Is it possible that food could become scarce in America? It could and would become more expensive if cap-and-trade legislation is passed. The progressive elite who run the world on opinions do not think eating should have a high priority among human concerns.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

If the cap-and-trade provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill become law, you can wave goodbye to those amber waves of grain as America’s heartland falls victim to a perverse set of incentives and a process called “afforestation.” Soybeans and wheat will give way to elms and oaks. … [A] study, which was released by the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] earlier this month, reckons that as a result of cap-and-trade, farmers with energy-intensive crops would see their cost of production go up 10% over the next 50 years. Couple that with the money to be made from carbon offsets, and it may not be long before we’re unable to see the farms for the trees.

The USDA projects that under cap-and-trade … fuel costs will rise as much as 5.3% from 2012 to 2018. “The conclusion of all the studies remains the same: that cap-and-trade has the potential to devastate the agricultural community with higher energy prices,” says Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Food prices have risen worldwide as farmland has been converted to the production of energy-deficient biofuels such as ethanol. They’ll rise even further as valuable acreage is taken offline for the planting of trees to absorb the carbon dioxide that was declared to be a pollutant in need of regulation. …

When the enemy was Big Agriculture, Willie Nelson started Farm-Aid and elites lined up to save the family farm. Now, it seems, saving the planet is more important. Who really needs cheap and plentiful food when we can hug trees and get rid of all those pesky barnyard animals and their greenhouse-gas emissions in the process?

From Investors.com (Investor’s Business Daily):

With less than two months to go before the big Copenhagen Conference on global warming, two major nations have said “no thanks” to the no-growth agenda. For that reason alone, so should we.

Following a deal signed late Thursday between China and India, anything we might agree to do in Copenhagen is likely moot anyway. The two mega-nations — which together account for nearly a third of the world’s population — said they won’t go along with a new climate treaty being drafted in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

They’re basically saying no to anything that forces them to impose mandatory limits on their output of greenhouse gas emissions. Other developing nations, including Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, will likely reject any proposals as well.

The deal was already in trouble. Three weeks ago, the Group of 77 developing nations met in Thailand to discuss what they wanted to do about global warming. Their answer: nothing. …

They see clearly what the rest of us seem to miss — that, for all its bad science, the Copenhagen Conference is about the world’s Lilliputians tying down its Gullivers, not about global warming at all.

So, thanks to China and India, Copenhagen is dead — just as Kyoto was when it was signed in 1992, though no one knew it at the time. Without them, no global treaty on climate change will be workable.

The two nations are not only the world’s most populous (with, together, more than 2 billion people), they are also the fastest-growing major countries. China is now the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, and India is catching up fast.

Even with their participation, Copenhagen should have been a non-starter for the U.S. Indeed, the main reason for the greenhouse gas deal, all but admitted to by its major participants, is to cripple the U.S. economy — the most successful economy in the world.

True enough, as green critics keep saying, we produce nearly 20% of the world’s CO2 and other greenhouse gases with just 5% of the world’s population. But our GDP of roughly $14 trillion is nearly 25% of the world’s total — in line with our gas output.

We provide jobs and consumption not just for Americans, but for tens of millions of people overseas whose livelihoods depend on satisfying the massive American market.

In case you’re still worried about warming, stop. Since 1998, the data show global temperatures have fallen. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says this can’t be happening. None of the IPCC’s models shows a possibility of rising CO2 output and declining temperature.

But even Paul Hudson, the pro-warming-theory BBC climate correspondent, recently had to admit: “For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.”

Yet, the IPCC estimates that “remediation” of the warming trend will cost about 1.7% of world GDP. In the U.S., that’s about $240 billion a year. For the entire world, it’s about $1 trillion a year — or $71 trillion over the next 70 years or so.

Proposals to slash CO2 won’t work anyway. Department of Energy estimates indicate that 97% of all CO2 emissions would continue even if humans didn’t exist.

Even so, climatologist Chip Knappenberger estimates that laws like the recent Waxman-Markey bill would, if fully enacted, reduce future warming by just 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100 — not enough even to measure accurately.

Can the world really afford to give up $71 trillion in the coming decades to solve a phantom problem?

Given the shoddiness of the science behind warming claims and the refusal of the biggest CO2 emitters to play along with the climate change sham, it would be economically ruinous for the U.S. to do anything other than wish the rest of the world a nice day, and go about our business.

Deroy Murdock writes at ScrippsNews:

Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in 2006.”

Earth’s temperatures fall even as the planet spins within what global-warmists consider a thickening cloud of toxic carbon dioxide.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii consistently and reliably has measured CO2 for the last 50 years. CO2 concentrations have risen steadily for a half-century.

For December 1958, the Laboratory reported an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 314.67 parts per million (PPM). Flash forward to December 1998, about when global cooling reappeared. CO2 already had increased to 366.87 PPM. By December 2008, CO2 had advanced to 385.54 PPM, a significant 5.088 percent growth in one decade.

This capsizes the carbon-phobic global-warmist argument. For Earth’s temperatures to sink while CO2 rises contradicts global warming as thoroughly as learning that firefighters can battle blazes by spraying them with gasoline.

So, to defeat so-called “global warming,” there is no need for the $864 billion Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Kyoto Protocols, elaborate new regulations, or United Nations guidelines. Instead, let the cold times roll.

It is one thing to have a national debate about a serious problem, with adults differing over which solution might work best. Reasonable people, for instance, can dispute whether growing federal involvement would heal or inflame our healthcare system’s serious maladies.

But as so-called “global warming” proves fictional, those who would shackle the economy with taxes and regulations to fight mythology increasingly resemble deinstitutionalized derelicts on an urban street corner, wildly swatting at their own imaginary monsters.

David Limbaugh points this out in writing about the Waxman-Markey ‘cap-and-trade’ bill: 

Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger, of New Hope Environmental Services, calculates that the bill would only reduce Earth’s temperature by 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100. The Heritage Foundation’s Ben Lieberman says he’s found no “decent refutation of the assertion that the temperature impact would be inconsequential.”

Unfortunately, the bill’s negative impact on the economy would not be inconsequential. Lieberman says the bill would cause estimated job losses averaging about 1.15 million from 2012-2030, and the cumulative projected loss in gross domestic product would be almost $10 trillion by 2035. The national debt from this bill alone, disregarding the multiple bailouts, stimulus packages and health care “reform,” would increase by 2035 for a family of four by 26 percent, or $115,000…

In addition to all the economic destruction the bill would cause, in the end, it is not so much about global warming as Obaman wealth redistribution. “The Foundry” says Obama’s own budget “promises to raise $650 billion in revenues by selling carbon permits (which are the exact same thing as an energy tax),” only $150 billion of which will go to alternative energy production. The rest will be redistributed to people who “don’t pay income taxes.”

Read the whole article here.