Climate Change Debate? Put a Cap On It!

President Obama got the best possible deal on reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming at Copenhagen, which was the environmental equivalent of Roosevelt and Churchill pretty much letting Stalin having all of Eastern Europe under Soviet domination at Yalta. Be that as it may, Obama is prepared to do whatever is possible to implement his plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.  In other other words, he isn't going to get to do much.

The Senate Republican caucus has made it clear of its plans to fight Obama's plan - including capping emissions and trading permits to emit more or less carbons - with every ounce of energy they extracted in fighting health care. They hope that this will be Obama's Waterloo - forcing him to break his promises to the world for the United States to take a more active role in fighting global warming. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who is cosponsoring a "cap-and-trade" bill in the Senate, has scoffed at the idea of such a strategy, insisting that there's no way the Republicans will be allowed to embarrass the President on the global stage and make us a pariah to the rest of the world.

Uh, Senator? Latest bulletin: The Republicans don't give a twit about the rest of the world or what they think of us. You kind of ran against an incumbent Republican President five years ago, and he considered his indifference to the rest of the world as an asset.

Enjoy a white Christmas if you have one - there might not be many from here on. I'm thinking of being beachfront property on Alaska's Arctic coast while it's still cheap.