The Cost Effect of Global Warming

The Cost Effect Of Global Warming Or Stupid Is As Stupid Does

When you hear the Bush Administration or other politicians talking about complying with the Kyoto Protocols as long as they are “cost effective,” they are talking about the cost to their campaign contributors not to you and me.

This week the Commerce Committee gutted Senator Feinstein’s sensible bill requiring car companies to improve over-all fuel efficiency of their fleets by 10 miles per gallon over the next twelve years. There’s nothing radical about that plan. It may even be too little, too late. But Tuesday the Commerce Committee added a little zinger to the bill: It would let the car makers off the hook if the annual goals aren’t “cost-effective.”

Cost effective to whom? If we really took global warming seriously, we would see an economic boom similar to that in Silicone Valley. Thousands of jobs would be created along with hundreds of multi-millionaires. More important, thousands of lives would not be ruined, costing us the taxpayers billions of dollars. Hurricane Katrina and the tornados that swept the Midwest may not be a direct product of global warming. But we do know global warming will create more hurricanes and more tornados ruining countless lives, costing billions of dollars.

If people get the government they deserve, then as my character Sissy LeBlanc might say, “Stupid is as stupid does.”