Daniel P. Schrag, White House climate adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, told the New York Times today “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” Later today, accordingly President Obama will give a major “climate change” address at Georgetown University that will do just that.
Despite the fact that recent science has cast major doubt on the validity of global warming theory, Obama will announce new executive action designed to artificially raise the price of energy and waste public funds on unproven expensive “renewable” energy sources. A PDF of his plan may be viewed here.
The plan will include launching the first-ever federal regulations on carbon dioxide emitted by existing power plants (generally coal-powered). These regulations will have the effect of increasing the price of energy, not only for the average home-owner but for the every company and manufacturer using energy. Those manufacturers will pass along those costs to the consumer, giving Americans a double-whammy.
We have seen it before. Every time the price of energy increases the economy slows down. The culprit is always more regulations slowing down an already sluggish economy.
Obama’s speech will also indicate that methane is the next gas in his list to target. From the plan:
Curbing emissions of methane is critical to our overall effort to address global climate change. Methane currently accounts for roughly 9 percent of domestic greenhouse gas emissions and has a global warming potential that is more than 20 times greater than carbon dioxide.
Thankfully the president only calls for the issue to be studied. He doesn’t call for a reduction in cow meat production to reduce bovine flatulence.
The president will also talk about leasing out federal land to renewable energy projects such as wind and solar to power the equivalent of 6 million homes by 2020, effectively doubling the electric capacity federal lands now produce.
And finally he will announce an $8 billion federal loan guarantees to spur investment in technologies that can keep carbon dioxide produced by power plants from being released into the atmosphere. We know what happens when the federal government picks winners and losers (think Fisker and Solyndra.)
In an advance statement to the press, the White House observed that “no single step can reverse the effects of climate change” adding that “we have a moral obligation to act on behalf of future generations.” The statement doesn’t explain or even mention why the earth hasn’t gotten warmer in over 15 years. One scientist has committed the ultimate hoaxer blasphemy, saying that if the trend continues their models could be “fundamentally wrong.”
Most recently meteorologist Hans von Storch, who works with the UN’s Climate Change group the IPCC who still believes in the global warming myth, told Spiegel online:
If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
Sidestepping Congress by using executive action doesn’t guarantee Obama smooth sailing. Hopefully, lawmakers could introduce legislation to thwart his efforts. And the rules for existing power plants will almost certainly face legal challenges in court.
This is a president who is re-shaping this country via manufactured crises. First it was the “worst recession since the Great Depression” when in actuality the one Jimmy Carter put us in (and Reagan got us out of) was worse. However Obama’s policies has given us the worst recovery since the great depression.
Then it was followed by the fake health insurance crisis which gave us Obamacare, the banking regulation crisis which gave us Dodd-Frank, and of course the Illegal Immigration criminally-trespassing-alien crisis which received cloture in the senate yesterday.
Now it seems he is moving on the fake global warming crisis. However if you look at these manufactured crises they all have the same two objectives, increasing government control of important industries and redistribution of income.
This president is a master at manufacturing or exaggerating crises to turn this constitutional republic into a socialist nanny state. Today’s announcement will hit the middle class and lower incomes the hardest by increasing energy costs and will slow down the economy creating more unemployment, is just one more step in this president’s grand plan.