John Kerry has responded to Sarah Palin’s op-ed on cap-and-trade at Huffington Post. Here is just a portion:
Around the world, the effects are already being felt. The Himalayan glaciers, source for almost all the major rivers of India and China, are shrinking, putting the future water resources of billions of people in doubt. Shifting weather patterns may turn the American “breadbasket” into a dustbowl. And stronger storms and rising sea levels can devastate coastal communities across our country and around the world.
All of these effects (and many, many more) will have a devastating effect on our economy and threaten our national security. For example, just imagine the situation in India and Pakistan if the rivers on which the region depends for agriculture dry up. Imagine how much worse the problems of poverty, terrorism, and instability would become in that situation.
Reading Gov Palin’s op-ed too often it sounds like the only threats America faces are solely economic. But that’s not what our intelligence experts and military leaders tell us. General Anthony Zinni, a rock-jawed military man and former commander of our forces in the Middle East who is tough to peg as any sort of climate alarmist warned that without action — and I quote — “we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll.”
We can’t afford to ignore this reality — in an op-ed column or in our public debate over an entire piece on legislation designed to meet these challenges. An op-ed on Guantanamo policy that fails to acknowledge the existence of terrorists would not be taken seriously. Neither should an op-ed on energy reform that fails to mention the irrefutable reality of climate change.
Common — admit it! You’re sad about Palin’s resignation because:
Palin Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened to The Left:
“Palin, especially for the left, was an obsession because she was a great, a terrific, distraction. On the one hand, Palin was a conservative train wreak. On the other hand, Obama’s gone off the reservation in terms of what everyone thought or hoped he would do before he was elected. Liberal centralist and the radical left would prefer to keep the spotlight off these issue albeit for different reasons.
Most liberal bloggers agreed that the op-ed managed to avoid any actual discussion of global warming and climate change.
There’s good reason for this (and liberal bloggers should be grateful Palin didn’t bring it up). She and others usually don’t talk about global warming and climate change because cap and trade regulations are going to do next to nothing to combat global warming and climate change unless the U.S. penalizes other countries who don’t go along with controlling their own emissions , i.e., an early draft of Waxman-Markey already contained triggers that gave the president the choice to introduce carbon tariffs if jobs and industry “leak” overseas to countries that don’t constrain emissions so dramatically.
While the language is not finalized, some kind of carbon tariffs triggers will have to be there or the bill will be useless.
This is the issue the left-wing would like to avoid talking about (as Kerry did in his response).
However, Palin’s op-ed and the left’s complaint that she didn’t address climate change turned the spotlight on exactly what the left would prefer to keep in the shadows.
Unfortunately (for the left), the distracting shadow of Palin is shinking . . . and weary eyes will soon turn back to Washington D.C.
Do people think that there is not a high death toll to economic weakness? Levying high energy taxes on a weak economy will have serious consequences.
Cap and trade has some serious flaws. I think so and I am as rough on business as the left gets. While I understand the need to collect government income, I believe the best way to do so is through basic taxation of personal and corporate income. Wide ranges of specialized, punitive taxation is simply foolish. If punitive taxation succeeds as a deterrent, then the added income is lost, while if punitive taxation fails as a deterrent then it does not meet its stated policy goals.
Some forms of industry will never be completely green, and we will have to deal with the environmental costs of said industry if we wish to reap the benefits of said industries. While there may be cases where scrapping said industries or finding ways to improve the efficiency of said industries is worthy of discussion, cap and trade is kind of stupid.
Unfortunately, political reasons make alternative methods of addressing environmental issues difficult for politicians. I just don’t think this is a good enough reason to support cap and trade. I do support more thorough research and development into green energy, careful re-expansion of a pragmatic nuclear energy program, and transition from oil to natural gas and from conventional gasoline to cleaner diesel variants in the interim. I believe more robust government pressure on corporations in this direction is at least as warranted, for national security reasons, as say the invasion of unfriendly countries in the Middle East, if not much more so. But cap and trade is silly.
I do have to note, however, that the biggest costs of economic weakness threaten many Americans equally seriously in times of economic strength because of the increased concentration of wealth in the hands of corporate entities and the corporate class. We have reached the point where we all share the costs of economic collapse without truly enjoying the benefits of economic strength. The middle class has been slowly squeezed into a position of economic serfdom as the corporate class has enriched itself at their expense, and no one even cares about poverty anymore.
Arguments about the cost of economic weakness do bear merit, but it is important to remember the flipside… economic strength has been stripped of its benefits for many and there are people for whom the recession has changed very little in a meaningful fashion because of that fact.
Man, here’s an argument that the poor just won’t get with the program:
Why Poor Countries Won’t Curb Emissions (And new U.S. tariffs won’t make them)
Here’s Shikha Dalmia bottom line:
“Consider what would be necessary to slash global greenhouse-gas emissions just 50% below 2000 levels by 2050–a far less aggressive goal than what the enviros say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe
The human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes–for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach–would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.
In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?”
Of course they won’t. And, for any small reductions they make, they will demand $$$ from the G8 countries.