The Environmental Lobby

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Great piece by Walter Williams on how the environmental lobby has prevented oil drilling, prevented new refineries from being built, and helped to raise prices for everyone while opening the door for massive government control of just about everything through the cap and trade bill (that hasn't passed as of yet).

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticle ... 7327198891

[jfiling]

I love reading/listening to Walter Williams, because he's really smart and has his finger on so many things that a wrong. I do have a little doubt about the doom-and-gloom regarding reducing carbon emissions, but only because I believe that the market usually finds solutions to problems. Somebody somewhere is working on a killer battery that will power electric cars, recharge from solar energy or an electrical outlet, that will cost pennies per mile to use in a car.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

I love reading/listening to Walter Williams, because he's really smart and has his finger on so many things that a wrong. I do have a little doubt about the doom-and-gloom regarding reducing carbon emissions, but only because I believe that the market usually finds solutions to problems. Somebody somewhere is working on a killer battery that will power electric cars, recharge from solar energy or an electrical outlet, that will cost pennies per mile to use in a car.

I have a lot of doubt about carbon emissions mainly because I read scientific journals that are peer reviewed and there have been a lot of articles that show that rising CO2 emissions are actually a sign of warming and not a cause. The correlation isn't there for them to be a cause and CO2 is such an infinitesimal part of the air it's not even funny.

That said, I'm not opposed to finding cleaner power sources, cleaner cars, etc. Clean is still good and I don't need a catastrophic reason to support it.

Here's the kicker. Innovation has been squelched for so long by government and even by some of the regs that the environmental lobbyists have advocated. Now there's a great financial incentive to do so mainly because the public will jump towards it, but there were not ever many tax breaks or incentives to do so prior to gas and energy prices sky rocketing.