Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

The Carbon Footprint of the Inauguration and what to do about it

Hint: Not a darned thing. From David Harsanyi at the Denver Post:

Debate over; it's freezing
The carbon footprint of Barack Obama's inauguration could exceed 575 million pounds of CO2. According to the Institute for Liberty, it would take the average U.S. household nearly 60,000 years of naughty ecological behavior to produce a carbon footprint equal to the largest self-congratulatory event in the history of humankind.

The same congressfolk who are now handing out thousands of tickets to this ecological disaster only last year mandated the phased elimination of the incandescent light bulb � a mere carbon tiptoe, if you will. The whole thing seems a bit unfair.

And, on the day millions of Americans were freezing their collective backsides off, new Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman announced that Congress would fast-track climate change legislation. Waxman claimed "inaction on the climate issue is causing uncertainties that make it more difficult to emerge from the recession," according to The Associated Press.

Waxman's methane emission would merely reek if it weren't so catastrophically sad. I learned long ago that any dissent on climate alarmism will be met with unflinching fury, but is there anyone who can genuinely argue that inaction on "climate issues" (formerly known as global warming) has had a fundamental impact on the economic downturn?

Our plight will, in actuality, likely be exacerbated if Waxman gets his way. Playing on the public's fear of climate change, we are about to almost certainly see a nationalized energy policy and price controls through cap and trade.

The late economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt once wrote that those who attempt "to lift the prices of particular commodities permanently above their natural market levels have failed so often, so disastrously and so notoriously" that no one admits to wanting to try it. Then again, in those heady days, the Energy and Commerce chairman's job was actually assisting Americans with their energy needs, not making it more expensive.

With policies like this, it's no wonder that Waxman has a curious history: Swiped from Michael Laprarie at Wizbang Posted by DaveH at January 16, 2009 3:16 PM