by Elizabeth A. Marion

Created on: January 30, 2010

Considering the fact that most of the evidence supporting the hypothesis that human activity is causing global warming has been fabricated and exaggerated, no, the President should absolutely not be making fighting global warming a top priority. There are a few good reasons the President was laughed at when he said there was overwhelming scientic evidence supporting the idea of global warming during his State of the Union address. Most of the people laughing, including myself, were laughing at the fact that he claimed science strongly supported his agenda. The junk science does, but not the real science. Scientists can't even make up their mind on what it is. Everyone used to call it global warming. Suddenly, the Earth stopped warming and started cooling, so in order to save face they started calling it climate change. After all, if greenhouse gases, as they're called, as causing the Earth to heat up and we're continuing to emit more greenhouse gases it wouldn't make sense for the Earth to start cooling agian. Which climate is the President supposed to be fighting: global warming or global cooling? So basically man kind is responsible for whatever temperature "scientists" claim might someday be catastrophic. The President should base legislation and priorities on solid facts, not fabricated statistics that were only created to support a certain agenda. If only this administration actually cared about the facts.

Even if climate change were an immediate threat that required us to curb our emissions in order to save the planet, the United States passing cap and trade legislation would do nothing to solve the problem. While those on the far left who are currently in power like to blame the United States for everything there are actually several other countries who pollute far more than the U.S., mainly China. Without those other nations also agreeing to curb emissions, the United States efforts alone would be futile. The blame-America-first attitude may help score politial points with certain stereotypes, but in this case the United States simply is not the largest contributer to the problem.

The other issue is how cap and trade legislation would effect the economy. Assuming that climate change is an immediate threat and that curbing emissions is the only way to save the planet from inevitable destruction, what's left of the U.S. economy would ultimately have to be sacrificed. Our economy would not be able to survive the sudden regulations on carbon emissions that would be enforced. Businesses would not be able to adjust quickly enough. If cap and trade legislation is passed, we may be able to bring down the temperature of the Earth one or two degrees if everyone on the planet does their part, but the U.S. economy will never recover. Somehow that doesn't seem like an equal trade.

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