“Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.” – AL GORE, speech at National Sierra Club Convention, Sept. 9, 2005
Grandiose fear mongering claims, such as the one in the above quote from former Vice-President Al Gore, have fueled the debate over global warming in the United States and the world. Many believe our earth is in peril and without swift action by the governments of the world we will all be doomed to face the consequences of our so called poor stewardship. Whatever you personally believe about global warming, the reality is, there are many hard core believers operating within all layers of our government, Federal, State and Local, who have bought into this idea, and will stop at nothing to use government to accomplish their objectives.
Certainly government elected officials and government appointees are trying to wield government power in a multi-prong attack against our society and our way of life, all in the name of the Global Warming Crusade. Cap and Trade, the demonization of the Petroleum Industry, Renewable Energy, the indoctrination of our children in schools and even those swirly little annoying florescent light bulbs they want us to buy are all examples of “fronts” on which we are being barraged daily.
I believe some politicians, such as Al Gore, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama, have championed the Global Warming Crusade for what it can bring to them, more power through government control. I believe other politicians though, such as Gabrielle Giffords (D) AZ 8th District, a member of the Science and Technology Committee in the House, are willing dupes to do the bidding of people like Nancy Pelosi, because they have fallen prey to years and years of constant noise from the liberal eco-left, telling them the world will end if they don’t take action.
In Giffords case, she has willingly taken up the “front” of Renewable Energy, more precisely, solar energy. Constituents in her district are regularly fed press releases from her congressional office about her efforts in Washington to promote the solar energy industry, or they are forced to see news snippets about her in the local media when she schedules in-district solar related photo ops. In 2008, Giffords supported and voted in favor of the The Energy Improvement and Extension Act (H.R. 1424), and in 2009, Giffords supported and voted in favor of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1). Both acts expanded subsidies to homeowners for the purchase of renewable energy production devises, such as solar cells.
Subsidies, in the form of a personal income tax credit for 30% of the cost of a renewable energy production devise, are given to homeowners as an incentive to buy into fledgling technology. Without such subsidies, demand for alternative energy, like solar, would be insignificant against traditional energy sources because these technologies in their current state of development and efficiency would be cost prohibitive.
Lawmakers like Pelosi and Giffords believe it is the federal government’s role to prop up speculative business in the United States by creating artificial demand for products like solar. They do this to support their global warming (or climate change) agenda. However, what they really accomplish, by design, is to create a culture of dependence on the federal government. Dependence on the federal government is their end game in all matters of government involvement. This has become brutally apparent over the course of this current congress and under the guiding hand of the Obama administration.
At the time of this writing, Congresswoman Giffords has the following quote on the solar energy page of her official Congressional web site:
“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” –Thomas Edison, 1931
Giffords, perhaps, would have us believe that even a great American entrepreneurial hero like Thomas Edison would have been on board supporting the government subsidies to fund the development of fledgling technologies like solar. Perhaps he would have, but the reality is, Edison, who held 1,093 individual patents, including one for the now doomed incandescent light bulb, accomplished this all with the help of private investment, not government.
Another prominent example of the private sector entrepreneurial spirit was Henry Ford. He started his vast automobile empire with $28,000 privately invested by friends and associates. Ford created a demand for the automobile and he created a system of bringing that product to the consumer at a price that was affordable, the assembly line. He didn’t rely on the government to prop up his business until he could get the costs down to a reasonable level. He used genius and ingenuity to make it happen.
Politicians like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi seek to create a nation of needy reliant people. Politicians like Gabrielle Giffords are at best unwitting accomplices in this crusade to make the American people reliant on big government for everything. They accomplish this in small or large steps but the end result is the same. If we are ever going to take back control of this country and throw off the bonds of government, as our Founding Fathers did, we must do so in November. We must vote politicians out of office that wish to drag our country and our American industrial spirit down, or relinquish ourselves to becoming a nation of “Once greats” and “Has beens.”
