Obama Opposes Trade Sanctions In Climate Bill

NYT:

President Obama on Sunday praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as an "extraordinary first step," but he spoke out against a provision that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution.

Read the whole story: NYT

Comments

[webmonkeydc]

12:07 PM on 06/30/2009

What's the change we really need? Find plenty of examples at: http://obamaprayers.blogspot.com

[cinemabon]

03:02 AM on 06/30/2009

Barack is trying. He beats a McCain/Bush/Republican any day of the week! I shudder to think what the world would look like if they had won.

[DailyElitist]

03:17 AM on 06/30/2009

Who cares? We only have one party in the US, and that is the Wall Street/corporate party.

[ErnestineBass]

11:53 PM on 06/29/2009

I'm startin' to think maybe we should have elected Michelle instead...

[DailyElitist]

03:01 AM on 06/30/2009

Or Hillary - she's doing a magnificent job. Clinton 2012!

[mioffe]

10:51 PM on 06/29/2009

Let begin some questions game:
Why on high mount is cold, even sometimes there is snow in middle of summer?
Why most of people are going to rivers, lakes, sea or ocean shores?
Do you know that to evaporate 1 kg of water, we need 539 kcal of energy and to heat 1 kg of water on one degree Celsius we need 1 kcal of energy?
Do you know that water vapor is lighter that almost all others gases in air (molecular weight H2O=18, N2=28, O2=32, CO2=44)?
Do you know that water vapor is invisible gas and has tendency to go up on cloud level?
In clouds we see water droplet and do you now that energy released when water vapor condensed to water droplet is the same?
Why these questions are so important?

[Daniboy]

10:45 PM on 06/29/2009

Heard things are so bad Obama ordered one of his Czars to design and produce life jackets for polar bears! The seas are arising-but the Messiah will reverse nature-with a simple BTU tax.

[Daniboy]

10:39 PM on 06/29/2009

World been cooling the last few years-not good for the great hoax. Now called Climate Change-covers both cooling and warming-Algore can still make millions why the average American pays the BTU tax-and give some to other countries-just borrow more Barack!

[DesertDogAlpha]

03:36 PM on 06/29/2009

The only way the Chinese will come along on a climate approach is if we pay them to do so (we can borrow more money from them to fund the federal deficit and then give it back to them). China already has passed the US in terms of CO2 emissions, but Chinese CO2 output on a per person basis is only about 25 percent of that of the US. Face it, they want to live as well as we do in terms of lifestyle. So, folks in Ohio and Oregon can now write checks to pay the Chinese to do better on climate.

Of course, we can probably get all the money we need for this by taxing the top 5 percent of Americans!!

And, we can get energy independence by borrowing lots more from China to fund the federal deficit and completely give up hope where US financial independence is involved.

[expired]

03:32 PM on 06/29/2009

Dear MoveOn member,
The U.S. House passed a huge energy bill Friday. Lots of good people are applauding the passage of this legislation. But here's the ugly truth:

Big Oil and Coal lobbyists, working in cahoots with some conservative Blue Dog Democrats, weakened the bill terribly—it now falls far short of President Obama's campaign vision to transition America's economy to clean energy and create millions of new jobs.

In fact, the bill repeals a key part of the Clean Air Act and doesn't do nearly enough to shift America to renewable energy—so instead of a boom in solar and wind, the bill locks us into dirty coal power for another generation.1

Working with progressive champions in the House, we were able to achieve modest gains at the eleventh hour (see details below). But saving the Clean Air Act and fixing other problems with the bill as the fight moves to the Senate will require a massive grassroots outcry.

So we have a decision to make: Should MoveOn launch a full-court press to fix the bill, and turn up the heat on senators who might be tempted to side with Big Oil and Coal?

Click to vote:

"Yes. Let's fight to save the Clean Air Act and fix the energy bill."
"No. I don't think we should do that." (And tell us why.)
We'll go forward if 2/3 of us who vote think it makes sense.

[sc300nc]

01:00 PM on 06/29/2009

The bill will do nothing to improve the climate. It will have a huge financial impact on us all. Thanks Mr. President for another tax on middle and low income America.

[ReedYoung]

01:26 PM on 06/29/2009

You're betraying the entire planet.

"Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html

[DailyElitist]

01:35 PM on 06/29/2009

Heretic! Witch! Blasphemer!

Better get that oil boiling...

[DailyElitist]

01:37 PM on 06/29/2009

Yep, you've got it exactly right: the NerObama regime is TAXING THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS IN ORDER TO CREATE A NEW SPECULATIVE DERIVATIVES CASINO FOR WALL STREET. That is what this is, and that's all this is. It is a fraud, and it is tyrannical.

[fairtaxplease]

12:35 PM on 06/29/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4

Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket

[ReedYoung]

12:22 PM on 06/29/2009

It would be pretty hypocritical to try to punish other countries for what we ourselves were doing just last year. Trade preferences for the cleanest nations would be better policy.

[DailyElitist]

12:33 PM on 06/29/2009

Wow, try not to get hurt twisting yourself into a partisan pretzel like that.

[ReedYoung]

01:32 PM on 06/29/2009

My comment is simple, impartial common sense. It's not my fault that only one of the two major political parties every exhibits any.

[cavegal]

01:25 PM on 06/29/2009

Considering we import everything from China who is the world's number one polluter now, it is one of the few parts of the bill I do not have an issue with.

[ReedYoung]

01:29 PM on 06/29/2009

"As capacity has risen, installed PV system costs have been cut in half between 1997 and 2007. Solar power now meets about 1 percent of Germany's electricity demand, a share that some market analysts expect could reach 25 percent by 2050."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

The United States has significantly higher per capita income than China, and we have been polluting more, longer. We should help drive down the costs of clean energy for China, as Germany has done for us. That is how free markets are supposed to work.

[RomeoMD25]

12:08 PM on 06/29/2009

“Too much CO would poison the miners, too much methane would explode, and too much CO2 would suffocate them. Carbon monoxide is far more lethal than CO2.

“The deeper into the ground the miners dug, the more dangerous it became, because these gases — which are heavier than air — have a tendency to accumulate at the bottoms of coal mines.

“Lest you missed that, let me say it in a different way.

"CO2 is heavier than air.

“Isn’t CO2 supposed to be rising high into the sky and creating the greenhouse effect and therefore causing global warming? Isn’t CO2 supposed to be a thin layer of invisible gas lurking somewhere a hundred or so miles up in the sky, reflecting heat back onto our planet?

“How in the world can CO2 be rising into the sky and creating the greenhouse effect if it’s heavier than air? Isn’t it more likely to be accumulating down around my feet?

“ ‘CO2 most certainly does not form some sort of magical layer in the atmosphere that then acts like a greenhouse,’ says analytical chemist Hans Schreuder. ‘That is pure pseudo-science!’

[ReedYoung]

12:49 PM on 06/29/2009

1. "Isn't CO2 supposed to be a thin layer of invisible gas lurking somewhere a hundred or so miles up in the sky, reflecting heat back onto our planet?"

No, it's the ozone layer that is so high in the upper atmosphere. CO2 from industrial and vehicle pollution is in the troposphere, which extends only 2km - 5km up from the surface, depending on conditions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/dems-urged-to-play-down-t_n_218801.html?show_comment_id=26151354#comment_26151354

2. "'CO2 most certainly does not form some sort of magical layer in the atmosphere that then acts like a greenhouse,' says analytical chemist Hans Schreuder. 'That is pure pseudo-science!'"

No, the simplification of global warming to a "blanket" is what's called an ANALOGY, a sort of comparison used to achieve partial understanding for people who express unwillingness to do the hard work necessary to fully understand a complicated phenomenon. One can critique the usefulness of the blanket or of analogies in general (I hate 'em), but they are not "pseudo-science" because they are not an attempt to imitate science, only to convey an important finding in simple enough terms for the semi-literate Republican base. That, by the way, is why I think such analogies are unhelpful. They are certainly not "pseudo-science" however. Hans Schreuder, if he really said that, IS a pseudo-scientist.

[pragmaticdallasite]

02:12 PM on 06/29/2009

thankyou

[BUTCHER111]

11:40 AM on 06/29/2009

If there are no sanctions then how do you get compliance or acceptance?

[ReedYoung]

12:26 PM on 06/29/2009

With a carrot, not a stick. Foreign countries can just take their business elsewhere, and they have when we've gotten belligerent in the recent past.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=37468§ionid=351020103

[quidam56]

11:08 AM on 06/29/2009

When are we going to put an end to the devastation of mountaintop removal ?

http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138

[jwws007]

10:38 AM on 06/29/2009

what a bunch of bolgogna, this will only case more jobs to go to china, india, and mexico. still waiting for obama to fulfill his campaign promise of renegotiating nafta, i guess the new world order guys have gotten to obama as well

[ReedYoung]

10:50 AM on 06/29/2009

The bologna is people like you, who worry about how we compare to developING nations like China and India instead of how we compare to developED nations (the United States was one, as recently as 1999!) like Germany, Netherlands, Japan and Korea, which are making money hand over fist from solar and wind power because they never let petroleum and coal corporations dictate their policies.

[jwws007]

10:57 AM on 06/29/2009

in case you hadn't noticed, the 4 countries you speak of are in worse economic shape than we are

[DailyElitist]

12:41 PM on 06/29/2009

Germany's economy is collapsing. Expect that to accelerate as they continue with their insane, suicidal decommissioning of their nuclear power plants and plunge into useless "green" nonsense.

The Netherlands is uniquely suited to wind power, and it's one of the few places where it's economical (reliable resource, high population density).

Japan and Korea are both going heavily into nuclear power in the French mold; France undoubtedly has the most successful energy policy of any country in the world.

[BrettnCalgary]

12:22 PM on 06/29/2009

Bad news dude, if you want to reopen NAFTA you have to open it all up, even the parts you like. What do I refer to? Oh, the parts guaranteeing access to Canadian energy and resources. When NAFTA was first negotiated the world was awash in cheap energy and you got a sweet deal from us that looks idiotic in todays world. This was what Harper was hinting at when the topic came up during your election.

I say reopen NAFTA and bend the US over hard. We won't have much trouble selling our goodies elsewhere, and we can easily replace American imports from elsewhere as well.

[jwws007]

01:32 PM on 06/29/2009

open it. see how long mexico lasts without technology and capital investment from the US