America has huge reserves of natural gas, plenty of room for more nuclear energy, and is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. Simply put if we tax the huge reserves of coal that America has it won’t get used. The health benefits of better air quality and not releasing hundreds of tons of toxic heavy metals into our water tables would make avoiding coal worth it without global warming.

The Democrats are going to take a hit this November, and maybe even lose both houses. If that happens, don’t expect to see a climate bill with any teeth whatsoever for the remainder of the Obama presidency.

The way the GOP sank the last science education bill this week, should tell you all you need to know about how a climate bill will fair over the next two years.

They will move to places they aren’t taxed…

The same products will be made and the carbon will be released and people here will simply lose jobs.

But hey, if they are unemployed, they won’t have any income so they will consume less…

Yeah, that’s it…

Why not help power plants convert to natural gas instead of coal? Why hybrids for cars? Batteries require mining for rare metals, plastics, and they make cars less efficient due to excess weight, number of batteries, production costs, and cost to the consumer (can’t live on government subsidies for “green” cars forever). We’ll run out of rare metals before oil in the long term if the world starts driving battery powered cars and we’ll be right back where we started, with this type of legislation. I believe it would be more efficient and fiscally responsible to push for natural gas (they already use natural gas to produce h2 for experimental cars and Honda makes a Civic that runs on CNG) , clean diesel (which can run on algae or used veggie oil, because using fresh corn is inefficient), and hydrogen power (when they develop efficient and safe means to store h2). All of which will also make us energy independent and non-dependent on oil, without having to charge carbon emissions. There’s no way we’re ever going to eliminate emissions entirely, but doing all of these will cut it dramatically over the long term.

There’s plenty other incentives the government can offer that doesn’t involve punishment, but rather tax incentives for converting to natural gas, sequestering carbon below ground, filters, etc. The taxes are only in there to fund the government’s oversight and regulation of energy via another bureaucratic agency, not necessary, it’s only going to cost us more money in the end, higher taxes are passed to the consumer through higher utility prices and government agencies waste government money like nobody’s business. I worked for a government agency and witnessed the waste firsthand.

Why sponsor a Carbon Credit market?

Wouldn’t it be more affective and simple to charge EVERY polluter a Fee of 5% of the cost of fossil fuel they use.

The Fees would build a Green Energy Fund ($ Trillions Yearly) used exclusively to encourage known and new methods and means of reducing pollution.

VOTE TO REVISE THE ENERGY BILL

Gene Thomas
May 11, 2010

Additionally, lets be blunt about what we’re doing here: We’re taking millions of years worth of dead swamp and bog plant, and millions of years of buried sea-floor plankton, and we’re releasing all the carbon those plants stored in their cells over that time period.

What you do when you breath out and fart is let out the by-products of digestion and sugar metabolism, by yourself or the bacteria in your gut. Because of that, you can exhale and fart no more than the amount of carbon in your actual diet. A car can easily burn through a couple gallons worth of gas in the course of a day. You’d be hard put to eat that much, and in the form that your car processes it, your car can much more efficiently product CO2 as a by product of its chemical reaction.

And that’s your car. Think of a big tanker ship, a jet, or a powerplant that shovels coal in by the train car load. Would those not turn hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide in much greater quantities?

You talk about breathing and farting because you’re working off the notion or the rhetorical stance that people like me are saying that any CO2 emissions are evil. They’re not. Our basic problem is the huge rate at which we’re putting this stuff out, a rate that’s greater than nature’s ability to lock it back up. It’s a question of reducing our output to sane levels so nature can catch up with it.

How much does my exhaling cost the government? Will I be taxed on farts as well?