Thursday, November 20, 2008
Heritage Blasts Obama’s Climate Message
The Heritage Foundation issued a harsh rebuttal to Barack Obama’s latest climate change comments, blasting the president-elect for recycling problematic climate change rhetoric from the campaign trail.
The Washington think tank also criticized Obama’s plans to address global warming, calling the proposals “fear mongering” based on tainted data.
The Heritage Foundation’s statement came in response to comments made at the Global Climate Summit, a meeting arranged by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles earlier this week. More than 600 global climate-change experts convened at the summit to try to break gridlock on environmental issues ahead of next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.
In a video played for the Summit’s attendees, Obama emphasized his enthusiasm for the Poznan Conference and promised that his administration would mark a “new chapter in American leadership on climate change.”
“Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change,” Obama said. “Many of you are working to confront this challenge. But too often, Washington has failed to show the same kind of leadership. That will change when I take office.”
The Heritage Foundation complained that Obama’s more-of-the-same proposals, include a federal cap-and-trade system, cutting carbon emissions by a whopping 80 percent by 2020, $15 billion a year in new spending, and five million new “green” jobs.
“The globe-trotting delegates at the posh Beverly Hills conference swallowed every word,” the Heritage Foundation statement said. The group has long disputed some of the key facts and figures on the subject of man-made global warming – data relied on by the Obama camp.
“There is absolutely no scientific evidence that Obama’s carbon capping targets would solve any of these problems,” the Heritage Foundation argued. “If the U.S. reduced carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2050, it would result in just 0.013 degrees Celsius of “prevented” warming by 2050.”
Other bullet points in the Heritage counter-argument included:
Studies show that stabilizing carbon at 2000 levels would do nothing to stop the rising seas.
The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., calculates that even if the United States, Europe and Japan turned off every power plant and mothballed every car, atmospheric carbon dioxide would still climb from the current 380 parts-per-million to a perilous 450 ppm by 2070 -- thanks to contributions from China and India.
The Heritage rebuttal also emphasized that there are no environmental benefits from Obama’s green agenda promises – only costs to bear from the President Elect’s cap-and-trade plan, for instance. Obama says he will take the proceeds from his plan and spend $15 billion a year to create 5 million new green jobs.
The Foundation fired back with these bullets:
The environmentalist left has already admitted these numbers are completely bogus. Apollo Alliance co-director Kate Gordon recently told the Wall Street Journal that her group’s job estimates were arrived at “just to inspire people.”
Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis studied the economic costs of the much less stringent Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade plan and found that it would cost the U.S. economy a $4.8 trillion loss in GDP and a net one million loss of jobs by 2030.
“There is a reason European Union countries such as Germany and Italy are insisting that the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions targets be eased; they are experiencing the economic pain of the green agenda first hand,” argued the Heritage Foundation brief. “The EU’s cap-and-trade program is in complete collapse. Now is not the time for the U.S. to import Europe’s failed and job killing environmental policy.”
The Heritage Foundation issued a harsh rebuttal to Barack Obama’s latest climate change comments, blasting the president-elect for recycling problematic climate change rhetoric from the campaign trail.
The Washington think tank also criticized Obama’s plans to address global warming, calling the proposals “fear mongering” based on tainted data.
The Heritage Foundation’s statement came in response to comments made at the Global Climate Summit, a meeting arranged by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles earlier this week. More than 600 global climate-change experts convened at the summit to try to break gridlock on environmental issues ahead of next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.
In a video played for the Summit’s attendees, Obama emphasized his enthusiasm for the Poznan Conference and promised that his administration would mark a “new chapter in American leadership on climate change.”
“Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change,” Obama said. “Many of you are working to confront this challenge. But too often, Washington has failed to show the same kind of leadership. That will change when I take office.”
The Heritage Foundation complained that Obama’s more-of-the-same proposals, include a federal cap-and-trade system, cutting carbon emissions by a whopping 80 percent by 2020, $15 billion a year in new spending, and five million new “green” jobs.
“The globe-trotting delegates at the posh Beverly Hills conference swallowed every word,” the Heritage Foundation statement said. The group has long disputed some of the key facts and figures on the subject of man-made global warming – data relied on by the Obama camp.
“There is absolutely no scientific evidence that Obama’s carbon capping targets would solve any of these problems,” the Heritage Foundation argued. “If the U.S. reduced carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2050, it would result in just 0.013 degrees Celsius of “prevented” warming by 2050.”
Other bullet points in the Heritage counter-argument included:
Studies show that stabilizing carbon at 2000 levels would do nothing to stop the rising seas.
The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., calculates that even if the United States, Europe and Japan turned off every power plant and mothballed every car, atmospheric carbon dioxide would still climb from the current 380 parts-per-million to a perilous 450 ppm by 2070 -- thanks to contributions from China and India.
The Heritage rebuttal also emphasized that there are no environmental benefits from Obama’s green agenda promises – only costs to bear from the President Elect’s cap-and-trade plan, for instance. Obama says he will take the proceeds from his plan and spend $15 billion a year to create 5 million new green jobs.
The Foundation fired back with these bullets:
The environmentalist left has already admitted these numbers are completely bogus. Apollo Alliance co-director Kate Gordon recently told the Wall Street Journal that her group’s job estimates were arrived at “just to inspire people.”
Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis studied the economic costs of the much less stringent Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade plan and found that it would cost the U.S. economy a $4.8 trillion loss in GDP and a net one million loss of jobs by 2030.
“There is a reason European Union countries such as Germany and Italy are insisting that the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions targets be eased; they are experiencing the economic pain of the green agenda first hand,” argued the Heritage Foundation brief. “The EU’s cap-and-trade program is in complete collapse. Now is not the time for the U.S. to import Europe’s failed and job killing environmental policy.”
