We're going to get into a climate change debate if you're going to say that scientists are getting "skeptical" about man-made "global warming."
Take a look here:
http://www.grist.org/article/the-scientists-arent-even-sure/
http://www.grist.org/article/there-is-no-consensus/
We're going to get into a climate change debate if you're going to say that the Earth has been "cooling" for the last ten years "despite increased CO2 levels."
Take a look here:
http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998/
http://www.grist.org/article/some-sites-show-cooling/
And you're wrong about Australia too -- they passed legislation last year to ban the sales of incandescent light bulbs, thus saving 4,409,245 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere by 2012.
But, go ahead, be ignorant about climate change/global warming. Go ahead, wait until the Palmer snowfield is gone and the Horstman glacier is just a memory. Go ahead, wait until skiing is completely gone from the Appalachians and just a useless mass of chairlifts in the lower Alps. Go ahead, wait until the snows of Kilimanjaro are gone (which will happen by 2020) and the snowfields of Australia and New Zealand are just dirt covered mountainsides. Go ahead. Nothing's stopping you.
A recent United Nations study showed that global warming could eventually limit skiing to mountains with base elevations above 5,000 feet. This would present difficulties for many resorts in the U.S.
Now, bringing all that information back to the cap/trade debate. Suggest to me a piece of legislation that would reduce CO2 emissions by the same amount that a cap/trade system would. I'm all for international dialogue, especially with China and India. You know, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is having a meeting later this year. I'm all for shelving the bill (keeping it on the table, but waiting to vote on it) until after the IPCC discussion. That way we can make changes to bring the bill up to international standards and it can still take effect in the same year. I'm all for that; but the era of American arrogance is over. The US, as the #1 emitter of CO2 on Earth as of 2004 (the last year data was available), has a duty to ourselves and to the rest of the world to cut our emissions. That's a fact; we are no longer better than the rest of the world. It's time to act. Be it cap/trade or something else, the time is now.
And forgive me; I got really off-topic on that. If you want to continue this dialogue, I will gladly create a new thread.