Bishops Support Climate Change Bill

Courtesy of CWN

The US bishops have given their enthusiastic support to the Waxman-Markey bill, a piece of legislation designed to address climate change, which Republican opponents have characterized as entailing "the largest tax increase in American history."

It is sad that our bishops would support a bill that will have no environmental impact but force millions of more American families into poverty and on the bring of homelessness. This is one more step towards socialism that many of our bishops are supporting. Our hope though can be that if the US continues to lean in this socialist direction we can begin to learn to live off the land again and strip ourselves of our dependence on material possessions.

The Congressional Budget Office, in its analysis of the legislation, concluded that the Waxman-Markey bill would entail new costs of $770 a year for the average American family. A separate analysis by the Heritage Foundation suggested that this figure was grossly understated, and the actual costs would be closer to $3,000 per year for a typical family of four-- rising steadily up to $4,600 by the year 2035. The Heritage analysis added that the bill would increase gasoline prices by 58%, home heating oil by 56%, and electric rates by 90%. The total drag on the economy would likely result in a loss of over 1 million jobs, Heritage concluded. In spite of this enormous cost, the Foundation argued, the Waxman-Markey bill would produce only a miniscule effect on the process of climate change, producing a drop in world temperatures of "only hundredths of a degree Celsius" in the next 40 years.

Do you have an extra $3,000 that you can throw away each year for a bill that will accomplish nothing for the environment as a whole? We need to accept that the world climate goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Remember this bill is sponsored by the same politician that would protect public school pedophiles and would attack private schools allowing anyone nearly unlimited time to sue a private school for sexual abuse.