http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2008/07/why_president_obamas_likely_to_1.htmlWhy President Obama's likely to have a tough four years
Posted by Paul Mulshine July 30, 2008 2:21PM
A group of Democratic senators issued a release yesterday calling on Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen L. Johnson to resign over allegedly false statements he made to a Senate committee.
Among other offenses, they say that he "made false statements before the committee in January when he said that he alone had decided California should not regulate the gases blamed for global warming from motor vehicles."
This may sound like a minor point, but it's symptomatic of a major problem Barack Obama will face if he wins the presidency. And that problem is the likelihood that Democratic majorities will pass into law such extreme environmental measures as the California car standard.
I like small cars as much as the next guy, and perhaps a lot more. But this standard, which has been adopted by New Jersey among other states, requires an average gas mileage of 40.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Even the tiny Mercedes Smart Car, which I drove for a few days earlier in the year, does not achieve that standard. If the Democrats were to get their way and impose it nationally, then cars as we know them would disappear from the streets.
And that's just the beginning. The cap-and-trade system for CO-2 emissions could cause big hikes in your electric bills and the cost of heating your home. Of course, you'll have solar panels and windmills instead - or so say the environmentalists.
If Obama wins the presidency and gives his own party its way, he'll spend four years fending off protests from the great mass of Americans. We all love to tell the pollsters how much we love environmentalism when it comes at no cost. But put a price tag on it, and we go nuts.
With gas prices already at an all-time high, Americans are extremely unlikely to want to start spending more for other forms of energy. And they're not going to start crowding into Smart cars either. As I wrote at the time, I found the Smart to be tremendously amusing. But it doesn't even have room for a sack of groceries.
So there's your real audacity of hope. The Democrats had better have the audacity to hope Obama doesn't keep his promises on environmental issues.
