passed through coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass on the savings.’

‘I take climate change seriously,’ libertarian economist Megan McArdle wrote last week. But she said the projections for ACES’s ‘effect on global warming are entirely negligible,’ and any hope that U.S. passage of the bill will ‘persuade China and India to get on board’ is ‘entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists. China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India.'” (Read more from campaignforliberty.com)

Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists

Ron Paul’s Statement before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009:

“Madam Speaker, before voting on the ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists:

‘We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.’

Circulated through the mail by a distinguished group of American physical scientists and supported by a definitive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, this may be the strongest and most widely supported statement on this subject that has been made by the scientific community.” (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

Al Gore: There’s a consensus, I tell you! A fucking consensus! Now buy some solar panels from the companies I invested in!!!

Taibbi’s Rolling Stone Article

A friend recently called my attention to Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone Article, “The Great American Bubble Machine.” Read it here.

Taibbi knows little about economics, and comes down on the wrong side of the most important question raised by our economic crisis – freedom or government?

For example, he writes: “an extremely unfortunate loophole in tbe system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a Society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.”

This is bullshit. We should not condemn free markets until we’ve given them a chance.

His understanding of the causes of the Great Depression is completely anemic (no mention of inflationary monetary policies), and his explanation of how Goldman cheats the world makes no sense.

Matt Taibbi’s worst offense is calling for more regulation to “protect” us from the likes of Goldman. Regulation is exactly what got us here.

Sure, if banks commit fraud we need the government to put them in jail, but beyond that, all we need to do is let the fuckers go bankrupt when they get caught holding loans which should never have been made.

It’s completely schizophrenic for the government to subsidize bad loans (HUD, Freddie, Fannie), then hand the banks billions of tax-payer dollars (TARP), then say the problem is too much freedom. In a free market, irresponsible companies go bankrupt.

So Taibbi fails.

He does deserve praise for a couple things though – demonstrating the pervasiveness of Goldman Sachs alumni throughout our government and the banking world at large, and calling attention to Goldman Sachs, and evil, evil company. His criticism should be directed to their influence over the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, and policies which transfer our wealth to likes of Goldman.

One very good point he makes, is connecting Goldman to Cap & Trade – the hideous bit of legislation which just passed our Congress in order to “save” us from Global Wharming. It’s another big scam.

See Also: Taibbi responds to Goldman’s criticism of his article.