Category: Environment Page 3 of 4
Email with more information from Kay Granger on the Climate Bill that passed the House two Friday’s ago. Unbelievable.
Dear Friends,
I heard your concerns loud and clear about the “cap and trade” bill. The overwhelming majority of you who shared your thoughts with me voiced your opposition and frustration, and I am proud to say I voted against this misguided bill. Although this 1,400-page bill narrowly passed the House, we are still learning what’s in it because parts of the bill were hidden from Members of Congress until less than a day before the vote.
Many of you told me you are worried about the job losses and economic impact we can expect from this bill. What you may not know is that the Democrats who wrote this legislation know it is going to cost American jobs, so they included incredible new benefits for workers who lose their jobs because of this bill. These benefits include 156 weeks’ worth of payments that are equal to 70 percent of the worker’s average weekly wage; 80 percent of their monthly health care premium; up to $1,500 for job search assistance; up to $1,500 for moving expenses; and job counseling, training, and other assistance. Rather than instituting an expensive new welfare program that will cost untold millions in tax dollars, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop those jobs from being lost in the first place?
This is outright tyranny. Just like the trillions in bailouts that clearly aren’t working (see Warren Buffett’s comments from today, who himself is a liberal Democrat), this too will be crammed down our throats, without debate, without the consent of the people for whom Congress allegedly works, without any dialog or discussion, under the assumption of an unproven theory that man is causing the Earth to warm. This is simply outrageous. And it will raise costs on everything, especially energy, to levels we likely haven’t seen … and all this at a time when our economy is in one of the worst crises since the Great Depression and on the verge of possibly getting worse for a long time to come. Simply unbelievable. Yet this is the exact kind of nonsense that was warned against before the election. Kay Granger is up in arms on this one.
Right on.
Maybe we should try working on actual problems that exist in our world instead of spending possibly trillions of dollars on a phantom. Lack of fresh water concerns me a lot more than nonsense elitist scientific “orthodoxy”.
Oh yeah, that’s right … it was all marketing anyway, a facade … and when the economy crashes, marketing and advertising are the first things to get cut. Plus, when the economy is down, there’s no money to be made, because the green push only works when the economy is doing well. Hmm, what does that tell us about the reality of things?
The mighty Green push has disappeared from the media, with the exception of big companies like NBC and CNN still pushing it (I’m assuming because for them, there is still money to be made based on statistics), despite the fact that 2/3 of the presenters at the UN’s IPCC conference dissent against the theory of man-made global warming.
Can you tell this is a sticking point for me? 🙂 The level of absurdity with this nonsense continues to boggle the imagination.
Update on 4/17/2009:
It is now up to 700 international scientists who are dissenting.
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This is just too good not to comment on:
(Original): http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? … 4616db87e6
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/scie … %20Claims/
Just read some of the quotes from top-level, international scientists at the UN conference on climate change. Unbelievable. To think that Gore and the media would tout man-made global warming as an absolute, definitive consensus in the scientific community … it is a total, flat-out lie. There’s nothing else to call it really. There is apparently more to come from this conference soon.
http://gizmodo.com/5065587/greenpeace-o … ood-enough
So Apple, in response to the environmentalist outcry over the past few years, that their products are harmful to the environment (which I am for reducing toxins I might add), stepped up their efforts to make good on reducing the amount of damage they cause in towns like China where they are produced, as well as issues such as the cancer-causing toxic fumes reported to be burning off of the motherboards. So, as this article says, with one hand, environmentalists are patting Apple on the head and saying, “Good job,” while apparently the other hand is still chastising them for not doing enough. What is enough for an environmentalist, I ask?
This leads me to one fundamental conclusion: as long as humans are alive and consume anything, anything at all, whether it is food such as plants, animals, or if we use wood for building houses to live in, or use cars for transportation, fuels for energy, environmentalists will complain and fight all forms of technology that advance society. Now that doesn’t mean we have no responsibility to take care of the Earth as Christians. But it does mean that it should not become our god as it has for the environmentalist movement who opposes the God of the Bible (for the most part, with exceptions of course).
This leads me to more thought at a worldview level of where we as Christians are coming from and where our environmentalist friends are coming from. Are humans more valuable than anything else on the face of the planet as the Scriptures say, or are they of the same worth, value and honor as everything else that exists, which makes us just common place amongst a host of other organisms and matter? For instance, does a plant, as has been dictated in Switzerland by their governmental ethics board, have just as many inherent “rights” as humans and as much God-given value and honor? Or are humans distinct in honor and value apart from all other things in creation as has been ordained by our Creator?
Now my presupposition with all of this is that God is the Creator of all things and created all for His glory. In addition, I believe people were created in the image of God, to reflect His glory and attributes. The evolutionist/environmentalist does not believe any of this and so just as belief in the God of the Bible guides all my other beliefs and decisions, so also their underlying beliefs about reality (based largely outside of any text or manuscript, but based in very large assumptions that have been widely accepted by the scientific community) guide all of their other decisions regarding the world and our role as humans in it. These beliefs naturally and logically lead them to conclude we have no more inherent worth than that of a rock.
The Christian worldview says humans were created by God as His crowning achievement, made in His image and possess more inherent worth than any other of His creations. The evolutionist/environmentalist worldview (though not all environmentalists I might add) explain humans away as just a series of chemical and biological reactions that just happened to come into existence by chance, survival of the fittest or natural selection. Therefore, what worth do we have as humans that is more than that of other creatures, they seem to ask on an almost constant basis, at least implicitly?
This exposes the fundamentally different ways of viewing humanity and our use of the environment. Both camps believe (or should at least) that we should care for and protect the environment. Yet the reason why we should do this is what splits us. The Christian worldview says that we should take care of the environment out of our glory to God and thankfulness for what He has granted us to live in. The environmentalist (who for the most part holds to a evolutionist worldview) is merely a survivalist, believing humans to possess no more worth than that of a rock or plant and then applying the same worth and value we possess as humans, as granted to us by our Creator, to that of other objects with which we come into contact.
At what point will environmentalists cease their varied agendas? In their worldview, until humans are using no resources or are using only the most limited amounts possible to the point where there is no progress made at any level in our civilization, will their endeavors be complete. So should environmentalist policies and legislation be imposed on the collective society so that everyone must abide by their assumed rules? Is this not the very thing the same kinds of people accuse Christians of doing, imposing moral laws on the collective society? Do they not believe their proposed laws to be rules that are morally correct for all people and that we all should abide by them?
As Greg Koukl insightfully points out in his lecture on Relativism, and this whole discussion proves as a case in point, when you really get down to it, morality is the only thing you can legislate. This is clear between both the Christian and environmentalist worldviews. Now I don’t believe you can bring people to salvation through legislation (what many on the Christian right seem to assume), all the while ignoring the actual changing of people’s hearts by the Holy Spirit.
But the question is, which one of the meta-narratives for our existence is true? The Christian worldview that values humans above all in creation? Or an atheistic, evolutionist, radical-environmental worldview which believes humans to be of equal worth and dignity as anything else that exists, like plants now? I would argue it takes way more faith to believe we got here from nothing than to believe God was always there, self-existent, creating us and all things out of nothing by His infinite power. The latter at least logically makes more sense for how we got here and what our point of existence is: to find our ultimate joy and fulfillment in giving glory to God through Jesus, not in trying to save a world marred by the fall, though of course we sinners can make it worse off a lot faster if we’re not careful by how we use resources.
(Original): http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen … 55406.html
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/envi … th%20Pole/
As we can see, according to this at least, the Earth’s climate is indeed warming. No one has questioned that. This is an indisputable fact. Yet, is it caused by man’s pollution, or way more dramatic forces, such as oceanic temperature fluctuations in combination with increases in solar energy output from the sun? I believe it would be the latter as fast as this is occurring. But I’m no climatologist. Yet oddly, that is what most meteorologists and climatologists will tell you. So shouldn’t we be spending federal money on preventing the effects of this unpreventable climatological warming instead of trying to cut these so-called green-house gases? Seems reasonable to me.
Many from conservative and liberal camps are proposing two different ideas for our current energy conundrum: we either need to (from the conservative camp primarily) increase our domestic drilling and current output, or we need to (from the liberal camp primarily) create new sources of renewable energy so that we can become less dependent upon foreign oil, decrease “greenhouse gases,” and overall lower pollution (which I’m all for getting rid of nasty fumes, by the way).
It seems each group, respectively, pits one idea against the other as if they are opposed to each other. But why can’t we do both at the same time? One resolution solves the current short-term problem of domestic demand and oil speculators driving up the price of the commodity (based on the possibility of instability in the Middle East) and the other is the long-term solution to getting away from oil altogether, which I am for.
Different political groups dig in their heels against an opposing group just for the sake of the group, not for the sake of what logically makes sense to solve our problems. It’s that precise thinking that needs to change in this country. Yes, I have hang-ups with most liberal policies and cannot stand with them on most things. But there are some things that do logically make sense that we all need to be doing that conservatives and liberals both (as groups) seem to deny.
Yes, John McCain is a “conservative” advocate for the environment and defies the norm. I mean I sure wouldn’t consider him a true conservative because of some of his out of place policies. But regardless, he does at least seem to see both of these points very clearly: increase output now in the short term and begin implementing renewable energy infrastructure into the market for the future and security of this nation.