Climate Change Proposals

The Washington Post reports the the Senate Dems have sent a new health care deal to the CBO: Under the deal, the government plan preferred by liberals would be replaced with a program that would create several national insurance policies administered by private companies but negotiated by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees health policies for federal workers. If private firms were unable to deliver acceptable national policies, a government plan would be created.

In addition, people as young as 55 would be permitted to buy into Medicare, the popular federal health program for retirees. And private insurance companies would face stringent new regulations, including a requirement that they spend at least 90 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums on medical services for their customers.
"It may be different from what was previously included in the bill," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley, "but it accomplishes the same goals as a so-called public option."
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The American Spectator: The Environmental Protection Agency announced an endangerment" finding on carbon and other greenhouse gasses, which would allow the Obama administration to impose restrictions on carbon emmissions even if "cap and trade" cannot get passed through Congress. (Snip) This is just one example of how Obama will attempt to impose through regulation whatever parts of his agenda that he cannot achieve achieve legislatively.
"Each day, throughout the executive branch, presidentially appointed bureaucrats who remain unknown to most Americans make decisions that have consequences for the entire nation. And in President Obama's case, his appointments serve as a plan B, allowing him to realize the parts of his agenda that he is unable to enact through the legislative process."
Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, made these intentions clear in her opening memo to employees in January 2009. "EPA will stand ready to help Congress craft strong, science-based climate legislation that fulfills the vision of the President," she wrote, adding, "As Congress does its work, we will move ahead to comply with the Supreme Court's decision recognizing EPA's obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act."
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Maybe there is hope, after all. Following is an important letter.

Dear Mr. President:

I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the Administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed upon at the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The phrase “politically binding” has been used.

Although details have not been made available, recent statements by Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern indicate that negotiators may be intending to commit the United States to a nationwide emission reduction program. As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.

I would very much appreciate having this matter clarified in advance of the Copenhagen meetings.

Sincerely,

Jim Webb
United States Senator

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My question is this: Does Congress have any rights concerning overturning the EPA's coming regulations on CO2 in the USA?

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The Wall Street Journal reports: An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.

Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.

An EPA endangerment finding "could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery," he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.
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Now, how many of us remember that in 1975 our government was scaring us about a coming Ice Age? Or how about one of the Kennedy's in 1990 saying that we had ten years until our oceans would be dead......
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Reuters reports: The Obama Administration is touting that their stimulus program has saved or created 640,329 jobs since it was enacted back in February through the end of October. This number is updated and posted on the Administration’s recovery.gov web site. That amounts to $246,436 per job based on the $157.8bn that has been awarded so far! Total compensation earned by the average payroll employee during October, on an annualized basis, was $59,867. If the government had simply used the funds awarded so far to pay for a year’s worth of labor, that would have paid for 2.6mn jobs!

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John Hawkins of Townhall.com pokes four holes in the theory of man-made global warming:

Climate change has been around as long as the earth: Graphs highlight 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, Dr. Esterbrook says, were up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."

The earth was cooling from roughly 1940-1976: Despite the fact that widespread industrialization was occurring during that 30 year time period. If global temperatures are tightly bound to man-made greenhouse gasses and those gasses were being rapidly introduced to the atmosphere, then the earth should have been warming, not cooling during that period.

So, if it's global warming, why isn't there any warming occurring now? . Again, if global warming has its bootlaces hitched to the amount of man-made greenhouse gasses that are being produced and those numbers are increasing, why hasn't the temperature gone up as well? There's a simple answer: Man-made greenhouse gasses are not a decisive factor in raising or lowering the temperature of the earth.

Climate models can't accurately project the weather 100 years in the future. Since the climate models can't explain the climate over the last 25 years and they can't explain the leveling off of temperature since 1998, why would anyone believe they can predict conditions in 100 years? As computer programmers say, "garbage in, garbage out."

[The scientists of global warming refuse to even answer these questions, saying only that there is a consensus of opinion on the science. And yet, here comes the EPA to regulate us concerning our use and production of that horrible greenhouse gas, CO2, which we all exhale with every breath.... Now THAT is some kind of power over us!]

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The scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters documented that ice melt on Antarctica was the lowest in 30 years during 2008-09, a fact being ignored intentionally by NASA. Unlike the U.S., China and India already have opposed foreign climate governance because it would jeopardize their national sovereignty.

In my former column titled "Obama's One-World Government," I detailed more than a dozen actual statements in the proposed summit treaty that threaten our national sovereignty, could severely cripple our already depressed economy and are so globally socialistic that they would make even a communist blush.
The U.N.'s climate chief, Yvo de Boer, reported that between $10 billion and $12 billion annually will be needed from developed countries (e.g., the U.S.) through 2012 to "kick-start" things. According to the World Bank, adapting for global warming (e.g., building larger dams and higher bridges) will cost an additional $75 billion to $100 billion a year over the next 40 years. (A business professor at the University of Cambridge says it could be as high as $300 billion.)
Page 11 of the 181-page climate summit treaty, which says it would ensure "that global crises, such as the financial crisis, should not constitute an obstacle to the provision of financial and technical assistance to developing countries in accordance with the Convention."
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