Chupacabra Report

News That Get's My Goat:

Climatologists from the Max Planc Institute recently reported that global warming will be delayed some in Europe and North America, until approximately 2015; effects cancelled out by changes to the Gulf Stream, the river of ocean currents that circulate warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic.

Funny, my neighbor just sent me a video pegging Biblical end-time prophecies to the year 2015, when the Goddard Space Flight Center’s calendar of eclipses predicts an event like the blood-red moon from Revelation.

Secular Humanist me, I’ll bet on the climate change.

The other day I was finding fault with some presidential candidate’s positions, here’s another: All three candidates are in favor of a cap and trade system to reduce carbon emissions. Chronicle business reporter Loren Steffy asked Sunday how long it would take traders to game a cap and trade system, suggesting for example that companies could concentrate all their credits in one region and cut back in others “like some carbon-based version of Enron’s ‘Ricochet’ scheme.”

I’m with him, a BTU or carbon tax is a more direct and effective means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This is another reason that we need to elect robust Democratic majorities this year at all levels of government. Here in Texas, the state Commission on Environmental Quality has again gone to bat to prevent the city of Houston from regulating big polluters in it’s jurisdiction.

In the coming era of post-Republican rule, we’ll have plenty of market-based mayhem to clean up after. Let’s find us some tools that will work, rather than accept more of the same corporate boondoggle that’s been shining on us this past decade.