Three Ways the Climate Bill Will Change Your Life
Late Friday, the House passed the first legislation solely dedicated to reversing global warming. Now the fate of the Climate Change Bill is in the hands of the Senate, and political pundits are predicting the bill won’t pass. This exact bill might not pass but sooner than later one will and until then they will have several things in common. A climate bill will change how we produce and use electricity. It will change how you travel from point A to point B. It will change how every business operates and how every American lives. Our lives will never be the same. Dramatic? Yes. True. Yes.
The passage of this bill will change your life in three ways:
- It would affect what type of car you can drive - smaller.
- It would affect how much you pay for energy - more.
- It would affect what type of job you have - green job.
Energy affects every facet of our lives. When energy prices go up, food prices go up, clothing prices go up..the price for everything we buy gets more expensive. Why? Because our society is intricately intertwined with energy, and energy is intertwined with our economy.
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On Saturday during his weekly radio address, President Obama put pressure on the Senate to pass the legislation. “Now my call to every senator; as well as to every American, is this: We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past.”
Yet many Americans don’t want this bill to pass. In a survey conducted by the Center for Public Opinion Policy Center, 76 percent of African-Americans want Congress to make economic recovery, not climate change, its top priority.
“An overwhelming majority African-Americans want Congress to fix the economy before turning its attention to climate change,” said David Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research, who directs the group’s Center for Public Opinion Policy Center, which issued the poll.
One could argue that passing this type of bill will help the country recover faster and it will have a major impact on the country’s auto industry. Most importantly, it will open the door for smaller, start-up companies to compete which will need skilled auto workers. It could also level the playing field for many types of technologies including flex-fuel vehicles, hybrids, all-electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells or liquefied natural gas to have a stab at leading the way to our new transportation highway.
This isn’t the best piece of legislation, but it is a step in the right direction.
Great, concise, rational overview on the Climate Change Bill and its effects on our society and economy until the last line. Nothing in the facts listed or Joanna’s own commentary support her closing line… “but it is a step in the right direction.”
It’s weird… like she lays out the argument to support a different conclusion.
The one thing most people fear more than death is “change” and this clearly changes everything AND NOT FOR THE BETTER!
If the whole 1000 page bill was read maybe the House wouldn’t have been so quick to jump on the bandwagon! Giant bills which no one reads in entirety and votes on without duly considering, are the hallmark of this administration! It falls into the category of not looking before you leap and you know how that can end (pretty darn hard).
상율 한
Lets see, lets build wind mills, nope, they kill birds.
Lets build solar power plants out in the desert, nope, the power lines are an eye sore.
Lets build wave generators, nope, will effect wildlife.
I know, hydro power, nope, we have to tear down the dams and block the construction of anything else.
Nuke Power, don’t even get me started.
I’ll conserve were I can, but I will not turn off all the lights at night, I’ll continue to go to work, and I’ll not commit suicide to keep some extremist happy. How about some options that don’t keep the price of a kwh at .50 cents or more.
Everyone is missing the real point to this thread, why ? because we are all part of the bigger problem, fixing the echonomy first is falling right back into the rut we are in right now, our echonomy and growth is what is causing the problem, population is part of that growth, and we are now past the level where our immmmediate enviornment can sustain us, whithout the oil we are in real trouble.
Higher prices driven up by waste is another of the problems, we need to want less first, bringing goods from far a field which could be made in the parent countries is the way to do things, bring back the older skills so we are going to have a chance if we need to do the things to survive.
Cheese from Brazil, butter from New Zealand and plane loads of grapes from Chile, when we could get them or grow them at home or much nearer to home is more responsible,
What kind of car we drive is not important, if we all started to work work together instead of against our immediate enviornment we would all be much better off.
As JLawson said
The allarm bells are already ringing around the world but no one government is bothered about it or real progress would be being made.
There will come a time when the rich amongst us will have to give back what they have taken from the earth which others have helped them gain.
Less can most definately be more.
Let’s get the timing of everything right here. The worlds economic problems were caused by the U.S. economic crash. The U.S. economic crash occured during G.W.Bush’s reign in power, when the oil companies were heavily subsidized. Why would anyone believe Obama is responsible for the increasing price of oil which is a declining commodity in a world of increasing demand?
President Obama is doing the right thing in looking for alternate sources of energy to one that is declining and destroying the climate at the same time. Wiseup. 6.7 billion humans are already using more than this planet can produce and by 2050 there will be 9 billion of us.
MeMySelfandYou
“There will come a time when the rich amongst us will have to give back what they have taken from the earth which others have helped them gain.”
One of these rich you speak of has already given back to me. I call it “my job”. Without the rich person that owns the company I work for I could be unemployed or working for another rich person.
What if there were no rich. Who would most people work for then?
Sambar
You forgot to mention how Obama said during his presidential campaign last year that he wasn’t opposed to gas being $5.00 a gallon plus. This statement should point out a likely tactic for how he might force alternative energy sources on everyone. Let the price go up and then no one can afford it.
The U.S. economy didn’t decline because of who was President but because of which party was in charge of both the House of Reps and the Senate. The Democrats took over congress in 2006 and within a year is when the economy started declining. President Bush had already been there for 6 years. Can’t blame it on him.
When you say “oil is destroying the climate” you sound like a broken record, like all of the others obsessed with thinking that we can affect the climate. Go listen to what George Carlin said about global warming and the idea that humans can control climate. to actually think that we can cause more of an affect in the short amount of time oil has been used than all the 1,000’s of years of electrical storms and tornados, hurricanes, volcano eruptions, magnetic pulls, and the 1,000’s of object entering our atmosphere from space.
Remember, while other sources of energy can help certain people (i.e.-someone in Michigan cannot benefit from wind power harvested in florida), oil is still the dominate source of energy in America and without it we would not be one of the worlds leading nations in so many different areas.
Lastly if this global warming bill gets enacted, no matter what version, the America we know now will be no more for so many reasons. There are so many things that will change i don’t have the time to talk about them
As the previous reader said, hurricanes, tornado’s electic storms, volcanic are all natural , what isn’t natural is the USA spewing 900 billion plus tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year and rising as we speak, China close too at 700 billion tons and the list goes on.
What is also not natural is the destruction of the planets lungs which are being cut down at a rate where borneo will not have its rain forset by 2020 and others follow suit.
The experts are saying today that the sun is in its most dormant stage for centuries, how much we warm up when she comes back to full power is anyones guess.
If anyone thinks we are not having the slightest effect on climate they need to check out what is really a foot, we are obsesed with power and oil,
but all the money in all of the banks throughout the world will not feed or save us from ourselves when its all gone, then we are open season especialy the super powers who know this and are today in constant resolution with the rest of the planet in obtaining the black stuff.
The topic of the moment takes away ones intrest with the swine flu issue, but the real forest creaps up on us unaware, then cars and transport will be the least of our problems, when food becomes scarce then we will know what is a foot.
Check out the film, A Crude Awakening and you can hear the experts saying exactly what is coming, If we all Ignore the facts it will be at your own peril, get ready for the coming onslaught.
James said:
One of these rich you speak of has already given back to me. I call it “my job”. Without the rich person that owns the company I work for I could be unemployed or working for another rich person. What if there were no rich. Who would most people work for then?
History has a nasty habit of repeating itself
When society becomes unable to support itself as it does today on the back of a very powerful resorce like oil we are all going to have to work together more and more with the land and each other, you will one day see those ghost towns in the mid west and all over the USA where everyone left for the big cities and jobs becoming self sufficient towns once again, another mass migration will have to occur in order to survive, the older skills combined with more recent ones will have to jell and make everything we need to survive,
We have all been happy and easy for nearly three generations now, not knowing a real hard time for too long, a single barrel of oil holds the available energy aquivalent to 12 people working for a whole year, its gonna be really hard if no real alternative is found, thisis why we are going to need some of the old manual skills to get the natural balroling once again.
There will always be those who are cleverer at getting others to do their dirty work, but making someone work for nothing and giving others their hard earned labour and ritches for nothing does not work for the whole.
The Amish are a collective who for centuries have made ends meet, their farms are truly hard work and beutiful at the same time, yet their way of life is being destriyed year by year, when we should be preserving it.
Work for who ever you like, but do something for yourself because your gonna need it.