Residual Forces

Did you know Sen. John McCain tried to go all Kyoto on the US.

McCain’s Climate Stewardship Act, cosponsored with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D., Conn.), is a political roadmap back to the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations global-warming treaty that the Senate preemptively rejected by a vote of 95-0 in July 1997.

The Senate said no to the Kyoto Protocol, but McCain couldn’t help himself.

As originally introduced in January 2003, McCain’s bill would require the United States to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide from fossil-energy use, to 2000 levels by 2010 (Phase I) and 1990 levels by 2016 (Phase II). Though not as restrictive as the U.S. Kyoto target — 7 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012 — Phase II was close enough for government work. Too close, in fact, to have any chance of passing.

McCain dropped Phase II in an effort for comity.

Proponents will undoubtedly argue, as they did last fall, that we need not worry about the bill’s economic impact because Phase I is just a “modest” first step in addressing global climate change. A recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysis suggests otherwise. According to EIA, Phase I would increase: gasoline prices by 9 percent in 2010 and 19 percent in 2025; natural-gas prices in the industrial and electric-power sectors by 21 percent in 2010 and 58 percent in 2025; and electricity prices by 35 percent in 2025.

Just imagine if McCain’s Kyoto Dream had passed. How much worse would the energy price spike of 2006 had been? It was bad enough with out the Kyoto like mandates.

Further, Phase I would reduce U.S. GDP by $760 billion during 2004-2025 (or $290 billion in present value). For comparison, consider that Congress has appropriated $135 billion to pay for the war in Iraq.

And the costs do not stop there. Does anyone believe for a moment that enacting Phase I would appease rather than embolden the Kyoto lobby — or that enacting Phase I today would not make it easier to enact Phase II tomorrow? Phase I would impose Kyoto-like emission caps on major U.S. companies.

And that’s where the dirty little secret of Kyoto becomes clear.

Once subject to such regulation, firms would have an incentive to lobby for the treaty’s ratification in order to gain access to Kyoto’s emissions-credit market.

So just like McCain’s brain child of the McCain-Feingold law actually got more unregulated money into politics, his Clean Air Stewardship Act would have cleared the way for even more corporate corruption and lobbying. (Folks the answer is not more government, McCain doesn’t get that)

More importantly, any carbon-emissions cap, however “modest,” would radically change U.S. national policy. Never before has the U.S. government regulated energy markets based on the carbon content of fuels or emissions — and for good reason. Carbon dioxide is the inescapable byproduct of the carbon-based fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — that supply 86 percent of all the energy Americans use. Enact Phase I, and you cross a regulatory Rubicon. From that moment on, the debate in Washington would no longer be about whether to suppress carbon-based energy production, but about how much and how fast to suppress it. There would be no difference in kind between U.S. law and the Kyoto Protocol. Ratification of Kyoto would surely follow.

So tell me again why I should even consider supporting this guy for President of the United States when he is such a dangerous Senator?

But, some may ask, “Shouldn’t we do something about global warming?” Well, for starters, we should try to understand how much global warming is taking place, and how serious a problem it is. Unfortunately, much of what passes today for “settled” science is misinformation, conjecture, or hype.
Last October’s Senate debate on McCain-Lieberman provides a memorable case in point. Senator McCain displayed two satellite photos showing a significant contraction in Arctic ice cover between 1979 and today. To him, this was proof positive that carbon dioxide-induced warming was despoiling our beautiful world. “You can believe me or your lyin’ eyes,” he huffed.

However, Russian meteorological observations from 75 stations going back to 1875 show that the Arctic was warmer in the late 1930s and early 1940s than it is today. Yet most of the buildup in atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations occurred after 1940. For all we know (satellite photography did not exist 70 years ago), ice cover retreated as much during the 1930s and 1940s as it has in recent decades. What Sen. McCain dogmatically asserts to be a linear trend may in fact be the waning phase of a natural cycle.

I got a ’support McCain’ talking points email tonight (literally), and I stumbled across this while fact checking them. Now this Clean Air Stewardship law is just plain fringe liberal, but I can also tell you the talking points are complete spin, this came up when I searched for McCain tax increases. He may not have technically voted for tax increases, but his policies, if passed, would have been. More than that, they would have been devastating to our economy.

Please, anyone considering McCain, do you homework, and don’t turn in what was prepared for you by McCain’s closest friends and supporters. Go read the rest of the NRO piece and get back to me will you? Oh and before you get all ‘inconvenient’ on me, keep in mind mother earth is spewing out more CO2 than we mere humans could even dream of.