Morning Bell: The Edifice Falls
Mike Gonzalez /
Having failed to convince the country that we should reorder one-sixth of our economy (health care) in one fell swoop, liberals in the Administration and Congress are now doubling down and moving on to the next big thing. This time it’s the transformation of everything, through climate legislation. One could almost stand agape, admiring the boldness of the overreach, were not so much prosperity at stake.
The latest attempt to force the U.S. economy to turn away from readily available, affordable fuels and leaving it to the tender mercies of untried, experimental and expensive technologies is a bipartisan effort by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). A legislative package from them, according to The Washington Post on Saturday, would individually cap how much traditional energy the main pillars of the American economy would be able to use. This would of course cripple our economy and threaten our prosperity. Any doubts about how broad and deep this effort is are dispelled by reading the following paragraph in the Post:
According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.
The reason the Senators could not act through their preferred vehicle, a “cap-and-trade” scheme that would put an across-the-economy ceiling on the use of traditional sources of fuel such as coal, oil and natural gas—above which companies using these fuels would have to pay for extra rights—is that the whole edifice of global warming is now falling apart.
It is collapsing with such rapidity that it is worth pausing from time to time to take stock. (more…)