++Don't Tread On Me++

"Don't Tread on Me," was a motto of the American Revolution against the tyranny of European elite. Three years ago European socialist governments, influenced by the "greens," enacted the European Union Emission Trading System. Government rations CO2 emission allowances. Companies can use them or sell them at market rates. Costs of CO2 emissions allowances are passed to consumers. This is the model for the Lieberman cap-and-trade legislation that was before the Senate.

Seventy percent of America's electricity sources produce CO2 emissions. Cap-and-trade will raise electricity prices ["Cap-and-trade really cap-and-tax," Opinion, June 2]. Electricity prices raise the cost of everything. The cost is in the trillions. On another front, permits for new electrical plants are harder to get because of the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species. Where could this lead? It means that only "alternative energy" plants will be built. These alternatives, other than nuclear, operate less than 40 percent of the time when the wind blows or the sun shines, but you never hear about this capacity factor. Electric power supply shortages will cause the whole country to experience something like the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001. This could eventually lead to forced electricity rationing such as meters that shut off your power. Cap-and-trade is designed by the "greens" to bring America's economy further down to Europe's "global" level.

Courageous scientists, called "deniers" by climate-change alarmists, have established that climate change is a natural phenomenon regulated by the sun, the oceans and clouds. The deniers still debate climate-change science even if former Vice President Al Gore, the presidential candidates and climate-change alarmists cannot. Climate change is natural, insignificant and noncatastrophic. I believe that Americans can adapt to global warming of 1 degree per 150 years because it will be during the winter at night in the northern latitudes. The dirty little secret in all this is that CO2 emissions reduction will do nothing to stop climate change.

However, it's not about global warming. It's about Americans losing the freedom to run our factories at full capacity when we want; to drive our SUV's to our vacation homes, shooting clubs and political rallies, and to turn the air conditioner down to 72 degrees for a garage-band party on a hot summer night. It's about the freedom to power our computers all day to e-mail our friends and nongovernmental organizations and read blogs; to leave the power on your TiVo when you travel; to watch TV on multiple big screens; to use incandescent light bulbs whenever we please and shine them brightly on this anti-American cap-and-trade legislation. Electrical energy has been essential to our freedom, prosperity, security and our way of life. To allow the politicians to ration or eliminate the large sources of fossil fuel energy, at a time when these same ("green") political forces oppose coal, nuclear and hydroelectric sources (more than 98 percent of our nation's total), is dangerous for our nation.

The power to tax-and-ration energy is the power to have life-and-death control over every human being. No government should ever have this power. I don't want European-style ("green") tyranny in America. I stand with the global warming "deniers." "Don't Tread on Me."

Bill Malenius of Laguna Niguel