Whitfield Rises to the Occasion

Kentucky can be proud of Congressman Ed Whitfield, who took to the House floor this afternoon (23 April, TVed on C-Span) to make the case that the energy bill is too flawed to be passed. His arguments were telling as he backed them up with actual information, not a bunch of computer models premised on events that have not yet happened.

Very politely making his points, he explained how the president’s plans would place this country at an intolerable disadvantage in the world marketplace if Obama’s efforts are taken seriously. His argument against cap-and-trade was bolstered by the cap-and-trade efforts/results made in Europe over the last few years. This unilateral taxing of U.S. citizens could cost $1.7 trillion, according to the expert cited by Whitfield.

Whitfield cited remarks made by Obama during his recent trip to Europe regarding how this country could take a lesson from Spain in the matter of using so-called “renewables” in the business of creating energy. The fact is that the Spanish green-effort created some jobs, a primary argument by the administration, but for every one job created, 2.2 jobs were lost in the manufacturing field.

Whitfield made the point, obvious to anyone whose head is still above ground, that coal WILL be used to produce energy, no matter what the hand-wringing, climate-change (a false claim anyway) fear-mongers say about CO2. Coal is responsible for 50% of all electricity, nuclear for only 20% and all other elements for the rest. Whitfield mentioned that by 2035, the energy consumption-rate will have increased by 35% from what it is now.

Whitfield remarked that in the president’s budget (hundreds of pages) there is not even a mention of nuclear energy, much less money allocated to it, even though this is the way other countries have gone. There’s no money allocated for the spent-fuel facility at Yucca Mountain, after billions have already been spent to make this site workable. He mentioned that in France, for instance, the spent fuel is recycled, thus making less of it required for disposal, but that president Carter signed an executive order, apparently still in effect, that forbade such recycling in this country. The result is that the nuclear-energy producers have sued the government for billions, since they have contracts with the government to provide for disposal.

In short, the budget would take this country out of the global economy, meaning loss of goods and services to other countries that have no compulsion to worry about manmade climate-change, a proposition already shot-down quite effectively by U.S. scientists anyway. Manmade climate-change is the biggest hoax foisted on the American public in probably its entire history. This hoax was perpetrated in the United Nations in its last IPCC report, a report that has been shown to be so badly flawed as to be laughable.

The state and the country owe Whitfield thanks for his effort.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark