Politics / Propaganda Steve Fielding wavers on climate change
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03 June 2009
Wisconsin Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner told a climate change conference in Washington attended by Senator Fielding that electricity bills would double or triple under US cap-and-trade legislation. And he denounced the climate change movement as simply transferring wealth to developing countries.
Mr Sensenbrenner said that without China and India signing any climate change legislation, it would be foolish for the US or any other country to take the lead, arguing that capping emissions in the US would allow other countries to take an advantage.
"What we are seeing is the Third World using the collective guilt of the First World to have a massive transfer of wealth to help them fund their development," he told more than 300 delegates at the climate conference held by a US free-market thinktank called Heartland.org.
Mr Sensenbrenner was in China last week with Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and said he was discouraged. "What we heard from our Chinese interlocutors consistently is that they would never sign a treaty that mandates an emissions cut. They said they would do it their own way," he said. He said China would go its own way regardless of what was negotiated at the Copenhagen environmental summit in December. "If China and India stay out of it, we should stay out of it," Mr Sensenbrenner said.
Delegates heard from a number of scientists questioning whether man-made activity could influence the global climate, with keynote addresses citing solar flare activity rather than greenhouse gas emissions as a reason for global warming.
While climate change advocates challenge these claims, Senator Fielding said the arguments presented yesterday were giving him pause to reflect on the entire debate over climate change.
"I'm not sure we should be signing anything before Copenhagen," he said after listening to Mr Sensenbrenner. "If it's true climate change is driven more by solar changes, then I have to consider if (climate change legislation) is worth doing."
