Climate 411

Claim:

“As I see it, the most important single item in President Obama’s budget is his commitment to a cap-and-trade plan (to limit and reduce carbon emissions). It represents nothing less than an absolutely breath-taking attempt at reengineering the entire American economy.”

— James Pethokoukis, U.S. News and World Report, February 26, 2009

Truth:

Maybe just a touch of hyperbole here?

President Barack Obama’s proposal to cap and reduce America’s global warming pollution is a straight forward plan to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil and put people to work to unleash our green energy future.

This is not a government take over of the energy sector. The only mandate from the government would be to cut global warming pollution. Industries and utilities would be free to make business decisions on the best way to meet these pollution reduction requirements.

A cap on global warming pollution would send a clear market signal that businesses must innovate and adopt cleaner energy solutions or they would have to pay for market-based pollution credits. It is a balanced plan that offers the most efficient and effective way to deal with the growing threat of global warming.

Claim:

“A cap on America’s global warming pollution is nothing more than a disguised energy tax that will drive up the costs of energy, particularly among the poor.”

— Various opponents of global warming action.

Truth:

Put simply, a cap on global warming pollution is not a tax. In fact, the policy was designed specifically to not be a government run tax, but rather a way to create market incentives to efficiently cut global warming emissions, reward green energy innovation, and rebuild America’s energy infrastructure.

Read More »

The distortions and lies from opponents of global warming action are flying fast and furious. Please help us keep up by adding claims you’ve seen as comments to this post.

We’ll review your submissions and try to respond to as many as we can in the main Truth Squad categories.

Submission suggestions:

1. Please send us the exact quote from our opponents with source or link. We’re looking for material that we can directly refute and it helps for us to understand the context in which comments were made.
2. Please keep this focused on claims from opponents of global warming action. There are plenty of other places on the web where we can debate the finer points of climate legislation. We’d like to use this space to focus on the most outrageous claims from those opposed to any real action at all.
3. Please feel free to provide links to video, radio, podcasts, blogs and other forms of online content.

Thanks for your help as we try to document the bogus claims of our climate action opponents.

Claim:

“We utilize energy from carbon not because we are bad people, but because it is the affordable foundation on which profound improvements in our standard of living have been achieved – our health and our welfare.

“I was a physics and chemistry teacher at Nyeri Baptist High School in Kenya, East Africa and witnessed first hand this simple rule – without energy life is brutal and short. World-wide, carbon-based energy demand will grow as Africans and others continue to discover the benefits of technology, medicine, mobility and agriculture and start reaping the benefits of higher standards of living just as we have. Having lived in Africa, I don’t see how one could halt the progress they need and will achieve. In my view, international rules to limit energy production will not halt the expansion of their energy use because of the tremendous benefits provided by energy that the energy-poor crave.”

— John R. Christy, Alabama’s State Climatologist and Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, written testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, February 25, 2009.

Read More »