An emissions tax that will raise the cost of new vehicles by $1300, and a cap and trade plan that will cost our economy $7,000,000,000,000 over the next 19 years. $7 Trillion dollars. How is that a good idea? How is it not one of the worst ideas we’ve ever had?
First of all, global warming is an effect that if it exists (there’s a decent chance of that) likely isn’t caused by humans, and even if it is, by the worst case estimates of the IPCC(the actual scientists who split the Nobel with Gore) it won’t have any noticeable effect for several hundred years. And that study was since shown to be overly aggressive in its predictions.
Secondly, every dollar we waste trying to fight global warming is a dollar we’re not spending elsewhere. If we’re going to just be giving money away from our economy, it’s much more worth it to fight things like malaria, or for clean water and such. Those sorts of efforts literally give the world back about $7 dollars in the next 50 years for every dollar invested, rather than taking hundreds of years to even break even on the investment. And they save lives immediately.
Thirdly, the only people who have ever effectively done anything for the environment have done so from a position of wealth. If you’re still struggling for a reasonable standard of living, you just don’t have the time or money to care about the environment. Slowing down the economy is the exact worst thing you can do for the environment, as it means there’s a lot less money to go around investing in the fantastic ideas such as hydrogen power or electric cars that are going to do amazing things for the environment in the long run. Do you really think that any of those ideas – which everyone insists are going to take 5-10 years of development before they’re practical enough to go mainstream – will develop any faster if the economy stays in a rut? No! The fastest way to develop our technology is to have enough money that venture capitalists can afford to throw money away at interesting ideas in the hopes that some of them will make it big.
In short, everyone who is fighting for carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and pretty much every other economy limiting economic legislation is not only fighting against the environment, but they’re fighting against the economy, and for the deaths throughout the developing world of everyone who’s suffering from basic conditions we in the first world got under control long ago.
