NO, THIS ISN’T ABOUT SEX. It’s about carbon footprints — yours, mine and that of just about every other living creature that walks, crawls or flies over the face of God’s green Earth. Once the California Legislature passed America’s first full-blown cap-and-trade law, we Californians all became very hot stuff indeed!
I know because I just took the Nature Conservancy’s online test for my personal carbon footprint. Identifying myself as a single person living alone in a one-bedroom apartment who hasn’t done much of anything special to control his energy use, I learned the cost of my carbon footprint is $80. So of course that’s what the Nature Conservancy asked me to donate to their cause.
Go ahead. Check it out yourself. Make sure you’re honest about your personal energy use, though. My guess is you’re much hotter stuff than my hypothetical self is. Consequently, your carbon footprint is going to be much bigger and cost much more. Now, under the new California law, you’ll owe that and more to the Democrats in Sacramento.
You say you won’t put up with that and, if worse comes to worst, you’ll just pick up your hot stuff and move to Nevada? Well, don’t count on that as a long-term fix. Remember, California has always been first in the nation to innovate. As somebody said in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal not long ago, the whole country is about to be “Californicated.”
Besides, this has long been part of Obama’s grand plan for America. Remember in January 2008 when then-presidential candidate Obama said energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket” under his cap-and-trade plan? Do you also remember during his nomination acceptance speech when he rhapsodized, “We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment … when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
During the past six and a half years, Obama’s soaring rhetoric has come back to haunt him a bit. As the UK’s Daily Mail reported on April 22, 2014: “President Barack Obama is marking the 44th Earth Day with a carbon-emitting extravaganza, spending more than 15 hours on Air Force One and 15 minutes aboard the Marine One helicopter. Not including his motorcades in Oso, Washington, the site of a recent devastating mudslide, his trip will consume an estimated 35,565 gallons of fuel.”
Just think what his and his family’s carbon footprint must be with all those thousands of official and unofficial Air Force One flights in the past six and a half years. “According to the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, beginning with the infamous New York ‘date night,’ the Obamas have spent $44,351,777.12 in taxpayer cash on travel expenses. … As of March 2014, Obama has spent more time traveling internationally than any other president, taking 31 trips since assuming office in 2009. The 119 days spent overseas have cost taxpayers millions of dollars.”
So I guess I can keep my puny little $80 carbon footprint if I like it. Obama, after all, has much bigger fish to fry, as evidenced by his latest Clean Power Plan.
This Aug. 4 edict “commands states to cut carbon emissions by 32 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2030.” That’s “9 percent steeper than the draft the Environmental Protection Agency issued in June 2014. The damage to growth, consumer incomes and U.S. competitiveness will be immense — assuming the rule isn’t tossed by the courts or rescinded by the next Administration.”
Lots of luck with that, America. This president’s just too sexy for his shirt. He has moved way beyond and above the reach of our nation’s courts and any future White House administration. He’s engaging a much higher power. “As Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer,” Obama warned, “taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation.”
On the same day Obama announced his Clean Power Plan, the United States Conference of Bishops sent an open letter to the president to “welcome this important move by the administration to adopt long-awaited standards to mitigate climate change and safeguard public health.” Their open letter even encouraged lawmakers to “oppose legislation and appropriations riders designed to reverse efforts to implement a national standard to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants.”
Only 10 days earlier, the newly appointed Archbishop of Chicago, Blasé Cupich, toured a Catholic school with EPA administrator Gina McCarthy and invited her and her agency to monitor archdiocesan power and water usage. So much for the separation of church and state!
Bruce Robinson is a writer and former Benicia resident. This article originally appeared in American Thinker.
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Bruce you are a very welcome change to the Forum page. Glad to see you back. We now need Dennis and HJm back on a regular bases. That trio was well needed then and needed even more now. Very good article Bruce.
Bruce, welcome back. Good to see you keeping an eye on our ‘Green’ President.
Must say that your $80 footprint is minuscule to my $390 one!
I am sure Gov. Jerry will be coming after me!’
Robinson, Livesay and Lund. Science deniers?…and you three think all of Global warming is one big Obama joke?
Why am I not surprised? And voting for Trump too? I’m sure he’ll create the cash cow world of your dreams out of his 4th grade vocabulary and “good old boy” rhetoric. Good luck with that!
Peter Bray
and you three think all of Global warming is one big Obama joke?not at all Petr, MCGW, extends far beyond Obama.
Now if you had stated that Obama is a joke, you would have been correct.
And Dr. Jim Hansen, formerly of NASA, all his papers on the environment, they too are a joke to you?
Pb
Thanks Bruce for getting Petr out of his funk . I l;ike it when he comments.
I love this Bruce. We are now back on track for some fun comments. You must write on a regular bases along with Jim and Dennis. The Forum page will be fun and the comment section will be lively again. Keep at it Bruce.
Wow! What an eye opening column. It’s as if democrats and folks on the left have not already called out Obama on the hypocrisy of his energy policy. Always just a bit behind aren’t we Bruce? Did you write this column, what, 5 or 6 years ago?
And just what is the Republican Energy policy dare tell? And their Global Warming policy, their policy on healthcare or anything? Coastal waters off the Hawaiian Islands this morning are at 86F as reported just now in the news. What are Repubs prepared to do about it? Make juvenile jokes about Obama while a gasbag like Trump leads your 17 candidates in a race to nowhere?Great work, Repubs, great work!
Peter Bray
well Petr at least they do not tell stories about their e-mail. Does the name Hillary sound familiar.
Try to address the questions being asked Bob, otherwise you’re not debating, you’re just a right-wing Diversion. Something all the Repubs in Congress do since water and bread were invented.
Peter Bray, and, I never was “in a funk”
HILLary’s E-MAILS WERE NO DIFFERENT than Colin Powell’s or all the Bush e-mails that were destroyed with NOT a stir by the Repubs. You guys just chase your tails until all the world’s problems are resolved by others. Get ready for Bernie, he may have you for lunch. Or perhaps Joe Biden. Take your choice. We have many. Do you have any? Jindal??? Huckabee? Christy??Hahahahahaha
” a right-wing Diversion.” Otherwise known as a “Trump”.
Rhymes with “dump.”
pb
Petr I know the only thing that gets you out of your dump is an article by Robinson, Pugh or Lund.. Other than that you just swoon all over Matt. Glad you are out of the dump and writing your Socialist views. I do enjoy them.
You don’t enjoy anything I write that’s why you only create diversions and never answer direct questions. You’re not a problem solver, just an oil soaked, Repub whiner…
pb
Furthermore, Bob Livesay, Matt writes more in a paragraph than you and your 3 cynic-Repub peers will ramble through in a lifetime. I suspect your development went from cerebral cortex then straight to the infantile wallet then to a petroleum oil bath and offshore investments, tax loopholes, and cynical whining with smoke and mirrors as an option. No heart, no humanist development, hardly any cojones either, just fake, whine, dodge and smile. All attributes of a playground bully and arrested development male. No wonder Mayor O’Rourke, a bright female, gives you the MAJOR willies. Mama’s harsh shadow recalled there? Study Matt’s writing sometime, he writes to upift and understand. You right-wingers write to humiliate, demean, and cover for your own inability to do anything benevolent or constructive on this planet. Trump and Palin are the perfect bozos and running mates for arrested development voters. Support them,
they will do and accomplish nothing and you will be happy and under-challenged. Safe and stagnant. Good luck with that.
pb
TP and Petr it appears the only one being investigated on e-mail abuse is Hillary. Petr it now appears you have verifed your Socialist leanings. At least you admit it.
Republicans never “investigate” their own, they are above the law, e.g., Dick Cheney’s fracking fluids pumped into the earth are not under The Clean Water Act, he saw to that as VP. After the rampant greedy capitalism collapsed the US economy in 2007, a tad of Bernie’s democratic socialism sounds pretty good to me. Did you notice how the Repub’s sham “debate” had not a word about the environment or Global Warming in it? YOU guys aren’t problem solvers but offshore opportunists…blatant at that.
PB
Petr I love fossil fuel. I assume in your career you never were about working the oil when at that giant company you worked for. I do believe they were into fossil fuel big time. But not Petr. Explain that one Petr and I might just believe you.
We all use fossil fuels, but it’s drawbacks are apparent. It’s days are over. We no longer cook over cameldung chips and an open fire and whale oil has passed its prime also. Try not to be a relic, or you too will be divested.
pb
i> HILLay’s E-MAILS WERE NO DIFFERENT than Colin Powell’s
Petr, I have to admit at times when I am traveling I may miss a few things that may be newsworthy. That being the case perhaps you can provide some links on:
When did the FBI launch a criminal investigation int Colin Powell’s email?
When was it reported that Colin Powell’s privat IT tech took the fifth?when was it reported that Colin Powell hired a private company to slick his computer?
Thanks in advance Petr, as o know you to be a sincere honest fellow who will handle this with all the series ness deserved.
Sorry for the typos, I’m on an IPHONE.
Jesus, Dennis, I’m not going to do your political homework for you. Go see what Colin had to say on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” He too had two e-mail desktop servers. One government, one private and both on the same desk. No big F’g deal! You Repubs are so scared silly of an icon female with more global experience than any of you I can hear your collective urine running down your birdy legs. You trip over mice lint and never rise to help anyone but yourselves. I really try not to get involved with these petty pusuits online but to mock you clowns and your lofty but trivial pseudo-arrogance. Boo!
pb
You really do not he it do you Petr?
The difference lies in your statement;
He too had two e-mail desktop servers. One government, one private and both on the same desk.
You really are so focused on defending the D’s that you cannot see the difference?
Colin offered that defense to Chuck Todd, I didn’t. This same clod that went before the UN with “renderings” of mobile WMD labs. Renderings! Jesus Christ, Any tech art group can make renderings. JFK had aerial photos of the Russian missiles in Cuba!!!! How F’g lax are your lying administration’s cowboys, Dennis??
If Hillary gets derailed by her inability to shrug off Repug tripe, Bernie’s populist vote will have your 17 candidates for lunch. Or maybe Biden will. Huckabee? Jindal? You gotta be kidding…Jeb? That family is polluted…
Dennis:
Dennis:
Furthermore, American politics or maybe human species politics is an open sewer. Very few bright people are called, but the opportunistic, greedy and power- hungry and always they throw their friends and family and themselves under the bus to get ahead, Even incrementally. I don’t belabor the issues or the players, don’t follow the Draft Pick or their RBI’s or ERA’s but sometimes fall into their odorous quagmire and have to wipe my feet. I have plenty of other things to do: http://www.handymanservicespeterbray.com and www.
peterbray.org/pedro
pb
You really do not see it do you Petr?
The difference lies in your statement;
He too had two e-mail desktop servers. One government, one private and both on the same desk.
You really are so focused on defending the D’s that you cannot see the difference?
Edify me, my friend. Good news is always welcome.