Paying for global warming | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    What do you suppose ever happened to "Global Warming". Short answer: Real numbers (i.e. "measurements" as opposed to "model generated" values) from the last twenty or thirty years did not support the fiction of "Global Warming" so the ever conscientious purveyors of the Global Warming myth came up with a new name: "Climate Change".

    We hear some of the Anointed One's puppets telling us that shutting down all the nation's coal fired power plants will eventually end up saving us both financially and physically. (The old standby; "cost avoidance"??)

    In the meantime we hear that the prices of electricity will be higher (skyrocketing higher is how the Anointed One put it either just before or shortly after he was first elected Prez).

    It is a lot easier to agree with the notion that the price of electricity will be severely higher if generated under the mandates of the Anointed One's DOE or EPA. Surely a new federal program will be required to ensure that the poor among us will be able to afford to keep their TVs operating (97.7% of poor households); or their Air Conditioning (78.3% of poor households; or their second TV (65.1% of poor households); or their cable/satellite TV service (63.7% of poor households) as well as a lot of other things...The foregoing percentages are from a Heritage Foundation "Ask Heritage" response to a "What's the Truth about Poverty in America?" question.

    To see more, click here. If the term is properly defined, perhaps all of us could be considered to be living in poverty which would allow the government to pickup the tab for almost everything we consume. Hmmm...

    I suppose that problem is fairly easily solved. Simply increase taxes on the "rich" to pay for it. We can only wonder if "the rich" includes the Prez.. I thought the answer to that question would be an unqualified "YES", but maybe not. It would appear that the Anointed One and his "bride", "Michelle", are headed in the same direction as the Clintons as his term winds down. Over the last several years, his income would seem to have "tanked":

    In 2009 the Anointed One reported an AGI of $ 5,505,409: In 2010 that amount had decreased to $ 1,728,096: In 2011 it further decreased to a paltry $ 789,674. At the rate they are going, the Anointed One and his bride may not be able to afford being President much longer. If they aren't careful, it may be back to the car with the hole in the floorboards (which Michelle told us about a while back). If they mention the Clintons when they get to the poor house, they may be able to get some type of preferred treatment....

    But wait.

    Surely the Anointed One has a fairly good potential for income from the "speech circuit". Not as good as the Clinton machine (Bill, that is), but still good. The big difference is Bill has things to say in the International Arena that folks are willing to pay to listen to. It is not clear that the same can be said about the Anointed One. And, it would seem to be unlikely that Michele would receive an $ 8M book advance as she went out the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for the final time as FLOTUS. But the Anointed one is really good at reading the Teleprompters. All he will need is a prolific speech writer.

    Rather than reaching deeper into the pockets of the "rich" to pay for the "green energy", it may be time for some new thinking. We should make electrical power available at variable rates. We already have the mechanisms in place to do that. The rates could be charged individually at rates to be selected by the individual consumer. The rates should start with what the lowest rates would be if we had already not inflated them with so called "environmental" requirements (such as minimum percentage of "green source" power etc.). The rates should then scale up (perhaps in 10% increments - matching the percentage of "green source" power being fed into the power grid) to what they would be if all the power being used came from "green" sources (e.g. Lowest rates - electricity produced without the help of the environmentalists - perhaps 10¢ per KWH: Highest rates- ranging up to several dollars per KWH for full green source power). Individual consumers could them decide which rate they would be willing to be charged as a function of their commitment to support so called "green energy".. Surely we would find out just how truly committed the environmentalists (i.e. environmental zealots) are when it is time to spend their own money instead of others' money in support of their "religion". The rest of us could live happily ever after... Hmmm...

    The rates would be periodically adjusted (perhaps annually) so that as soon as the technology (be it solar, wind, or something else) is developed to the point of being economically competitive eventually all the rates would even out across the board. In the meantime we would see just how serious the so called "greens" are about all these alternative energy sources and how much they really believe in the technology they continue to demand that all the rest of us pay for. Of course in the meantime we must continue to guard against the environmental zealots "working the system" in ways that will raise the lower rates instead of lowering the higher rates.

    And BTW, if we haven't all already agreed that global climate change really exists, it is time that we did... Because it does... The earth's climate has been changing for untold millennia. Several ice ages have come - and gone - long before CO2 emissions were ever dreamed of. And long before a Band of British Brigands ran their scam on the rest of us with their phoney, biased models. If it our global climate isn't cyclical, what to you suppose it was that caused those ice ages to materialize and what do you suppose it was that made them disappear??

    D'ya Think??