June 24th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today strongly urged Congress to reject legislation “that will deliberately increase the costs of gasoline, oil, and coal at a time when the American people can ill afford it.”
“While the American people are dealing with a brutal recession, soaring unemployment, and about to be hit with massive inflation, Congress in the Waxman-Markey bill is proposing to make energy more expensive to service a radical environmentalist agenda,” said Wilson.
“It is up to the Congress to stop this legislation dead on its tracks, before it causes an economic train wreck that will take decades to overcome,” Wilson added.
The legislation, HR 2454, would force carbon-emitting industries coal, oil, gasoline, and natural gas to purchase carbon permits that would reduce in supply over the next decade. The bill aims to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.
“The whole point of capping carbon emissions is to increase the prices of oil, gasoline, coal, and natural gas across the board, and thereby ‘incentivize’ alternatives like solar, wind, and hybrid vehicles,” Wilson explained.
“If this legislation passes, 10 bucks a gallon for gas is going to seem cheap in five years,” Wilson added.
Wilson noted that similar legislation had failed in the Senate last year. “This bill was rejected last year, and should again be rejected this year, because it’s an economy-killer. It will cost jobs, it will cost progress, and it will cost prosperity. That is the price,” Wilson said.
Wilson says that what makes the bill even worse is that the science behind cap-and-trade is contrived and misleading. “The whole premise of global ‘warming’ is based upon flawed computer models that predict climate change, and are not based on actual observable data that can be confirmed.”
Wilson pointed to a study from APS Physics, “Climate Sensitivity Revisited”. “The Monckton study proves beyond any doubt that the UN International Panel on Climate Change’s computer models that ‘predict’ climate change greatly overstate the impact of carbon emissions. In other words, ‘man-made’ climate change is not real, and yet Congress is ready to reorganize the entire energy sector around the idea.”
“It is up to Congress to vote against this whacko environmentalist agenda before the economy is wrecked, the oil, natural gas, and coal industries bankrupted, and the American people being buried at the gas pump and on their home-heating bills,” Wilson concluded.
Interview Availability: Please contact Alex Rosenwald at (703)383-0880 or at arosenwald@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.