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Some fear economic impact of climate change conference
Posted: 12.09.2009 at 7:53 PM
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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- About 70 people gathered at Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center Wednesday morning to watch a live Webcast from Copenhagen by Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips to report on the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

"I am really concerned with what's going on in Copenhagen right now," said William Gillin. Gillin came to listen to what those from Americans for Prosperity had to say along with former Congressman Bob Beauprez.

Reading from the notes Gillin took he said, "As Bob Beauprz said, if the Cap-and-Tax bill in Congress now goes through it could cost over a million job losses per year for the next 25 years. See electricity bills shoot up 90 percent."

Monday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave the president a new way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions when the agency determined that scientific evidence clearly shows they are endangering Americans' health. That means the EPA could regulate those gases without the approval of the U.S. Congress.

"We will work closely with our Congress to pass legislation to lower our greenhouse gases more than 80 percent by 2050," EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told those attending the conference.

Many of those who gathered Wednesday at Mr. Biggs were concerned with the economic impact the conference could have in the United States.

But Jim Ebersole and Brian Linkhart, both biology professors at Colorado College, believe the environmental consequences of not lowering emissions outweigh the economic impacts.

"If almost all the engineers in the world say 'this bridge is unsafe, it's going to be expensive to fix it.' That doesn't mean it's any less important to do it and any less critical to do it," argued Ebersole.

Ebersole went even further to say he believes the issue of trying to stop global warming is also an ethical issue.

"These problems [global warming] will be especially concentrated among the people with the least resources to deal with them. The area south of the Sahara Desert, those people often experience devastating droughts and famine and almost certainly will have more of those. People in Bangladesh who experience those catastrophic floods associated with typhoons due to sea level rise associated with global warming many more people will die over there," said Ebersole.

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