The 70s was big on ecology and the ecology flag was designed in 1969 as America was preparing to save the environment and go green. Talk of global cooling was in the air and soon the government got involved with tax credits to encourage energy efficiency.

Vietnam was hotter than the planet and Richard Nixon was burning down is presidency with Watergate.

Gerald Ford was busy promoting WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons encouraging personal savings and disciplined spending habits in combination with public measures. A novel idea that didn’t work.

Jimmy Carter, who is now preparing to cajole the leader of Hamas, gave us over 20% interest rates, lines at gas stations while others ran out of petrol and closed.

The Energy Tax Act (ETA) of 1978 (Public Law 9-618) was passed in response to the unstable energy climate of the 1970s and was intended to induce homeowners to invest in energy conservation and solar devices. The statute encouraged the conversion of boilers to coal and investment in cogeneration equipment and solar and wind technologies through the use of tax credits.

The ETA provided a residential federal energy tax credit of up to $2,000 of relevant expenditures on or after April 20, 1977 and before January 1, 1986 with respect to the taxpayer’s principal residence. Solar space and water heating carried a 40% tax credit, while weatherization, insulation, and similar conservation activities carried only a 15% tax credit.

Implicit in the law was that the residential energy credit could not be carried beyond December 31, 1987. However, the incentives were curtailed in the mid-80s as a result of tax reform legislation that stemmed from the philosophy of letting market conditions determine energy conservation decisions that prevailed during the Reagan administration.

I do my part, separating glass and plastic and taking it to the local recycling center and I have always been efficient in my driving habits while keeping my thermostat at reasonable temperatures but at cost saving levels. My motivation isn’t that I’m a great steward of the earth and it’s resources but on the one hand I like to save money, on the other I support the community and businesses that are in the business of recycling.

Now we have global warming and Al Gore has been cashing in forever and he is bringing along many of his friends and business partners while fictitiously advising the world we are burning up. Mr. Gore claims we need to “save the planet” but chairs a company, Generation Investment Management, selling carbon credits to people like himself who don’t wish to cut back on energy use but want everyone else to follow his claim so he may continue to emit carbon into the air faster than any average American household and profit at the same time.

Venture capitalists and companies like Google are already jockeying to fund clean energy start-ups. In 2007, clean tech was the fastest growing category of venture investing in the U.S., growing four times as much as Internet investing, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Smart entrepreneurs are inventing new technologies to cash in on the high-tech bonanza to come, claiming to offer clean, affordable energy without carbon emissions. As with most things in a capitalist society the motivation must be provided through either the promise to save money with a tax credit or to make money in a business motivated by today’s rage. If we don’t have carbon emissions what will happen to Al Gore?

A Silicon Valley firm, Innovalight, has figured out a way to harvest solar energy much more cheaply than present technology allows by dissolving silicon nanocrystals in ink, which will ultimately be printed onto roof panels like we print ink onto paper. Using a platform they developed as postdoctoral students at Berkeley, the founding scientists of a company called Amyris have re-engineered yeast to ferment sugar into pure hydrocarbon fuels. A company called GreenFuel is working to make biodiesel from the algae that feed on the carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks.

Many of the new technologies may or may not pass muster but rest assured these inventors and scientists will continue to lay claim that global warming is a guaranteed threat and they will continue to ask for government grants to fund their studies and inventions.

The paradox is America’s economy will grow and new technology companies will be a part of that with new startups offering ways to save money and clean the environment.

China and India are growing in leaps and bounds but the necessity of these two countries to stop their intense carbon emissions is ignored but the “blame America first” mantra is front and center.

In 2004 the total greenhouse gas emissions from the People’s Republic of China were about 54% of the USA emissions. However, China is now building on average one coal-fired power plant every week, and plans to continue doing so for years. Various predictions see China overtaking the US in total greenhouse emissions between by 2010, and according to many other estimates, this already occurred in 2006.

In June of 2007, China unveiled a 62-page climate change plan and promised to put climate change at the heart of its energy policies but insisted that developed countries had an ?unshirkable responsibility? to take the lead on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and that the “common but differentiated responsibility” principle.

China provides a climate change report but then points to developed countries to clean up the problem first while the Chinese use up oil and pollute at highly demanding rates.

India is no different than China and is exempted from the framework of the treaty. At the G-8 meeting in June 2005, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointed out that the per-capita emission rates of the developing countries are a tiny fraction of those in the developed world. Following the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, India maintains that the major responsibility of curbing emission rests with the developed countries, which have accumulated emissions over a long period of time.

However, the U.S. and other Western nations assert that India, along with China, will account for most of the emissions in the coming decades, owing to their rapid industrialization and economic growth.

While collecting millions in grants and carbon credits what are the proponents of global warming doing, other than cashing in, to remedy the developing country issue concerning carbon emissions and overall pollution that affects the world?

Al Gore, the UN and politicians everywhere are creating hysteria over global warming but these same people have the largest individual carbon footprints today.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley recently warned that failure to take action on global warming could mean the extinction of the human race. Mr. O’Malley didn’t qualify his statement with any scientific fact because he can’t. Al Gore calls it a “planetary emergency.”

David Deming, a geologist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma writes in the Washington Times:

In the mid- to late-1960s, the leading environmental concern was overpopulation. The 1967 book “Famine 1975!” warned “by 1975 a disaster of unprecedented magnitude will face the world ... famines will ravage the undeveloped nations ... this is the greatest problem facing mankind.”

A sober review of the book in the scholarly journal Science characterized the prediction of mass starvation as “self-evident,” argued that technological solutions were “unrealistic,” and concluded that catastrophe was unavoidable. The reviewer concluded “all responsible investigators agree that the tragedy will occur.”

Famine in the US is unlikely but food prices will go through the roof as farmers cash in with corn for ethanol and other “bio-technologies.”

Mr. Deming continues:

More widely read was Paul Ehrlich’s shrill screed, “The Population Bomb” (1968). Mr. Ehrlich began with the infamous words “the battle to feed all of humanity is over,” and claimed that “in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” “We must have population control,” Mr. Ehrlich argued, because it is the “only answer.”

Mr. Ehrlich followed “The Population Bomb” in 1969 with publication of the essay, “Eco-Catastrophe,” in which he predicted the Green Revolution would fail and that the “ignorance” of the Cornucopian economists would be exposed. By 1980, environmental degradation would wipe out all “important animal life” in the world’s oceans, people would choke to death from air pollution by the hundreds of thousands, and life expectancy in the United States would fall to 42 years. “Western society,” Mr. Ehrlich proclaimed, “is in the process of completing the rape and murder of the planet for economic gain.”

Corporate farming has grown, family farms were subsidized by the government not to grow food, SUV’s came into being and American’s guzzled gas at increased rates without any fear of demise to their pocket books or the planet.

Barack Hussein Obama feels America should “feed the world” and intends to cut military defense spending so he can send billions of dollars to third world countries creating a foreign welfare system subsidized by American taxpayers.

In 1975, the news media informed us that a new Ice Age was imminent. An article in the Chicago Tribune titled “B-r-r-r-r: New Ice Age on way soon?” noted, “It’s getting colder.” The Tribune interpreted a number of ordinary weather events “as evidence that a significant shift in climate is taking place ? a shift that could be the forerunner of an Ice Age.” The New York Times chimed in, warning their readers that “a major cooling may be ahead.” Famed science reporter Walter Sullivan announced “the world’s climate is changing ... a new ice age is on the way.”

We’ve heard it all before, at least the old generation has, if they were paying attention. The global warming debate is non-existent because the pro-global warming crowd won’t be challenged by the “skeptics” in the scientific community. 

When politicians start pushing an issue non-stop it’s time for the taxpayers to grab their wallets. Business will grow with the global warming hysteria and we will have green shoved down our throats. Prices for food will continue to grow, new refineries will not be built, increased nuclear energy will be dismissed but we will have plenty of twisted light bulbs and solar panels to invest in.

Corn on the cob will be turned into corn in the fuel tank of your mini-eco friendly pint sized car. Capitalism is a wonderful thing. Indeed!  Source

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