Cap and Trade: Air is not supposed to be orange

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I couldn’t help noticing an orange haze hanging over Atlanta most of last week – the week the U.S. House of Representatives approved Cap and Trade legislation. There are people that pooh pooh the need for environmental action to reduce smog (and to address climate change, clean the oceans, etc.). I am not one of those people. The city of Atlanta was under a smog alert most of last week so the very young and very old, as well as people with any kind of breathing disorders were advised to stay indoors. The rest of us are urged to drive less and fill our gas tanks up after sundown. Smog alerts are a regular part of Atlanta summers. Life goes on.

If you don’t think inhaling orange air is bad then the burden of proof is on you to convince me that there is not a need for environmental action.

Air is not supposed to be orange.

Last week Congress passed an environmental bill. The Cap and Trade bill was a 1,200 page mess that no one had read. The facts around the costs and impacts of the bill were in dispute because a study by the Congressional Budget Office was misused and abused by Congress, the media, and Cap and Trade supporters. Congress wasted a lot of time and hurt their credibility (and President Obama’s as well) by misconstruing details of the CBO study then rushing the bill through and dumping an additional 300 pages into the bill at 3:09 a.m. the morning of the day the bill was passed. Note that most of the nation’s newspapers were already being printed by then, not that anyone had the time to read those 300 pages and write a report on them. The air remains orange in Atlanta.

Air is not supposed to be orange.

I have often said that the environmental issues we face are far too important to be left to the environmentalists and their political supporters. Congress proved me right Friday by sensationalizing this important issue, misusing their research, and in the end, creating more doubters of both the environmental issues we face and of Congressional integrity.

There are ways to reduce our carbon footprint and there must be good ways to clean up our air without destroying our economy. Shoving poorly understood legislation through Congress in the deceitful manner of last week’s Cap and Trade debacle is not one of those ways. There are a lot of questions surrounding environmental issues and efforts; many of them good questions that advocates (and pundits) need to handle truthfully. Environmental advocates and their supporters in Congress damaged the integrity of their cause last week, possibly beyond repair, by choosing the path of deception. Next time, they ought to consider honesty and transparency …..President Obama???

Because air is not supposed to be orange.

Tagged as: cap & Trade, cap and trade, cap n trade, cbo, congressional budget office, economic crisis, economy, environment, HR 2454, obama, Pelosi, President Obama, smog alert, Tea Party, Waxman-Markey