U.S. Energy and Climate Plans Would Drag Us Back to 1905 – or 1862

Think back to 1905. The Wright brothers had just made history. Coal and wood heated homes. Few had telephones or electricity. AC units were handheld fans. Ice blocks cooled ice boxes. New York City collected 900,000 tons of vehicle emissions – horse manure – annually, and dumped it into local rivers. Lung and intestinal diseases were rampant. Life expectancy was 47. Today, President Obama wants to prevent “runaway global warming,” by slashing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory data, this reduction would return the United States to emission levels last seen in those halcyon days of 1905. But America’s 1905 population was 84 million, versus 308 million today. We didn’t drive or fly, or generate electricity for offices, factories, schools or hospitals. To account for those differences, we’d have to send CO2 emissions back to 1862 levels. The Civil War was raging. Nine of ten Americans were farmers (versus 2% today). The industrial revolution was in its infancy. Malaria halted construction on the Washington, D.C. aqueduct. Typhus and cholera killed thousands more every year. Life expectancy was 40 – half of what affordable hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power helped make it today...CNS News