This doesn’t look like greenhouse gas emissions to me, but I, like most Americans don’t have the faintest idea what they are Perhaps it’s because we can’t see the greenhouse.
There has been much hoo ha-ing about the American Clean Energy and Security Act recently passed by our esteemed House of Representatives. But as far as I can tell, no one really knows what it’s all about. In fact, the GOP minority leader (who was on his way back to the Rayburn building from a meeting of the Flat Earth Society) referred to the nine hundred page document as, “a pile of s**t”. Which I guess, could describe much of the legislation that’s been produced over the last two hundred years. That a republican would publicly disdain legislation Obama wanted is not surprising, and it’s not even surprising that he couldn’t explain what was in it, but it is a little surprising that the best and brightest of our 4th estate can’t seem to find the words to describe it either.
I decided that I’d better do a deep dive in the interest of my loyal readers. By god, I’ll find out what all of this is about. It may require a little patience on your part though. After all, they had nine hundred pages, and I’m going to try to do this in a couple of hundred words. Get ready for some heavy lifting, as it were.
As best I can figure it, it’s all about something called cap‘n trade and gas in our greenhouses. I got a little stuck right off so I thought I’d do me a small poll and draw on the knowledge of five of my closest and dearest friends and colleagues. So it put it to them as follows: “What comes to mind when you hear the term cap ‘n trade?” Here’s what I got.
1. “I think it has to do with a fantasy baseball league.”
2. “I’m pretty sure he’s the guy that runs a shrimp boat out of Rockport.”
3. “It’s not cap ‘n trade dummy, it’s cap and trade, but I don’t know what that is either.”
4. “It’s that @#$@$$ Obama trying to run up the cost of gasoline and bring and end to civilization as we know it.”
5. “I can’t exactly explain it, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to save the planet.”
So you see, all you have to do is ask. Ok. Let’s start at the beginning to figure this out. According to a recent study by scientists at MIT and endorsed by just about every other scientist in the world, the polar ice caps are shrinking at an alarming rate, arid zones are spreading, catastrophic temperature change is now not just a possibility, but a likelihood if we keep on our present course, and the arctic tundra is defrosting much too fast. The report concluded by saying that these phenomena are a “clear and present danger to our way of life and maybe even civilization itself”. Yes, I know. I, too, have a hard time linking that tundra defrost thing to the end of civilization, but I’m gonna give the smart guys the nod on this one. In the interest of fair and balanced reporting I give you the other point of view as well. Rep. Paul Broun a republican from Georgia (no surprise there) said, “all this climate change stuff is a hoax”. This after much deep study on his part I assume. I can’t seem to find his academic bona fides.
I’ll refer to all of this bad stuff that’s happening as “climate change” for short, and now comes the tricky part, and you have to take a little leap of faith here……say after me, “climate change is caused by greenhouse gases”. I’m a little fuzzy on exactly how these gases cause the tundra to defrost, but I say it’s true because a lot of smart people say it is, and more importantly because a lot of people I know to be idiots, like the aforementioned Congressman from Georgia, say that climate change isn’t happening, and even if it is, it’s not caused by greenhouse gases, and if it is caused by greenhouse gases, there’s nothing we can do about it. I for sure want to be on the other side of that bozo. As a footnote, I’ll add that I personally have a greenhouse at our farm (which most other Americans don’t), and I’ve never noticed any gas in it. So I guess that makes me a fellow traveler with this Georgia yahoo.
So there. I know you’re dying for the details, and here they are. Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. Got it? The elements which compose greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. Without these elements the average temperature of the earth would be much lower and conversely with increased amounts of these elements, voila, the average temperature goes up. The MIT study said that the previous estimate of an increase of four degrees was now thought to be as much as nine degrees. And these elements are the culprits. But wait a minute. Most of the rhetoric is about carbon dioxide, isn’t it. That’s the stuff that comes out of smoke stacks, cars and factories I believe. Yep. That’s right. CO2 is generated as a by product of the combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of vegetable matter.
So….that’s what the American Clean Energy and Security Act is all about. And that’s where cap and trade comes in. We want to limit or eleminate the amount of carbon dioxide released in to our atmosphere. Honestly, I think I coulda come up with a better name than that, but there you go. It’s actually a pretty clever free market (more or less) mechanism for the government (it’s pretty clear that business won’t do it on their own) to limit the amount of pollutants, i.e. greenhouse gases that can be emitted by a business. The bill does this by the government giving permits or credits to businesses for allowable pollution. If your business pollutes more than the credits permit you have to either stop the pollution or buy credits from some business that pollutes less than is permitted and therefore has excess credits.. It’s a kind of “Pay to Pollute” scheme, I guess you’ld say. I dunno exactly why but the repubs say that this will cost every American family somewhere between $170.00 and $1,300 per year. You would think that these smart guys could get a little tighter range than that.
You can see there may be some flaws in this theory. Once you get past the notion that there is a “permissible” level of pollution, then you get to who’s going to figure out what is “permissible pollution” by business, and then, if they have to pollute more to run their business and they can’t find any companies that have some to spare credits , what do they do….? But what the hey. Congress has always operated on the principle that doing something is better than doing nothing, even if it’s wrong.
But (as you might have suspected), I’ve got a better idea. Since there’s three to four times more water vapor in greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, let’s work on that. Heck, you and I could figure out a way to get rid of water. We’d just build a big cistern to capture it and use it to water our yards or something. And on carbon dioxide, why all the focus on fossil fuel combustion. I’m not gonna stop using gas, and I know a lot of you out there aren’t either, but I’m perfectly willing to do my part by stopping the burning of all of that pesky vegetable matter. It’ll be a sacrifice but I’ll do it to secure our energy future and to save the planet.
If someone would only ask.
