Here’s What’s Next

Exactly two months ago, I wrote a post I called “What’s Next?”  I concluded that I was pretty sure that, whatever it was, I didn’t want to know.  In the first 100 days, President Obama rammed through a number of pro-abortion efforts, insulted allies, played nice with enemies, and promised more havoc on the horizon.  Good grief, he moved so fast, we were left wondering what he could possibly jump into next.

Well, now we all know.

“What’s next?” has been answered by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, 1500 pages of cap-and-trade legislation passed tonight by the House.  During the campaign, President Obama promised that this kind of legislation would cause energy prices to “skyrocket”, although that apparently doesn’t bother him.  In the video clip of the pertinent interview, he has this sort of “why would that be a bad thing?” look on his face.  I’m sure parts of the environmental movement will love it; heck, parts of the environmental movement think people breathe too much air that could be used by the nice, natural animals.  Forcing people to use less resources by making them pay more for what they need is great, right?  (At least as a stop-gap until we can get rid of most people altogether.)

Except that Greenpeace (not known for being mild-mannered or wishy-washy in their environmentalism) is against this bill.  Something about it not being based on science.

Of course, as we discovered when gas prices spiked after Katrina, when energy prices go up, everything gets more expensive, since pretty much everything we eat, wear, or otherwise purchase had to be shipped from somewhere else.  Which means that the people who will really pay for this bit of pseudo-environmentalist posturing (which will largely profit big business) is the poor.  The rest of us will pay the taxes and go without vacations or new clothes; the poor will have to go without food.  Remember that “hierarchy of needs” thing they used to teach in social studies?  I seem to remember it saying something about food being basic, and lack of food rendering all higher goals (especially fuzzy ones like “saving the planet”) irrelevant.  Even if you accept the argument that the poor suffer disproportionately from pollution, cleaner air isn’t going to make up for slowly starving because they can’t afford food.

(Not that I seriously think the environmentalists care about the poor.  Or people in general.  The food riots caused by corn shortages, which were caused by cropland being shifted to corn for ethanol instead of corn for food, hardly caused any concern.  The ethanol is still mandated, because, I guess, a couple of people killing each other over a sack of cornmeal in Africa or South America is less important that the possibility of Manhattan flooding when the ice caps melt.)

Spain tried cap-and-trade.  Critics estimate that for every “green” job they created, they killed 2.2 jobs.  They have noted that the cap-and-trade program didn’t do anything for the environment, and mostly lined the pockets of those trading the pollution permits.  Spain’s unemployment rate is 18%, twice that of the rest of Europe, which has not tried cap-and-trade policies as agressively.

Australia tried cap-and-trade.  The program has been delayed, and now looks as if it’s in danger of being completely rejected in the Australian senate.  Apparently, the Aussies started looking at the actual cost of self-righteousness and decided it wasn’t worth the price tag, especially with the growing body of evidence that whatever the Earth’s climate is doing (and we aren’t even sure of that), man’s influence is dwarfed by other factors.

I would also point out that, as Obama’s would-be poster-child, Spain, is drowning under cap-and-trade, Europe in general took a strong conservative lunge in the last elections.  After decades of socialism, Europe is beginning, ever so little, to pull back from it.

But the Americans, as usual, are charging in where angels (or at least the rest of the world) fear to tread.  We are hopelessly convinced that we can do right what the rest of the world has tried and failed at.

When combined with planning, forethought, and perseverance, that can be an admirable trait.  We have done some great things that Europe dismissed as ridiculous or outright impossible, because we learned from others’ mistakes.

When we try to just plow in and do it just like it was done before, however, things tend to go very badly, just as they did before.

My main hope for my country at this point is that President Obama will so aggressively institute the entire absurd wish-list of the far left, that the country will be thoroughly disgusted with what they finally recognize as the real liberal agenda.  Maybe, just maybe, voters will realize that pretty talk about sympathy, diversity, and saving the planet is actually covering up some pretty rotten ideas and a greed for control.