Where did Global Warming Go? It's another issue that's been pushed under the rug by the 1% as irrelevant because it would ultimately affect their bottom line. Sure, many own oil stocks, bonds and pieces of these massive companies and many of those are the 99% but they certainly are not the ones who are attempting to control legislation and mold public opinion about Global Warming.
The United States remains the one Developed Country that has yet to fully address Global Warming and its effects on our environment. This is the cold hard truth and it comes down to the 1% and our complete inability to influence legislation that has to do with environmental protection whether it be air or water. These protections are currently labeled as job killers. Really, when getting rid of such legislation we need to remind people that legislation like that should be called people killers.
The most current issue? Cement regulation (h/t to Maher on Friday's Real Time).
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House Votes to Rewrite EPA Rules on Cement Plants
WASHINGTON—The House voted Thursday to force a rewrite of federal air-pollution regulations for cement plants, the latest step in a Republican-led effort to undercut the Environmental Protection Agency's agenda.
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Supporters of the bill say that the EPA has set emissions targets that, put together, will be difficult to achieve in practice and cause some cement manufacturers to close or scale down production during a recession, when they already have less demand. The Portland Cement Association, a trade group, says about 18 of 97 cement plants in the U.S. would have to close as a result of the rules.
The EPA's estimates are less dire. When the rules were finalized in August 2010, the agency said 10 U.S. cement-manufacturing facilities would have to idle after the rule goes into effect in 2013, unless market conditions changed. But it also said the economic benefits from a healthier population would far outweigh the costs of the rules, which require significant reductions of emissions of mercury and other pollutants.
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"In effect, the bill would exempt cement kilns from ever having to achieve meaningful reductions in toxic air pollution," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.). "It is turning our back on the purpose of the Clean Air Act."
Of course the Wall Street Journal fails to mention just what the issue is with regarding pollution and cement kilns. Mercury. Mercury pollution is the issue and mercury is a growing health problem. So do we have a jobs killing regulation or a people killing bill?
This is what it comes down to, for many of the 1% there are a lot of things that are taken for granted. And a big question needs to be asked. Where did Global Warming Go?
This fading of global warming from the political agenda is a mostly American phenomenon. True, public enthusiasm for legislation to tackle climate change has flagged somewhat throughout the developed world since the recession of 2008. Nonetheless, in many other countries, legislation to control emissions has rolled out apace. Just last Wednesday, Australia’s House of Representatives passed a carbon tax, which is expected to easily clear the country’s Senate. Europe’s six-year-old carbon emissions trading system continues its yearly expansion. In 2010, India passed a carbon tax on coal. Even China’s newest five-year plan contains a limited pilot cap-and-trade system, under which polluters pay for excess pollution.
The United States is the “one significant outlier” on responding to climate change, according to a recent global research report produced by HSBC, the London-based bank. John Ashton, Britain’s special representative for climate change, said in an interview that “in the U.K., in Europe, in most places I travel to” — but not in the United States — “the starting point for conversation is that this is real, there are clear and present dangers, so let’s get a move on and respond.” After watching the Republican candidates express skepticism about global warming in early September, former President Bill Clinton put it more bluntly, “I mean, it makes us — we look like a joke, right?”
Americans — who produce twice the emissions per capita that Europeans do — are in many ways wired to be holdouts. We prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value personal freedom, are suspicious of scientists, and tend to distrust the kind of sweeping government intervention required to confront rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change presents numerous ideological challenges to our culture and our beliefs,” Professor Hoffman of the Erb Institute says. “People say, ‘Wait a second, this is really going to affect how we live!’ ”
There are, of course, other factors that hardened resistance: America’s powerful fossil-fuel industry, whose profits are bound to be affected by any greater control of carbon emissions; a cold American winter in 2010 that made global warming seem less imminent; and a deep recession that made taxes on energy harder to talk about, and job creation a more pressing issue than the environment — as can be seen in the debate over the pipeline from Canada.
Job Creation a more pressing issue than the environment, than human health and the future of our planet. Jobs are an issue but we want jobs that sustain human life, that are sustainable and that build things rather than destroy. The Occupation must be about keep the 99% and beyond healthy and employed for more than what it takes to build a pipeline that will destroy habitat and bring in more fossil fuels that we don't need, a dead resource that must be done away with.
This is not about creating jobs, it's about creating wealth for a very few and ignoring the facts of where our planet is going and what the rest of the world is doing around us.
And the excuse that we need to pollute to compete with China is maddening. Aren't we exceptional? Why haven't we been innovating the past thirty years? Why would want to compete with a Country that's going through an industrial revolution (Coal plants?) that we went through how long ago? We must move beyond the industrialization of last century and move into this century.
A crumbling infrastructure, bridges, roads and schools falling apart, all things that serve the 100% need to be repaired, these are the jobs we want and need. And we can actually get there by investing in cement plants that make their products without spewing mercury into the air. WHY CAN'T WE HELP THEM MODERNIZE?
This is why we ask more from the 1%. It should not be either/or, it should not be about killing jobs vs. killing people. This is why we must move beyond where we are now because these are choices we should not have to make.
Investing in what we have now to make it safe, cleaner and better now and rebuilding our Country helps 100% of the population. And dealing with the reality that the rest of the world embraces means moving past this as well.
I am the 99% and this is what I ask for.