Addiction to power needs intervention

“Everybody complains about the weather ... but no one ever does anything about it.” Mark Twain may be dead and gone, but it seems the U.S. House of Representatives is finally getting around to addressing his complaint.

A slim majority of our ever humble representatives, in a remarkable display of profound magnanimity and the uttermost humility, have at last seen fit to resolve and decree that henceforth, the federal government is going to “regulate” ... the earth’s climate.

It only took about 1,200 pages for these exceedingly luminous minds to construct the modest apparatus by which this mild undertaking will be fulfilled. As usual, they are so astoundingly brilliant that none of them even had to bother to read the whole thing. They know enough; a glorious new bureaucracy is going to be created to make absolutely certain that eventually we Americans will only put precisely the right amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Don’t worry! They absolutely promise (and they really mean it this time) that it is not going to cost you very much money.

Oh, and here’s the other good news: It’s only going to give the government control over those few, marginally insignificant areas of your life where you use energy. So clearly there is no need for concern.

By the way, do you have all your “charcoal grill permit” paperwork in order? Where’d you get these contraband steaks? Don’t you know how much bovine flatulence contributes to climate change, Bub? I’m afraid I’m going to have to cite you. All right, so we’re not there yet, but that’s where we’re heading.

Our representatives have become so arrogant, so drunk with power, that 219 House members actually claim that the federal government can indeed regulate the climate. That is the underlying premise here. Try for a moment to transcend the virtual tsunami of alarmist propaganda that has deluged you for the past dozen years. Stop and think about that premise. It is pure fantasy.

Nancy Pelosi has said that solving this crisis means, “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.” Are you comfortable with that? Don’t you realize that accepting this premise throws the floodgates wide open to absolute tyranny? How long before you’re told one child is enough? What’s to stop them? After all, think of the size of each additional child’s lifetime “carbon footprint.”

Let me walk you through the issue as simply as I can. Humans only contribute about 2 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, a small fraction that cannot be reduced to zero. Now consider that greenhouse gases are just one of many factors that interplay and drive climate. So, all we are going to do is shave a tiny little fraction off of just one of many factors that impacts and drives climate.

In other words, the impact will be pathetically insignificant. Too bad the price tag isn’t. Too bad the threat to individual liberty isn’t. This crisis is a phantom menace. It is not about the end, it is purely about the means.

Any House member who was even on the fence about this bill should be unceremoniously booted from office in 2010, particularly Joe Donnelly. Ask your representative point blank, “Do you really believe that the federal government can regulate the earth’s climate?” Ask them if they can tell you precisely how many degrees of future warming will be averted by this bill? Ask them if they think it is a good idea to impose a massive energy tax in the midst of a severe economic recession? Ask them if they read the entire 1,200 page bill, including the 300 page amendment attached at 3 o’clock in the morning on the day of the vote?

Congress is out of control; an addiction in need of an intervention. Let’s schedule it for next fall.

Aaron Williford, Kokomo