If I wasn’t such a cynic, I swear I wouldn’t have believed my eyes when I saw Greenpeace on the same side as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Pork Producers Council. But then I looked in the other column, and found that the Sierra Club and the Union Of Concerned Scientists were siding with Rio Tinto and DuPont. What the hell!?

The title of this article is a big giveaway, but that doesn’t make the split between different interest groups any less remarkable: take a look at http://maplight.org/map/us/bill/83265/default for yourself.

It’s really difficult to summarise Waxman-Markey, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 in a few sentences, but David at The Good Human has done a decent job, so if you want to read what it’s all about then go here first. But why would a Bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions cause such a remarkable alignment of apparently opposing interests? The clue is in the subtitle:

To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.

Of the four key points, only one of them indicates a desire to protect the natural environment in any way; the other three, in order: promote economic growth, promote economic growth and promote economic growth. The main supporters of the Bill are therefore, unsurprisingly, all those companies and lobby groups that sit in the mainstream of the global market, among them some of the most destructive companies ever to disgrace the planet. In the best traditions of greenwash, the “environmental” supporters are largely organisations that have historically been comfortable working with these corporate monsters.

“So what’s wrong with economic growth?” you may ask. You can go to The Earth Blog for the full story, but here is a quick extract:

Trade is synonymous with Economic activity in the modern, globalized world. Unlike the self-sufficient Amazonian tribe that finds all it needs within walking distance, nations are no longer content to remain within their Economic borders: they cannot gain the diversity and level of growth they “need” simply by using (and exhausting) what they have, especially not if their consumers have become accustomed to a materially high standard of living. They must trade to create the necessary flow of materials, goods and capital to feed a growing Economy. More that just this, though, as corporations demand transparent borders and global channels, they – not the national governments – end up dictating the way the Economy operates: workers in China, raw materials in Uganda, oil in Saudi Arabia, customers in the USA – no problem! Who needs local economies when you can have a global Economy?

So Trade is the measure of the strength of the Economy and, as only a person immersed in an ocean of denial could refute, the production of Carbon Dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, the oceans and the exhausted biosphere is a direct function of the power of that economic machine.

The listed opponents are those groups that either oppose any attempt to cut greenhouse gases (which makes them look pretty stupid, considering the nature of some of the supporters) or have seen through the pseudo-environmental veneer of the Bill and stared into its pro-industrial, inhuman heart. You only have to consider the trivial greenhouse gas cuts that are being bandied around — anywhere between 12% and 17% by 2020 — in relation to the urgent need to cut emissions by a minimum of 95% in the USA by 2030, to realise that support of Waxman-Markey is support for the continued, irreversible destruction of the global ecology and thus humanity itself.

James Hansen puts it like this:

Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil’s cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.

The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.

This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won’t get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.

For all its “green” aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like “cap-and-trade” scheme.

As I explained in “Time’s Up!” there are, in fact, no solutions to our terrible position that lie within the realms of Industrial Civilization: the addiction this system has to economic growth means that it has to effectively gut itself before it can ever be sustainable; nevertheless, a good start would be to recognise that nothing that is being supported by such chemical and carbon monoliths as DuPont, Ford and Alcoa, has any chance of giving us a survivable future.

If you still support Waxman-Markey after this, then I can only assume you have a death wish.