Nothing inspires taking on the “planetary emergency” of global warming like the first snow of the winter in Washington, D.C.
As two inches of snow accumulated outside the U.S. Capitol, the Senate’s Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee debated “historic” global warming legislation sponsored by Sens. John Warner (R.-Va.) and Joe Lieberman (I.-Conn.).
“We look around right now and see the snow on the trees – standing out here and say ‘Where is global warming when you need it?’” Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said to the Business & Media Institute.
The pending vote is seen as historic because “ [1]the Senate would impose for the first time a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.”
According to [2]a November 11 Washington Times editorial, the bill would require companies to scale back emissions, costing Americans $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 40 years.
That would work out to $494 a year from every man, woman and child – more than 303 million Americans – a significant burden on the U.S. economy.
Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the EPW Committee, said he was optimistic the bill wouldn’t make it into law, despite overwhelming support from committee members.
“We’re in there, it’s going to be marked up and then passed out right on party lines,” Inhofe said. “The thing I think that will kill this will be the same thing that killed the McCain-Lieberman bill two years ago and that is this constitutes – or that bill constituted – a tax increase 10 times greater than the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. Now this is far greater than that, and yet there’s really no guaranteed benefits from it.”