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The Party of Nyet
Jim Manzi is opposed to the Waxman-Markey climate bill because he thinks it won't be effective and wouldn't be worth it even if it were. Fine. But there's something missing here:
At a practical political level, as far as I can see, the fulcrum of the debate is among midwest and mountain state Democrats. The Republicans (excepting the senators from Maine) seem solidly against it, and most coastal Democrats solidly for it. The legislative strategy appears to be to cut whatever side deals are necessary to get the swing Democrats to support it. This mostly has meant giving away special allowances and spending programs to pretty much every industry or region that actually produces greenhouses gasses at sufficient scale to play the lobbying game.
There does not seem to be any line in the sand that they will not cross. At this point, the side deals seem to have consumed the cap. That is, when you look under the hood, there is not really a material binding cap in this bill for at least a decade....In fiscal terms, Waxman-Markey will bring in almost nothing. We’ve given it all away.
Obviously I have a more generous view of Waxman-Markey than Manzi, but even if you accept his political analysis (which is basically correct, I think) you have to ask: Why is there no line in the sand that the bill's sponsors won't cross to get support from midwestern Dems? Why are they so eagerly giving away the farm?
And the answer is obvious: it's because Republicans have cynically decided nearly en masse to blindly oppose any action on climate change whatsoever. This means that Waxman and Markey have no choice except to grimly cut deals with every last parochial interest on the Democratic side just in order to get anything passed at all. So that's what they're doing. And it's ugly.
Now, if they wanted to, Republicans, in return for their votes, could fight to keep the bill cleaner, keep it more effective, and insert provisions that would make it more acceptable to conservatives. That would be great. Waxman and Markey wouldn't have to give away the store to every congressman with a coal mine in his backyard if there were even a small band of serious Republicans willing to support a climate change bill and bargain in good faith to help get it passed.
But there isn't. It's the Party of Nyet that's created this political dynamic. They can stop it anytime they want.
The Democratic party does
The Democratic party does not deserve to be the majority party in Congress, since it will not govern. My guess is that by 2014 at the latest, they will be where they're most comfortable, as a helpless, ignored minority.
Oh, Please.
And here I thought that the opposition was supposed to, ya know, oppose. They might even actual reasons for it.
Nyet
Have to disagree with the basic premise of this one.
The fact is that the Democrats are completely allergic to party discipline. Instead, they like to give out candy to anyone who cries.
Instead, they should do to the midwest Dems who object what they should have done to Lieberman, lock him out.
The Democrats, though, are wimps. Worse, they have zero values at all -- none, zippo, nada. Everything is negotiable. That is why whatever comes out of Congress on the environment (or health care) will be ineffective, and most likely make things worse.
In November of 2012 the Republicans will be asking democratic voters only one question (if they want to win): "in four years of power what the hell have the Democrats accomplished?". And there goes the White House and the majorities in the Congress.
(I can hear Reid and Pelosi now: "well, you know, these things run in cycles".)
Dick's Knee
Yes, the situation is so depressing. So do the conservative Dems think like their constituents or are they afraid of them? If the latter, they should support the party and take the consequences, if necessary, of being a one term Senator. That would be the RIGHT thing to do. If they think like their constituents, then the US is simply screwed. If they're worried about money for the next election, then again, take the chances on being a one-termer.
Dick's knee?
The situation is indeed depressing. Either a handful of politicians have to put the welfare of the country above party politics and their chance of getting re-elected, or we're screwed.
Which means, of course, we're screwed.
By the way, I don't get the reference to Dick's Knee.
R
oops
I was responding to the comment by 'Dick'sknee'. Darn, already I can't remember whether there's an apostrophe in there or not. Sure wish I had just hit the reply option!
bargain
"bargain in good faith"
where have you been for the last few decades?
"Have to disagree with the
"Have to disagree with the basic premise of this one.
The fact is that the Democrats are completely allergic to party discipline. Instead, they like to give out candy to anyone who cries."
Gee, dude, ever heard of democracy?
Yes it would be much easier if Kim Jong Il just ran the place, but the problem is that for every dictator like Harry Lee you get ten George Bushes.
The problem is not that "the Democrats are" anything; the problem is that fundamentally Americans do not want to make the sacrifices entailed by GHG reduction. They are not alone in this --- as I've pointed out before, in spite of their talking precious few West European countries have reduced their emissions either.
Yes are there particular aspects to the US political system that allow certain parties to game the system, but that is not what is going on here. The lack of movement by congress, sadly, mirrors American reality.
People are short-sighted morons; this is simply one example of that general principle.
Given these limitations is the bill worthwhile?
When it all gets watered-down to nothing you have to consider tossing it out as stupid government.
Maybe we should just use the Exec. branch to declare excessive amounts of co2 as dangerous and then limit it's release into the atmosphere.
Perhaps the best result of all would be to find some way to sequester it and use it profitably rather than toss it in a big hole in the ground. Turn it into something good ... and then tax it.
CO2
Hey, we could turn it into dry ice! I think you're right about the Exec branch being the only sane way to go. That's probably illegal, though, right? It's possible for a Prez to start a war but not make a policy decision. I read today, btw, that in order to appease Republicans, a paragraph was inserted into the bill saying that the EPA couldn't declare CO2 as a pollutant. Good news for the exec branch, huh?
Good Reason to Oppose a Farce
The science shows that CO2 is not having a negative effect. The warming is cyclical and there has been no warming for a decade. The only warming in the last 30 years happened in a single year - the 1997/98 El Nino.
See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_SimplifiedNutshell.htm for a summary, and http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/ to learn the details of the actual science.
People need to review the actual science and see that this political farce does not match reality. The environmentalists have been suckered into distraction from real problems such as tropical deforestation.
Off topic
There are R Senators who are in favor of doing something about GW. (McCain, Maine Senators, others?) It's them who could negotiate, come on board, but won't. They don't have much fortitude to do it, despite their professed beliefs.
This is total nonsense. If
This is total nonsense. If Global Warming weren't real it wouldn't be on NBC Nightly news! And I just saw a 'green' GE commercial showing how we can save the planet with GE Wind Farms.
I don't know what right wingnuts you're getting your science from, but global warming is real, Brian William's told me so.
That's a great little graph.
That's a great little graph. I love how they make it seem that they were able to accurately measure CO2 over 500,000 years ago just as well as they do today.
The Earth has been cooling for over a decade.
If you want to see a good graph, there is one out there that compares global temperatures with CO2 output. There's no correlation. It then compares global temperatures with sunspot activity. Huge correlation.
Go figure. Our temperatures rise and fall depending on the sun's energy output. Who would have thought that? Obviously not the global warming syndicate...
Ice Cores
"I love how they make it seem that they were able to accurately measure CO2 over 500,000 years ago just as well as they do today."
Ever heard of ice cores? Glacial ice preserves an accurate record of past temperatures and atmospheric conditions, e.g., CO2 density. The deeper you dig the further back in time you go. Pretty simple, really.
"People need to review the
"People need to review the actual science and see that this political farce does not match reality."
The science has been reviewed: that was the purpose of the IPCC. (www.ipcc.ch). The IPCC has become more and more certain of the science, doubter within the climatology like Spencer, Christy and Lindzen have seen their theories refuted, and most actual climatologists have become. A survey by the American Geophysical Union's journal Eos of 97 working climatologists found 95 climatologists believed in anthropogenic global warming, 1 undecided, and 1 skeptic.
You're free to believe that an opinion held by 1% of climatologists is the right one.
However, don't ask us to risk, well, a lot on the argument that 98% of climatologists are wrong. Risking things like our food and water supply, for starters, and the conflict that would result from crises in agriculture. This is an existential threat folks; CO2 emitted today will be in the atmosphere for 50-200 years. We'll be living with the choices we make now for a long, long time.
"The Earth has been cooling
"The Earth has been cooling for over a decade."
Right. We've had seven of the ten warmest years on record in the past ten years (2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2001, 2007 and 2008). And another two peak years in the 1990s (1998 [the warmest year on record], and 1997). And you think that's evidence of a "cooling trend".
Source: HadCrUT3 data at:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
Also, the global temperature anomaly was 0.262 deg C in 1999. It was 0.314 in 2008 and has been 0.385 so far in 2009. It's been over ten years since the hottest year in record in 1998 (which was a big ANSO year). So you might want to revise your rhetoric about a decade of cooling.
"If you want to see a good graph, there is one out there that compares global temperatures with CO2 output. There's no correlation. It then compares global temperatures with sunspot activity. Huge correlation."
Look again at the sunspot graphs produced by the skeptics. They tend to truncate their data around 2001.
That's because we've been in a declining sunspot cycle since sunspot peak in 2001-2002.(http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/) Yet we've seen seen temperatures in the top ten recorded in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, despite these years being in the low-activity phase of the sunspot cycle.
Global Climate change doesn't hurt people enough now.
What Maynard Handley said.
Global climate change is real, but so far it has not been a real in your face problem. It is affecting poor people far away, which to most people here is not their problem.
People simply do not make drastic changes, and certainly not drastic changes that hurt themselves, in response to a problem that is far away, either geographically, economically, or chronologically.
Look at the global chart Kevin posted awhile ago. Global climate change will affect the people with the power, the western world plus Asia, the least.
Don't blame the politicians, blame the people.
Tripp
You skeptics slay me.
First you mistakenly chastise scientists for predicting, in the 70s, a global cooling coming in the future, and then you chastise scientists today by mistakenly claiming there is an actual cooling.
Just because you don't have a coherent story doesn't mean there is no coherent story.
I trust science to find that coherent story much more than I trust people on the internet taking wild pot shots.
Tripp
Brain-dead Ditto-Head denialist dinosaurs
Alan Cheetham wrote: "The science shows that CO2 is not having a negative effect."
The science shows that you and your fellow Ditto-Head mental slaves of Rush Limbaugh are liars.
The deniers of anthropogenic global warming are far worse than Holocaust deniers. The Holocaust already happened, and the lies of Holocaust deniers can't change that -- they cannot cause one person more, or one person less, to die from the Holocaust.
But to the extent that their slavish regurgitation of ExxonMobil's scripted denialist lies succeeds in delaying action to reduce CO2 emissions -- and so far it has succeeded -- the global warming deniers are directly causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocent people in the decades to come.
The deniers of anthropogenic global warming are not "skeptics". They are either deliberate liars, or else they are the most GULLIBLE IDIOTS ever born.
In either case they are enemies of humanity and deserve zero tolerance.
EU Mistakes
The handing out of permits to pollute under cap and trade is almost universally acknowledged as the main mistake in the EU CO2 auctions. This is due to be phased out in 2013.
It is also interesting to me that there has been very little discussion of the existing cap and trade regimes, the EU and the ten state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The price per ton for carbon under the EU has varied between $38 and $18 and the price per ton under RGGI (in operation for less than a year) is between $3 and $4. The number I've heard most often for a motivating cost of carbon is on the order of $100 per ton.
What about human waste
What about human waste recycling as fertilizer. We are wasting a lot of waste right now. In fact, we're wasting a lot of energy to waste that waste.
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