This is mentioned in the Healthcare is a stupid waste of time thread, but I think this is big enough for its own thread.

Roll Call



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This will put more money for clean, American energy than every before, without taxing the middle class a dime. This will give us credibility we lose when we refused Kyoto, make us more popular in Europe and Canada, and thanks to concessions will not hurt agriculture and coal too much (though coal is on the way out, given what it does even if you don't believe in CO2 greenhouse effect).

May get watered down a bit in the Senate, but Franken's probably going to be there by then. I think it'll pass.

It will also tax you on a hoax. CO2 is not a pollutant, it's plant food and it's yet another way for already over inflated government to tax you for everything you do (i.e. running the lawnmower, firing up the chimney, having a BBQ, hell... even breathing)

This is just a rouse for those in Washington to get their grubby little meat hooks into your lives via something that isn't even proven science... and you thought CEO's were greedy well just wait til they up and leave because of this over-bureaucratic bull****... this will quite simply kill jobs, taxes are nothing more than restrictions on freedoms.

Actually it's not plant food. Plants remit their CO2 when they die in the fall, so CO2 doesn't noticeably decline from year to year. Meanwhile, unleasing it in its stored forms- coal, oil, and the like creates an unnatural level of it.

It is proven science, as the peer-reviewed scientific establishment in every country, liberal or not, has experimented and evaluated, and thus concluded.

And it's not an excessive tax. In Economics 102 (or 101, depending on the views of your professor), there was a unit on externialities. The air is a public resource, as is much water and land. If the temperature varies, it effects this. If the planet gets 2 C hotter (which it's about to), and your land has worse yield now because it's in the midst of a drought, the polluter did that and pays NOTHING for emitting it in the air. In a free market, this is nonsensical. Something of value shouldn't be free, whether it's stereos or the river nearby, or the sky above us all.

Cap and trade is the capitalist answer to this problem. A carbon tax is the socialistic answer. We did the capitalist one.

Now that the public gets a look at the bill, I highly doubt it will make it through the Senate. This thing has so many holes in it. First, the Earth has been cooling over the last few years, so its ridiculous fight global warming. More importantly, nobody in their right mind is going to actually support something that raises energy cost in the middle of a recession. The people that came up with this piece of garbage admit that if you get energy from coal or gas, your energy bill will go up.

As a conservative, its hard to stay positive about politics these days, but one thing that gives me hope is after this corrupt piece of dog mess gets exposed for what it is the tide is going to turn.

It was sunny today. Should I burn my raincoat?

It's transferring a volatile energy source (oil) to a more price resistant one (wind solar and biodeisel). Those provide relatively constant supplies of energy at a flat cost. Oil could triple in the next month or not change at all. That's a consumer risk that causes things like debt and bankruptcy in the long-run.

Yet the public wants emissions capped and clean energy, and green jobs. They know this, they still want it. Welcome to the minority, MIT.

Heh, I enjoyed the Bush officials who helped regulate the environment by doing coke and banging mining and coal executives. Or the censoring of EPA and Energy reports by oil lobbyists. Not corrupt, right?

I cant see how this is anything but good news. Whether human impact on climate change is real or not it is in every countries interest to make sure its not.

I metioned in another thread a good few months ago how if the US were to take something like this on, with its size and economical advantage it could revolutionize energy production and consumption. In reality from an economic perspective it needs to do this, oil is sold in dollars it is inevitable that trade in this commodity will fall and as it does so will the dollar as a reserve currency, the US needs a back up plan for when this happens and I see this as the opportunity to keep the $/kjoules hedgemon that the US needs to remain economically viable in the future.

Bananas, I always say for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can't just assume that this is good fine and dandy, because its not.

This bill will kill the coal and oil industry and all the jobs that go with it. That is the LAST thing we need in the middle of a rescission... right bill, wrong timing.

Everybody wants green energy to flourish. The theory if cap and trade, as I understand it, is to make carbon based energy more expensive in order to light a fuse for green energy. That just seems so short sighted and arrogant to me. We are setting a goal of producing clean energy cheaper than the artificially inflated price of conventionally energy. What's wrong with setting the bar at cheaper than conventional energy? I just don't see why we have to tax oil and destroy coal in order to support solar.

When times are bad its best to grab the bull by the horns and have damage limitation on the bad times rather than when you are on the up.

If you want a good example of this look at the UK coal industry. Thatcher came in and shut it all down in the mid 80's, she did not care for unions or recessions, she walked in offered a redundency, they rejetced so she closed it down along with a lot o fother industries, unemployment rocketted and some areas of the country never recovered from it, she is one of the most hated people by many..... but lets not forget what she really did because on the back of this the UK experienced the longest ever period of substained growth in modern history(thats in the world btw), it is no coincidence that this happened after she reformed the country. So yeah shut the coal and oil industry if thats what it takes, create more economical processes where the US have the tech advantage to be global leaders. Leave China behind burning coal and OPEC sucking oil and basically grab the bull by the horns and revolutionise the world, sometimes I think its a shame the USSR collapsed because it seems the US lost its forward thinking competitive spirit with it.

The worst of the recession is over, now is the time to rebuild your industry sectors, so you may as well rebuild them with a positive future rather than based on a negative present/past. Screw the recession, you wont be in a recession in 3 years or 5 years or 10 years time. This is your opportunity now, one more punch to the stomach will hurt less now than it will later..............

I've got mixed feelings on this. I understand and agree with using cleaner sources of energy and making that switch, but I don't agree with making carbon based energy so much more expensive to achieve that. It's going to be even rougher on people just trying to cool and heat their homes, especially the poor. I also disagree with destroying the oil and coal industries, eliminating so many jobs, especially in these economic times.

I agree with the end goal, I disagree with such a drastic immediate change.