We lost the global warming solutions bill in the last minutes of the 2008 session. CP joined the rallies, met with legislators and wrote on the topic. It came close to passage but a sustained effort by lobbyists using steel workers to cry "job loss" sealed its fate. Maybe next year we'll pass a similar bill.
Job loss indeed! It's the oldest scam in the anti-environmentalist tool box. CP has heard this bogus wail since the early 1970's. My personal belief is that just the opposite is true, that strong environmental protection creates jobs and furthers appropriate economic development.I remember a bumper sticker that read "If you are cold, hungry and out of work, shoot an environmentalist." How about we try "If you have no fuel or clean food to eat, clean air to breathe or clean water to drink, shoot an anti-environmentalist."
The thing with the steelworkers strikes me as especially odd. The entire US steel industry has been sliding downhill for decades and likely due to many factors. We've all watched the world's largest steelyard, that of once number-two steelmaker Bethlehem at Sparrows Point, slide into its present near ghost-town status. Was this because of "environmental protection"? There's hardly a Maryland steel industry to speak of anymore--or is there? Yet they rally to defeat a bill that might possibly have created jobs for them as well(Let's see, windmills, solar energy systems,"green" buildings, adding recycling capacity, building dikes and bulkheads...).
I guess that the slow demise of Bethlehem Steel was the fault of "environmentalists." Of course, how will anybody be able to produce any steel at that place when it's under water??? Alarmist? Certainly no more so than the steelworkers.
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Your economic analysis falls short. Go to wikipedia, or any first-year economics text, and look up the parable of the broken window.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Dear Anonymous afraid to identify yourself...your name would not happen to be Mark Newgent would it? I did not attempt to provide any kind of economic analysis, but do you argue with the facts I provided about our steel industry? Do you argue that this law might have provided jobs for steelworkers? What is your point? You were tyring to make a highly opinionated, purely political point because you simply are burying your head in the sand regarding the fact that the world is warming. Speaking of parables, arrogant folks such as yourself who suffer from hubris should read the story of Icarus.
No Paul, when I call you out I don't do it anonymously.
Also Paul the planet has stopped warming for the last 10 years, even the chair of the IPCC admits that, but that is the real inconvenient truth for you. Here's another fact, Sparrow's Point will not be under water. The high end of the IPCC estimate of sea level rise is 17 inches.
Furthermore, the "green economy" is a fallacy, you just don' take a steel worker and make them a windmill technician over night. Also analysis of the Liberman-Warner federal climate change bill shows that even after accounting for any green jobs:
The U.S. would lose between 1.2 million and 1.8 million jobs by 2020, and as many as 4 million by 2030;
Additional costs per household of $739 to $2,927 per year by 2020, increasing to $4,022-$6,752 per year by 2030;
Gasoline price increase of up to 144 percent, electricity price increase of up to 129 percent, and natural gas price increase of up to 146 percent by 2030;
GDP reduced by $151 billion to $210 billion per year by 2020, and by $631 billion to $669 billion per year by 2030; and
Reductions in the production of coal and electricity of 35 and 12 percent, respectively.
Thanks Mr. Newgent. I am so pleased to learn that you continue to read Annapolis Capital Punishment, which is more than I can say about me and your blog.
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