May 29, 2008

“As a body approaches the event horizon, time is distorted due to the force of the acceleration, and force of the field. To an outside observer it would slow gradually, and along with it, wavelengths, although maintaining velocity, are red-shifted. As the body becomes even closer to the event horizon, time appears to stop. Strong tidal forces would cause the body to be ripped apart. Upon reaching the event horizon, the body would never be seen again, and is thought by scientists to race irreversibly towards the singularity…”

      —Everything You Need to Know About Black Holes, Anne-Marie Cumberlidge, Keele University, 1997.

As Congress accelerates toward the adoption of the Lieberman-Warner America’s Climate Security Act (S. 2191), most Americans are oblivious that they are being irreversibly thrust into the vortex of an economic black hole by the very folks they’ve elected to protect their way of life. Yet, a recent poll by the National Center for Public Policy Research revealed that, when alerted to the issue, 90 percent of Americans rejected the prospect of paying “even a penny more” for gas or electricity. Thankfully, a few organizations are weighing in, such as The Club for Growth, but it may be too little, too late. I hope not.

By implementing the questionable goal of capping CO2 emissions (the gas that you are exhaling right now), the Climate Security Bill in essence bans coal, tolerates natural gas and embraces nuclear power. However, we can’t access the mother load of natural gas in our own Gulf. Nuclear plants are ten years away and they cost ten times a natural gas electric generator. By capping the production of CO2 and “charging” to produce it, the bill raises “...substantial resources” (read: carbon taxes) from the industries responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and recycles (re-distributes) those resources…” in order to “assist communities, individuals, and companies that could be affected by the costs of transitioning to lower GHG-emitting energy sources.” Thus, we have yet another wealth re-distribution program for a new dependent class in America, the energy-challenged (see Senate Committee Report 110-337, dated May 20, 2008, from the Committee on Environment and Public Works).

By the way, if Americans think they are energy-challenged right now, wait until electricity bills undergo the same inflation as gasoline. At least we haven’t been issued carbon ration cards like those proposed in the U.K. Not yet.

The Senate Committee Report ecstatically claims to have “modeled” the world economy while arriving at the conclusion that the legislation’s massive intrusion on the free market will “safeguard the health of the U.S. economy.” Hayek and Freeman would surely turn in their graves to read this tripe:

The Committee’s expectations that the power and dynamics of a Green House Gas (GHG) market, together with the program’s GHG reduction timetable and the bill’s technology programs, will … safeguard the health of the U.S. economy has been borne out by … a model—Applied Dynamic Analysis of the Global Economy (ADAGE)—that explicitly examined new technology deployment in the power sector of precisely the sort likely to emerge thanks both to the GHG reduction mandates established in the bill and the substantial financial resources that the bill itself provides to the development and commercialization of new technologies. ADAGE also models the global economy as well.

Wow, did some smart people really model the world economy? (I guess Congress forgot to use ADAGE to model the disruption in food prices caused by a little tinkering with the corn market.) So, if the Committee’s model predicts nirvana, why does Senator Lieberman’s press release note that the bill provides for (1) an Energy Assistance Fund; (2) the Climate Change Worker Training Fund; (3) the Adaptation Fund; and (4) the Climate Change and National Security Fund? It sounds like someone is going to need “assistance,” that there will be some “adaptation” going on by somebody—and that some workers are going to need “training.”

Didn’t someone speak up and point out that last century’s attempts by central governments to run entire economies didn’t work out so well? Senator Inhofe’s minority report is worth reading and lends some sanity to the debate.

My blood boiled as I poured over Senator Lieberman’s press release touting the bill, stating it had provisions, “Mitigating the negative impacts of any unavoidable global warming on low-and middle-income Americans and wildlife.” As a middle class American I don’t remember ever being lumped together with “wildlife,” I just hope we’re as well off as the “wildlife” after this fiasco.

Well, in black hole parlance, upon reaching the “event horizon” of this monster bill, the free market economy that Americans have known will never be seen again, ripped to shreds as we are “red-shifted” by the socialists of both parties.

Johnnie Byrd is a lawyer and host of “Johnnie Byrd’s Weekend” heard on WGUL-AM 860 in Tampa Bay, FL. Contact Johnnie at johnnie.byrd@hotmail.com.