President Barack Obama vowed to tackle climate change during his second term as President of the United States – and now he has promised to unveil a national climate action plan at Georgetown University on Tuesday. In his upcoming address, President Obama will propose a new strategy to reduce carbon emissions, prepare for the impact of climate change, build a green economy, and empower all Americans to do their part to “preserve God’s creation.”
Inhabit is another TreeHugger type site – environmentalism all the way (and, in fact, there is some cross-over in some of the writers). We all know that President Obama has decided that tomorrow he is going to tell us how our energy usage is going to look like going forward (emphasis on tell) and Inhabit decided to comment on it; the above is how they started their post. One of those changes will be, I’m sure, is to fulfill one of his 2008 campaign promises:
“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
The Legislative process in Congress decided to NOT do a Cap N Trade – there just was not a consensus that the benefits were not worth the cost (either to us financially or to them politicially). However, given the size and the overreach of the Federal Government, the EPA decided that it could be both Legislative and Executive Branches all on it own say so to dramatically change the make up of America’s energy sources. No Congress, No President, no law, no free market – just regulation.
This is the hallmark of a Representative Republic? Not in any dictionary I’ve ever read. And now, Obama is about to put that effort on steroids – and by simply manipulating the CO2 limitation of power plants, he is about to “take” the property away from electrical power plant owners. Simply, owners will shut them down instead of shipping dollars with every MW of energy, as I understand that the CO2 limits that will be allowed are all but impossible to meet. Essentially, they will be run out of the marketplace simply by an Executive Order. And I’m betting he will all but rule that the coal industry may no longer exist. This is another legacy of Obama – first the effective nationalization the healthcare industry and now the energy industry (after all, “you don’t have to own it to control it” – the quintessential definition of Fascism).
This used to be called by another name: Royal Decree. Seems to be a more fitting description of Barack Hussein Obama than not. He “can’t wait for Congress” – showing no respect for the legislative process – how much more IS this like being a unitary Head of State, a King, as opposed to being a President? This is his payback to the Environmentalists that wish to devolve America (heck, even some of the older nat-gas plants may have problems with what he is about to do) backwards.
But I digress – this is one of those posts that decided to go on another tangent, so let’s get back to Inhabit and the word “empower”. In response to the top quote from Inhabit, I could only think of one response (and no, no comment left):
“empower all Americans to do their part”
“Empower” means to give someone the authority to do something. Which also means, implicitly, the ability to make a choice to do or not do something as well. Obama will not be “empowering” anyone – only decreeing more and more regulations that will be put upon us with no way for us to choose other alternatives.
How does that “empower” anyone? No, the real word to have been used was FORCE to obey or suffer the legal ramifications: fees, fines, taxes, or legal action that can lead to one’s Freedom disappearing. None of this will be by the American tradition of legislative debate – this will be one person deciding this by fiat.
This is Freedom and Democracy in action? Heck, this will end up as taxation (as Obama WANTS higher costs delivered to us simply as a function of governmental action and not as an actual cost) without representation. We fought a war over the likes of this, didn’t we, when the King George decided that another commodity, TEA, was to have its price arbitrarily raised by the say so of one person.
This is simply yet another site dressed up as one that protects the environment at any cost – and being an apologist about it at the same time.
Empower my butt….
