Al Gore: It’s like gravity; It exists.

I bought the DVD “An Inconvenient Truth“, and have been a big Al Gore supporter since 1992.

I was crushed when the 2000 Election (which he really won) was just crookedly ripped out from underneath him, because he would have obviously been a significantly more honest and better policy President than Bill Clinton ever was (and light years better than George H. W. Obama Johnson).

Anyway, I provided that just for background context because while I completely agree with the diagnosis about Global Warming, and feel sorry for ignorant people who label it “junk science” — I also disagree with the whole “cap & trade” idea as the so-called remedy.

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The way “cap & trade” has been proposed, it has an unnecessary Orwellian character to it. Homeland Security, or some government body, can forcebly enter your home and then charge you money just for inspecting it (whether you did anything wrong or not) – whenever they feel like it.  They can abuse home owners and small businesses — while (being a good government entity) give a wink-wink pass to the real abusers like: the Halliburtons, the Exxon-Mobiles, the Coal Plants, the Lockheed Martins, the General Dynamics, the Dow Chemicals, etc. of our Country.  

And also on just an academic level, American taxpayers will now have to pay taxes, fees, and fines on to some unelected, Global, Non-U.S. authority that usurps control over our Country’s people across a wide sphere. That is just not Constitutional.  In a way, we do this anyways today since we are forced (without choice) to send taxpayers money (out of our pockets) to the IMF, World Bank for dubious causes and reasons, and to the U.N.. But that doesn’t mean it is applied properly or the best use of our money.  Some people fear that this effort is part of bringing into effect World Government, and part of the International Bankers desire to put all the people and Industry under their control — along with replacing the U.S. Dollar with a global (fiat) currency that only they operate. So this is a slipperly slope because it is yet another Orwellian model — not a liberating one. We have enough damn Orwellian constructs, procedures, and tactics in our Country today, along with the predictable loss of many of our once cherished freedoms and liberties.  Clearly, we don’t need to pile on even more gasoline to this fire.

In addition, the whole “cap and trade” scheme is just rife for Wall-Street style abuse and corruption. The fees are supposedly used to “offset” the use of CO2 by planting a tree somewhere in the Amazon (or some such similar area). But how do we know any of this is even real when the necessary Real Estate is finite?  How do we know that this beauracracy isn’t just pocketing most of the money and not following through? How do we stop them from corrupt swapping tactics like “virtual offsets”, and computerized offsets, and trading schemes that just obscure all the money that they’re really taking in?  And if the IMF and the World Bank are the blueprint here, then we are in trouble, and it will all just be a big, giant ripoff.

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I feel much more comfortable with the focus being, not on some hairbrained “cap and trade” scheme, but simply on new Invention, Industry, and Engineering. That is the real answer. A concentrated focus on developing Solar, Wind, Geothermal power systems, and: a) Getting off of The Electric Grid, and b) Getting off all dependency on Foreign and Middle-East sources of Oil.

The latter goal could be realized just by simply raising the auto-milage standard to 35MPG for all cars.  If we did just that alone, we could kiss the whole Middle-East goodbye and then also take our Tanks, Military Basis, War planes, Predeator Drones, and depleted Uranium with us and go home  (now that would be worthy of a “Nobel Peace” Prize).

The first goal (a above) is acheivable in a 7-10 year timeline — which is probably only twice as long as it would take for this ineffective “cap and trade” scheme to both pass Congress, and begin to be implemented anyway.

Thirdly, what made our Country great has always been manufacturing and invention — whether it was Intercontinental Railraods, the invention of the Airplane, putting a man on the Moon, or the invention of the Internet (which allows me to type this).

We already have enough sunlight that can be potentially captured in New Mexico to power the entire World. Miracles are not needed for this to become real.  It is only a matter of development of widescale production and deployment of existing technologies. It is far less of a technical challenge than putting a man on the Moon ever was — which took just 7 years after a President set that remarkable task as our National goal.

So the answer here is not a global authoritarian approach, which is always subject to abuses, waste, fraud, inequities, and no public representation — but rather the answer rests upon Invention, Manufacturing, and a repudiation of the whole “fossile-fuel = National Security” equation.  By focusing on these efforts, a real solution can and will be acheived .. and the very real problem will not just be politicized away with yet another smoke and mirrors deception put over on the public.