On Wednesday, September 10th, I attended a forum on Climate Change hosted by the Wheeling Chamber of Commerce. Tom Mullikin, an attorney with Charlotte, NC law firm Moore & Van Allen, and Jennifer Diggins, Vice President, Government Relations at American Iron and Steel Institute were the guest speakers.
I must admit that I found the presentation to be fairly refreshing. Too often, nearly every political issue is presented (if not outright shouted) in a polarizing fashion by someone on the hard right, or hard left. (The last, and only other time, I read a straight forward piece on this issue, was a op-ed piece in the Charleston Gazette by Jeff James, chairman of Create WV and vice chairman of Vision Shared). Tom’s talk was very matter of fact, and used studies, graphs, and statistics from peer reviewed third parties.
The main crux of the presentation was a review of potential impact on manufacturing and energy states (primarily the midwest) by the pending “Cap and Trade” legislation that was passed by the House earlier this year. Effectively, if the US goes ahead with this legislation, the end result will be:
- a reduction in carbon emissions from the United States
- a shift in jobs to countries like China and India
- a tripling in emissions from countries where the jobs “leak”
- the only “winners” – the “traders”.
Without a global solution, the environment won’t be better off, in fact it could be worse off! They cite the fact that will emissions in the US will be “capped”, but the global emissions will continue to rise as emitting activities will migrate to other countries. In fact, because US manufacturing is 3 times more efficient than Asian manufacturing, the environment will be worse off as a result.
The second half of the presentation was conducted by Jennifer Diggins. Her remarks echoed Tom’s, and centered around the need for a market based global solution. She spent much of the time reviewing specific projections for job losses in states like West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania if the US “goes it alone”.
As I mentioned above, it was refreshing to hear facts and opinions presented on a fairly controversial matter in a straight forward, adult manner. I feel that too many people, myself included, simply shrug their shoulders and tune out on important issues such as this, when the only information to be found is on television with a split screen of 2-4 “experts” yelling at and belittling each other. It seems there has to be a better way, and for an hour last week, Tom and Jennifer provided it.
