Santa Rosa students go green

Eighth-grader Brynna Thigpen wonders just how hard it really is to save the world from global warming.

It’s as easy as the flick of a switch.
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The students at Rincon Valley Middle School celebrated their week of eco-consciousness by hosting hip-hop artist Torman Jahi of Oakland, who performed at lunch Friday.

Jahi performed a rousing rap called “Green Flow,” in which he had hundreds of pupils on their feet chanting “Going! Going! Green! Green!”
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Jahi’s performance was paid for by the Climate Protection and Recovery Fund established by Santa Rosa City Councilwoman Veronica Jacobi.

Cap-and-trade: Obama's 'economic dagger'

Citing a recent Pew Poll in which Americans ranked the economy at the top – and global warming at the bottom - of a market basket of political issues, Inhofe calls cap-and-trade legislation “a form of global taxation” and believes it can be defeated again, even though it has the full backing of the Obama administration. The realization is slowly but surely growing here that duplicating Europe’s failed cap-and-trade scheme would be a knock-out blow for the U.S. economy because it would dramatically increase energy costs and cripple the nation’s dwindling manufacturing base. The Detroit News aptly called cap-and-trade “a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation's heartland.”

Even Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-ND, warned that the president’s $3.5 trillion budget “can’t pass here” if it contains cap-and-trade provisions that virtually guarantee a stratospheric rise in energy costs for families and businesses. The Obama administration has already signaled its intention to limit the supply of energy by blocking funding for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and canceling existing federal oil and gas leases. Less supply inescapably means higher prices. So let us hope that Inhofe’s bold assertion that “we are winning the argument with the American people” is correct. If it is, it comes just in the nick of time.