Mike Pence Says USCAP Businesses Should ‘Keep Their Powder Dry’
Mike Pence Says USCAP Businesses Should ‘Keep Their Powder Dry’
Speaking at an event meant to oppose Democratic clean energy legislation, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) warned corporations calling for the United States to take action on global warming to “keep their powder dry.” Grist’s Kate Sheppard asked Pence after the GOP mock climate hearing yesterday what he would say to the corporations in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP) who have testified that a mandatory cap on global warming pollution is needed. After trying to avoid the question, Pence told companies that support a green economy to “keep their powder dry” as the GOP attempts to preserve Bush-era energy policy:
Um. I, I just would say that any American who is prepared to endorse a national energy tax that there’s a better solution. Uh, that they should keep their powder dry. And uh, take their case to the American people that they don’t need, particularly during this very difficult time in the economic life of our nation, to raise the energy cost on our businesses and on American families.
Watch it:
Unfortunately for climate deniers like Pence and his fellow members in the GOP American Energy Solutions Group, corporate leaders aren’t heeding his warning, because they know the “national energy tax” scare is just a lie. As Grist noted, “the House heard the leaders of Duke Energy, ConocoPhillips, and DuPont ask for a cap as recently as April 22.” Politico reports that Nike has been telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “to take a more progressive stance on the issue of climate change.” And Exelon Corporation, one of America’s largest electric utilities and another US-CAP member, is featured in a new advertisement today from the Environmental Defense Action Fund calling for a carbon cap as a part of comprehensive clean economic policy:
10 Responses to “Mike Pence Says USCAP Businesses Should ‘Keep Their Powder Dry’”
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I’m heartened to see the debate on climate/energy legislation receive so much media attention at such an early date in the Obama Administration. In my opinion the majority of the credit needs to be bestowed on the White House. From his inauguration speech to his recent appearance at an Iowa wind turbine factory , the president has repeatedly stressed the impending climate catastrophe and the moment of opportunity it presents the nation to shift to a clean energy economy. And it hasn’t just been words. The administration has granted California an emissions waiver so the state can require auto companies to produce more fuel efficient vehicles; they have inserted $50 billion in clean energy funding into the stimulus bill; they have accepted the EPA endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions (and that’s just a short list).
But what hasn’t happened yet is a concerted effort to clearly explain the pressing need for major legislation. I imagine that push will come later in the legislative session. Probably with the goal of ramming through the Waxman-Markey bill in 2010. Until the American public understands the dire warnings coming from the scientific community, politicians like Pence and the spooky Michelle Bachmann (standing to his right in the above video) will be able to implement the usual scare tactics. The main ones being that cap and trade will raise energy prices by $3100 a year, it will shift jobs overseas, and it will result in higher unemployment. These arguments are at best misinformation and at worst outright lies. But they are inherently easy to understand. And they are a major reason why the Waxman bill is struggling just to get out of subcommittee.
A strong message on the near term impacts of climate change needs to come out of the White House. That way moderate Dems from coal dependent regions cannot find political cover behind the GOP wall of disinformation.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:43 pmCraig-
You are Chicken Little looking for “impending climate catastrophe.”
As there are scientists who support climate change theory, there are an equal amount of scientists who dispute climate change dogma.
I’m more concerned with having enough money to pay my bills than to be forced to pay for legislation (rammed through Congress without debate- as you explicitly support) to ease your fears and insecurities about your surrounding environment.
I would rather the White House stay out of my life as much as possible and let me live it as I choose, without the burden of paying for enviromentalist panic attacks.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:21 pmGreg –
It’s time to evolve!
Get out of the habit of responding to a factual comment with
1) name calling (”Chicken Little”)
2) sloppy assertions with no factual basis (”there are an equal amount of scientists”) … unless you mean equal poundage.
3) and unrelated emotional blasts, and personal attacks.
They don’t work, and make you appear to be simply part of the problem of ignorance, self-pity, and short-sightedness that have caused so many problems serious people are now working hard to overcome.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:53 am“to the corporations in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP) who have testified that a mandatory cap on global warming pollution is needed.”
These corporations are foppish geldings who are simply trying to turn the march to the slaughterhouse into a parade. it’s a parade that they are desperate to appear to lead, so they get better treatment at the final destination. Fools.
“3) and unrelated emotional blasts, and personal attacks.”
ROFLMAO! It seems the Wonk Room’s SOP is to take a Republican quote and then turn it into an ad hominem attack.
“They don’t work, and make you appear to be simply part of the problem of ignorance, self-pity, and short-sightedness that have caused so many problems” – I agree. ThinkProgress is part of the problem of partisanship not the solution. They are quite Orwellian in how they twist, distort, spin, deride, all for the ’cause’ where the ends justify whatever means possible. It’s repulsive really. (waiting for my comment to be deleted by the hidden censors … 4… 3. …2… 1…)
May 7th, 2009 at 3:46 pm‘The president has repeatedly stressed the impending climate catastrophe”
IF he did, then the President is a liar. He preying upon fears and ginning up a crisis that isnt real.
Of course, we’ve seen the script many a time. Politicians create phony threats and fears in order to ram their power-mongering policies through. Climate change is to Obama/Gore/Democrats what Iraq-WMDs is to Bush. “They preyed upon our fears” is what we will someday come to realize.
” and the moment of opportunity it presents the nation to shift to a clean energy economy.”
We have an opportunity to shift to clean, non-CO2-emitting nuclear power… but Obama is cutting it off at the knees with his dumb-as-rocks decision to close Yucca. Pandering at its worst.
“The administration has granted California an emissions waiver so the state can require auto companies to produce more fuel efficient vehicles” – oh the irony? an emissions waiver!?! How about giving the USA a 10-year waiver on regulating CO2, a molecule that is basis for all life on earth and is harmless.
“they have inserted $50 billion in clean energy funding into the stimulus bill;”
Expect billions in waste fraud and abuse in Govt spending.
“they have accepted the EPA endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions (and that’s just a short list).”
A finding chock full of myths, misstatements, errors and rejection of the real best science on true climate effect of CO2. This EPA decision will be almost as bad as the phony environmental scares over Alar, second-hand smoke, and power lines … oh, and cell phones… Come to think of it, a LOT of times we have been told to be scared of environmental threats and it turned out to be bogus.
60 years of CO2 influence and the global temps moved less than 0.4C. The models that predicted large differences are getting disproved. The temperature data has shown lower temps than 11 years ago, 1998. CO2’s influence on the environment is more benign and less influential than the fearmongers suggest it is.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:55 pmLeonard-
I was not responding to “factual comment”. Climate change THEORY is hysteria. If someone wants to believe in nonsense, they have every right to. That’s what liberty is all about, and I value individual liberty over group-think any day.
But, I feel no obligation to entertain and pay for the fears of others. I have no concern for those who go around whipping people in a frenzy, especially children (who recent studies show are increasingly convinced we will experience a climate holocaust of some sort), over something we human beings have no control over.
The truth is, we human beings are a very small part of a grand creation. Nature can wipe us out in a second, but we can do nothing to nature. We’re not powerful enough. It’s all a hoax, guys, and people like Al Gore are making fat speaking fees promoting it.
When you realize this, you’ll understand how evolved I am.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm“Climate change THEORY is hysteria. ”
To be more exact –
May 7th, 2009 at 7:02 pmCO2 influencing the climate is not hysteria. Claims that 10C temperature increase is imminent in this century is hysteria, when temperatures have risen less than 0.5C in the past 60 years and there are no credible models and scenarios that fit this trend to get to 10C.
when Gore spoke of 20 foot sea level rise (when its under 1mm/year and since 2005 has stopped), that’s hysteria.
When Gore and others speak of polar ice caps melting, when in fact neither ice cap is melting and antarctica is adding ice mass, that is hysteria.
Bashing people who disagree with the hysteria as ‘denialists’ .. is also hysteria.
Greg,
An equal number of scientists “dispute climate change dogma.” That’s quite a statement. One that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Protection Agency, American Meteorological Society, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the Hadley Center for Climate Protection and Research, and many other scientific organizations dispute in their position statements on climate change. Not to mention the first, second, and third assessment of the UN International Panel on Climate Change.
But I have enough friends and colleagues who are adamant deniers of human caused global warming to realize that no amount of scientific data is persuasive.
So I would like to ask you some questions: If the thousands of peer-reviewed articles verifying anthropogenic global warming are inaccurate, then doesn’t that cast doubt on the entire scientific method? And by extension, doesn’t that mean any scientific conclusion, no matter the discipline, should be disregarded?
But let’s assume the mountain of data pointing towards a warming planet isn’t merely inaccurate, but rather deliberately misleading. Why would scientists engage in what essentially amounts to academic fraud? What do they have to benefit? And yes, I’ve heard the “leftist bias in academia” and “scientists who publish findings that verify AGW get the grant money” arguments before. They are totally unconvincing. Scientists are, on the whole, more liberal than the general population. Polling data verifies that. But the rigorous process of peer review, a process that requires any new findings to be reproducible, is meant to weed out, as much as possible, political bias. The second argument fails because no credible evidence has ever been produced to demonstrate such data manipulation is occurring. It also fails because it’s just plain nutty.
And finally, if the data is either inaccurate or misleading, why would so many scientists willingly perpetuate this lie? Scientists make their reputations by challenging orthodoxy. Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein are all now household names because they challenged the reigning consensus. But no credible biologist today would seriously question natural selection just as no astronomer would challenge Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the solar system.
The reason is not some sinister intellectual conspiracy that attempts to maintain the status quo by cutting off grant funding or stripping a professor of tenure ship. The reason is that, because these theories have been so overwhelmingly validated, the scientific debate has moved on to more controversial issues. Just as today, in the disciplines related to climate change, the debate is no longer over whether CO2 produces warming in the atmosphere. That was accepted more than 100 years ago. It’s no longer about whether human generated greenhouse gases are warming the atmosphere. That was accepted more than 20 years ago. The real debate in science is occurring on the edges of research. Determining where the tipping points exist in the Arctic, the Amazon, and Antarctica that rapidly push the climate into a new more permanent state. A state that is much less conducive to a stable and healthy human civilization.
As for your contention that you want the White House to stay out of your life, I can sympathize. I certainly value my independence and autonomy. And I don’t like being preached to or having others overly dictate the terms of my life. But that is not what this debate is about. This debate is about how we as humans wisely use energy to ensure a stable climate. Besides, the cap and trade legislation proposed in the House is designed to allow the flexibility of the marketplace, rather than massive government intervention, act as the engine of change. Will your energy bills increase? Probably. But it will be far less than the wildly inflated figure of $3100 a year being pushed on the public by the GOP. And most of those increases will be offset by either tax credits or direct rebates. And any increased cost of generating electricity wouldn’t be felt by producers or consumers until at least 2012 (long after all economists predict an end to our current recession).
May 8th, 2009 at 10:15 amPart of the problem in this science talk … most folks have no understanding of the scientific process (hypothesis, testing, publication/peer review and challenge). They think that claims by anyone with a college degree, working from a garage or attic, (and especially if it involves talk of exciting conspiracies) is more valid than theories that emerge through robust application of the scientific process. I suspect that will not change, no matter how many references you provide to the peer reviewed literature.
And unfortunately, Al Gore has made the problem worse because even if he is sometimes right, his involvement provokes a reaction.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:59 pmBig Government is cruel because it promotes fallacy of Global warming and preys on fears in order to take control over other peoples live.
It does this despite scientific evidence, trillions of years of continues climate change, and the reality of having to extinguish the sun in order to actually achieve it.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:45 am