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Everybody hold your breath By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Dec. 10, 2009, in the Connersville News-Examiner. It turns out we are all polluters.
It turns out we are all polluters because we all breathe. Breathing, as anyone who was still taught biology in school can tell you, produces carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide, according to our benevolent, insightful overlords, is the leading poison destroying the planet. On Monday, Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the controversial Environmental Protection Agency, made the announcement the Obama administration and anti-free market, pro-environmental superiority activists have been wishing for breathlessly for months — carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” are a danger to public health. No, not the danger to public health Obama’s massive health care rationing scheme represents, but a danger to public health because carbon dioxide, as we have been told ad nauseam by the man-made global warming faithful and a compliant news and entertainment media, is going to drastically increase the temperature of the Earth, raise the oceans, cause floods, famine, disease and pestilence, political and social unrest and years upon years of tribulation. After all, every religion needs to have an apocalypse. “These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” Jackson said Monday. “There are no more excuses for delaying,” she told the Associated Press, adding that the so-called endangerment analysis from global warming had been under consideration at the agency for three years. With any religion, its clergy must have us believe the apocalypse is around the corner in order to coerce compliance. The faithful will also wave off evidence contrary to their beliefs and doggedly pursue their agenda, as the Obama administration did by calling the leaked proof that man-made global warming is a fraud designed to control humanity a “small blip.” That “small blip,” which includes hundreds of messages and reports documenting the systematic deception being perpetrated by the Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom, is refusing to go away, even bringing into question the climate conclave currently taking place in Denmark. The conference itself is awash with carbon emissions from the multitude of limousines and private jets used by the attendees, but we can be assured they bought carbon indulgences to offset their necessary extravagance. Ostensibly, Jackson and other administration officials say this move would target the same entities targeted in Obama’s onerous cap and trade legislation — vehicle efficiency standards, power plant emissions, industrial production and public and private buildings — at a cost of tens of billions. The administration is not being subtle about its intentions, either. An unidentified administration official threatened a “command-and-control” role in regulating carbon dioxide emissions if Congress does not act. “If you don’t pass this legislation, then ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way.” Ladies and gentlemen, the government’s actions here represent a giant leap toward tyranny. Allowing unelected government officials to assign themselves this level of power over the American people is dangerous. While they claim to be planning to limit vehicle and industrial emissions, invoking words like “command” and “control” has to make one wonder how far they plan to pursue emission reductions based on the folly of man-made global warming. We all emit carbon dioxide. And even though the government may not be able to regulate how we breathe, we could easily see a cash-strapped Congress voting to impose individual carbon taxes on individuals, as is already being proposed in Britain. Furthermore, our animals — namely livestock and pets — also exhale carbon dioxide, meaning we could see regulation or the eventual elimination of our furry friends — something PETA would love to see happen. Taken a step further, it’s not hard to conceive the notion of government limiting the number of children a family could have because of the increased carbon footprint. Several environmental extremists have already proposed this Draconian idea, and the practice is already under way in China, a practice many leftists look at longingly. We stand at the precipice of a time when our basic rights may be sacrificed in the name of protecting the planet. Without a significant pushback from the public, we could face a new Dark Age. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2009, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
Not because we drive cars and trucks and SUVs instead of the politically correct death boxes being passed off as vehicles nowadays. Not because we use incandescent light bulbs instead of those expensive, short-lived, mercury-laden fluorescent light bulbs. Not because we throw our trash into a trash can instead of meticulously cataloging and disposing of every item of refuse in our households into separate recycling bins that are all taken to the same landfill anyway. Not because we leave our pets’ droppings where they lay instead of our fingers knuckles-deep into those foul piles to take home with us. Not because we perform Google searches to find out why “green” technologies are under-producing pipe dreams. And not even because we blow soap bubbles at weddings because some overly hyped advice columnist wrongly said rice kills birds.
