Al Gore's Cap'n Trade: Scourge of the Climate Change High Seas

(Photo credits/special thanks to the Daily Mail)

“Climate Change battle is like losing weight.”
-Hillary Clinton

Cap’n Trade: Scourge of the Climate Change High Seas

The buzz this week is Cap and trade. Not unlike some evil Somalian pirate trying to loot a wealthy boatload of tourists on an Italian cruise ship, Cap’n Trade is rapidly becoming the scourge of the climate change high seas.

Global warming activist Al Gore on Friday urged passage this year of a U.S. law to slash greenhouse emissions, saying failure to pass legislation could cause the collapse of world climate negotiations. For the United States, much is at stake here - including billions and trillions of dollars in the emerging green technology sector, one that if successfully executed, could restore work to millions of Americans who have been robbed of their jobs by many of the same political and corporate advocates for imported, cheap foreign labor to replace them.

Even Hillary Clinton, weighed in on the matter, noting that the climate change battle is like trying to lose “x number of pounds but it seems like such a faraway goal.”

A few eyebrows were raised, however, as Gore reportedly “chickened out” after his handlers refused Maggie Thatcher’s former global warming skeptic science advisor, UK’s Lord Christopher Monkton, to testify alongside the former US vice president last Friday in Washington, DC. Calling them “cowards”, Monkton also stated that the “House Democrats don’t want Gore “humiliated.”

Monckton’s opposition slot was instead replaced with Newt Gingrich, who appeared in a Gore sponsored TV ad last year proclaiming his support for climate change action. But now, Newt appears to be against it. Mark Silva at The Swamp reports:

“Gingrich did appear in a commercial sitting beside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last year financed by Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection. In it, he said that while he doesn't always see eye to eye with Pelosi, "we do agree our country must take action to address climate change."

So what's the irrelevant, big-oil and coal supporting, on his third wife, flip-flopper Newt’s likely answer du jour to global warming?

Let’s see now…

More tax cuts for billionaires? Deregulation for polluting corporations because, after all, these responsible citizens always put people first?

The former U.S. vice president and star of the Oscar-winning documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth," told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that passing a climate law is a "moral imperative" that will affect U.S. standing in the world community. Fair enough. Who doesn’t want to clean up this place by enforcing a few climate laws? More power to Mr. Gore for taking the initiative.

Watch Al here in this Huffington Post piece reprise his famous sigh on Capitol Hill as he explains how he is not entirely in this for the money. (Don't miss the comments.) And do you know what? I believe him. I believe that he is passionate about reducing global warming and I can’t help but find the guy likeable. But as a very wealthy and powerful man, I can not help believe that he is a tool (wittingly or unwittingly) of global elites who could care less about the purging of American citizens at its expense. For example, what specific “climate law” is he pushing? Cap and trade or carbon tax? Both? At what cost to US taxpayers? I’m all for paying taxes that improve our infrastructures and civil services, but I'm equally all for our elected officials to support programs that work for us and not against us. At the rate our bipartisan politicians have been selling out our jobs faster than Somalian pirates can chase cargo and cruise ships, the jury is still out as to their agenda.

As for cap and trade or carbon tax, watch Rep. John Dingell, D-MI, raise the question to Al Gore here. Gore testified that he supports both a carbon tax and cap and trade, with cap and trade being “an essential first step” because it’s “hard to imagine a globalized carbon tax.” Since when did the USA appoint itself Global Cap and Trade Czar? I know. It is in our best interest to lead the green tech revolution and then sell proven climate change solutions to the third world. But for the US, at what cost to taxpayers, who are losing jobs by the millions through this unprecedented economic depression?

There are numerous problems reported with cap and trade, so why would Mr. Gore and President Obama promote it? Robert Shapiro at Roll Call (who served under President Clinton in the Commerce Dept.) describes the problems of cap and trade:

“But here’s the catch. A cap-and-trade system is very unlikely to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions — and more likely to introduce new, trillion-dollar risks for the financial system.”

If it won’t reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and will increase more financial risks, why support it? In addition, Shapiro cites the outcome of the European Trading Scheme (ETS) where cap and trade actually contributed to increased toxic emission levels by as much as 10%:

“According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, there’s little if any evidence that the ETS has had any effect at all on emissions in Europe. One reason is that major emitters such as Germany simply exempt many of their facilities generating greenhouse gases. Another factor is the “offset” permits that European “transition” economies, themselves exempt from caps, can sell to other ETS members. According to a recent study in Nature, once we set aside those offsets, emissions under the ETS have actually increased by 10 percent.”

Apparently Al Gore has astutely taken notes on the downside of cap and trade and now prefers a carbon-based tax system which would create direct incentives to develop and use less carbon-intensive fuels and more energy-efficient technologies.

Despite this, the bill now being crafted in the House of Representatives is based on a cap-and-trade system. This bill would penalize polluters, such as the coal industry, for toxic carbon emissions. This bill, favored by President Barack Obama, to cut U.S. emissions by roughly 15 percent by 2020 -- back to 1990 levels, is ambitious - despite the fact that Obama admitted that a cap and trade system would pass along the costs to US taxpayers, stating in the above youtube video that

“Cap and trade will cause electricity rates to skyrocket.”

In addition, Warren Buffet, who admits that the rich should be taxed at the greatest levels, has also slammed the cap and trade scheme as nothing but a regressive tax on Americans. If politicians were really serious about reducing green house emissions and improving our economy, for starters, why not put the kibosh on the private jet industry and pump every elitist, blowhard business traveler’s carbon based backsides back into the dying commercial airline industry and force them to ride shotgun (that’s code for first class) again? As private jet profits and demand soar, certainly Al Gore could do better than to practice what he preaches?

As China has now officially bypassed the United States as the world’s biggest polluter, the U.S. is still seen as a lead actor in global climate talks. The State Department will host a meeting in Washington next Monday and Tuesday of the 17 countries that emit the most greenhouse gases. These include rich countries like the United States, Japan and members of the European Union, along with such fast-growing, polluting countries like India.

Many unanswered questions surround the proposed cap and trade legislation, such as the specifics as to how many green jobs will be created, what they will pay, and most important, who they are designed for and who will benefit. While on Capitol Hill last week, Gore praised the carbon-capping legislation supported by Obama and crafted in the Energy and Commerce Committee for its plan to rapidly introduce new green technologies that, he claims, will create new jobs. That’ll work.

Let’s create new jobs for Americans to replace all the old ones previous administrations (including support from Obama, too) sold out to the immigration lobby dating back to 1992. Among other questions, will these promised green jobs also be “capped” at blue collar wage levels or do they include a hefty mix of white collar jobs, complete with on the job training and six figure salaries? Oh, and about that health benefits thing? Even Taiwan surpasses the US in its key achievements for health care and infrastructure. Taking a look at their transportation system alone, it looks like there are more serious ways to reduce a country’s dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse emissions by weaning off of cars. Duh. (A tribute to James Howard Kuntsler here:)

“The lack of high-speed rail harms America's efficiencies and international competitiveness because it raises the prices of virtually everything that has a transportation component (food, oil, concrete, raw materials, people, mail, etc.). Trucking all these goods around costs roughly ten times what it costs to move them via rail. It does sell more oil, though, which is probably one of the reasons why rail was abandoned in America in the first place (to appease the powerful oil companies).”

Back to the Obama/Gore climate change legislation. At the very least, they had better not be yanking us about this “new jobs” promise with cap and trade because, as Obama admits, if it’s going to raise our utility bills, citizens will have to have the means to pay them. But this is the same venture capitalist and businessman, Al Gore, who, along with his VC firm colleagues and the India/tech lobby, aggressively supports the major wholesale sell out of American white collar jobs to India.

And what would cap and trade legislation do for Obama’s re-election plans once consumers see their rising energy bills and simultaneously receive no help from the Department of Labor to slow down immigration policies that give away our jobs? For now, cap and trade appears to be a means of raising Joe Taxpayer’s energy costs in an attempt to bankrupt Dirty Coal and subsidize green technology start-up executives and their board members. Indeed, a moral question. After all, Gore was on the board of Google when it went public and made about $30 million exercing his stock options.

Good for Al Gore. Whether climate change is man made or not, so what - the world can’t close its eyes to the byproduct of impending natural (or unnatural) disasters. We need energy supplies, the cleaner and the safer, all the better. Oil is on the decline and it would be really cool if this country spearheads the development of cutting edge, clean and green alternatives – as we did in the technology sector, whose sociopathic leaders then turned around and kicked their rank and file workers to the curb in favor of importing cheap, foreign labor under the banner of age discrimination and H-1B visas.

In the final analysis, when it comes down to how climate change legislation will honestly lift up this country from its swindled, shaken down ashes and benefit American citizens, one can’t factor out the immediate need for true immigration reform.

Will the climate change solutions these politicians advocate be yet another excuse to kick American workers to the curb in exchange for cheap foreign labor? Even as Gore outlined a very promising, 5 step plan last year to create “millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced”, he said nothing at the meeting in Washington last week to ensure that the Obama administration would not insource them.

So the key question surrounding this latest request for more money from the broken taxpaying plebes under the banner of climate change solutions for Al Gore is: Will Obama break ties with the India/tech lobby and finally cap the trade of cheap foreign labor and truly work for Americans by implementing much overdue labor reforms that will promote job growth and put Americans first? As Citizen Carrie reported here in her post entitled No Worker Left Behind, politicians are most profitably successful at ridding American workers of their jobs.

Don’t hold your breath. Although Hillary is very successful brokering American jobs to India, she indicated in her climate change and weight loss analogy that trying to achieve, ehm, certain other “moral” goals may be illusory - but it’s the thought that counts:

"It's kind of like world peace and so therefore why even try? Well, because we are called to try. That's who we are as human beings and that's especially how we think of ourselves as Americans."

The question for Hillary is: What is her specific goal? To offshore/inshore more American jobs? (h/t Citizen Carrie at Carrie’s Nation.) Don’t get me wrong: I’m not giving up hope in our leaders like Obama and Hillary and Gore. After all, hope is for free.

-2Truthy