Hour 3: Fill-In Steyn Says Cap And Trade Will "Kill American Capitalism"

This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by nudity at the G8
By Simon Maloy

Steyn got this final hour going by revisiting the G8, saying that it's interesting to see the differences between what Obama and the rest of the developed world are doing. One thing Obama has managed to do, said Steyn, is make these anti-globalization protesters go away. At the 2002 G8, there was an anti-globalization nude protest, Steyn said, and normally it's difficult to put a strip club visit on the company expense account, but the anti-globalization protesters were just stripping right there in the street. They were denouncing Bush, he said, and then they had the big final pants drop, and across the row of highly variable bottoms -- OK, that's it, we can't take it anymore. Do we really still have to listen to this dreck?

We do? For the love of...

Fine. We'll keep going. Steyn said what's interesting when you get inside these G8 meetings is that there are differences that emerge between Obama's way of doing things and the rest of the world. The other nations of the world are reeling back on their environmental commitments because they realize those commitments have no impact on the planet, but a profound and immediate impact on the economy. Europeans are realizing that environmentalism is a luxury, said Steyn, and when times are tough, environmentalism has to go. Steyn then read from a New York Times article reporting that "negotiators for 17 leading polluters abandoned targets in a draft agreement for the meetings here. But negotiators embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit." This is a worthless number, said Steyn, like Obama's "saved jobs" stat. What's happened, said Steyn, is that Obama is far more out of step with the rest of the world than the cowboy Bush ever was. The Chinese and Indians are not agreeing to any emissions standards because they want to enjoy material prosperity as their economies develop.

What's even more interesting, said Steyn, is the way the Western nations have looked at environmentalism and realized that they can't make it work. Environmentalism is an indulgence, said Steyn. He returned to his thoughts on American imperialism from earlier, saying that America is the least imperialist nation out there right now. Steyn continued, saying that it's precisely because America is not that kind of threat that the left concocted this idea that Americans eating and going to the beach and having big cars is enough to destroy the planet. And that whole crazy theory, said Steyn, is a reflection of how non-threatening America really is. The idea that lifestyle is a threat to the planet is patent nonsense, he said, but if you're a self-indulgent, morally superior liberal, it's an attractive theory.

After the break, Steyn took a call from a gentleman who said that cap and trade should be called "cap-and-hoard," because if you have a business that you want to expand, you need to get carbon credits from someone else, but they're not going to want to get rid of them. And what's going to happen is that businesses that do sell their credits will sell them to the highest bidder, which means that huge corporations are going to outbid small businesses. Steyn said the caller is right, and he doesn't know that there's any way around that fact, unless you're Al Gore, who buys his carbon credits from himself. According to Steyn, this is a "growth-crusher" on the businesses that everyone claims to like, the small businesses. This is a concoction that could only be designed by an administration with limited, if any, experience in starting and growing businesses. It's what happens, said Steyn, when you put a community organizer in charge of the economy, and it will "kill American capitalism" if it isn't stopped.

Another break and Steyn was back with another caller, who said that he supports cap and trade because it gets us off foreign oil, which means we're not funding dictatorships and terrorist sponsors. Steyn responded by talking about electric cars, saying that if you want an electric car, it's likely going to be powered by a coal-fired power plant, so you're just exchanging one fossil fuel for another. Steyn also said the caller was right about dictators -- we're funding both sides in the war on terror, as well as Hugo Chavez, so why not support more oil production at home? The caller didn't disagree with some offshore drilling, but said we need nuclear and alternative energy and more energy efficiency, and if you reduce air pollution, you'll lower health care costs. Steyn said the places with the worst pollution in the world are poor places. Dynamic, wealthy societies clean up their air because they don't want to live in smog. Steyn said cap and trade takes the decision-making process away from businesses and replaces it with government standards. You're better off living in a polluting industrial nation than in some bucolic, Third World pre-industrial society, Steyn said. We're not rich enough anymore to indulge ourselves with a government bureaucracy that will regulate how every home in the country is built.

After yet another break, Steyn came back ready for more hostile calls, saying that he likes them. They keep him "sharp." Anyway, the next caller said he likes Steyn, but he thinks that the U.S. is indeed an imperialist nation. They don't make the colonization mistake that the British made, said the caller, but instead pay money to dictators to control things behind the scenes. Steyn said he'll grant the caller that the U.S. has tried to do foreign policy on the cheap, just look at the Middle East and the fetish with "stability." The U.S. gave Mubarak billions of dollars, said Steyn, and, in return, Mohamed Atta flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Steyn said his general point is that America is the most benign superpower in history. Institutes like the World Bank were set up by the United States after WWII, thereby dampening America's own voice and magnifying the voices of lesser countries. That is not conventional imperial behavior. It's difficult to export your power and impose your will on the world, said Steyn, but it pays off in the long run. Showering dictators like Mubarak or the Saudi kings with money is not in our interests.

And that's it. We're done. No more Mark Steyn. In an ideal world, that small fact should not make us this happy, but we're going to enjoy it for all it's worth. We'll be back tomorrow for Mark Davis, and we hope you will, too. Until then, as always, Media Matters' Limbaugh archives eagerly await your patronage.

Ariana Probinsky and Zachary Pleat contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.