Rep. Miller: One of the reasons why we have the lifestyle we have is because of cheap, affordable, reliable energy. We’ve created this monster called CEJA. One of the observations that President Reagan made was the most terrifying words in the English language was ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’
We’ve created this mess and now we’re on the fourth amendment to try to clean it up. You know, I work outside every day I work in the environment. You know, when it’s 100 degrees in the shade and 90% humidity, I don’t sit around and whine about it being hot. When it’s the wintertime and I’m out feeding the cows and it’s 20 below zero, I’m not whining about it being cold. And we’ve created a complete myth that is destroying the economy in Illinois, and eventually we destroy the economy in the United States of America if we continue down this rabbit trail. You know, before CEJA happened, myself, Representative Halbrook, Representative Caulkins, we actually went on the energy tour, and we visited the Prairie State Campus. We visited Hamilton Coal. We visited the nuclear power plant in Clinton and we visited the wind farms, we visited the solar fields and we made a decision based on information, not our emotions or how we feel.
I know one of the things that we found out in these energy producing plants that everyone was running about almost 100% capacity. And at that time, we knew that there was no way in the world we could shut down our existing power and still power our grid. And the net result of it was a war on the middle class, and people can no longer afford to pay their doggone electric bills because of bad public policy. I know one thing about it for the last 69 years we’ve had a climate crisis, and we’ve gone from one thing to the other.
When I was a kid, we had global cooling. We’re gonna have the great freeze out and and 4 billion people were gonna die. And then we went to global warming where the Earth was gonna return to turn into a frying pan. We were all gonna burn up. And now we’re on this myth we call climate change. And now we’re all going to change to death. One of the common threads that links all of these ideas together is none of it ever happened. And guess what? None of it is ever going to happen. We aren’t going to be destroyed by CO2. And I would suggest that probably most of the people in this body don’t even know what carbon dioxide is. There’s a good dose of it. [*Blows into the mic*] There’s a little carbon dioxide for ya’ and guess what? Nobody’s gonna die! One of the things that-
Rep. Jay Hoffman in Speaker’s chair: Representative [laughter] Wilhour gives you three minutes.
Rep. Miller: But anyway, does anybody know how much carbon dioxide is in the entire globe? I guess and probably nobody can answer that question. There’s four hundredths of 1% of the entire world atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide. During the Obama administration, the EPA said if we do everything that we want to do by the year 2100 that we will increase the global temperature by two one hundredths of 1% of a degree. It doesn’t amount to jack squat.
There’s one thing that I know is in sound science, your observation dictates your conclusion. Your observation dictates your conclusion, and I know I am 69 years of observation, and I have come to the conclusion that this is a bunch of blunk and we need to throw this all in the garbage. One of the things that we, that I understand is Earth science as a farmer and there’s a great mechanism that we call photosynthesis. And it’s an incredible, it’s an incredible way that we clean up the atmosphere. Guess what we have millions of acres of green leafy plants that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. It’s amazing. It’s incredible.
Another thing that takes us out of the atmosphere is sulfur. And guess what we’ve taken so much sulphur out of the atmosphere, now as a farmer, I have to buy sulfur to put in my fertilizer mixes so I can grow the maximum production of corn.
There’s one thing that I know is our biggest threat to civilization is not climate change. But I know a lot of times that I think that our biggest threat to civilization is the hot air that gets produced in this General Assembly by passing bad public policy. No one continues to whether or not Joe Biden not Barack Obama, not JB Pritzker, not John Kerry. They cannot change the climate. People do what they really believe. And when you see these guys flying around the world in their private jets, they live in mansions on the beach. If they actually thought the world was doomed because of climate change, they would have a different lifestyle. Part of the lie is convincing you that electricity comes from magic!!! We wave our magic word all of a sudden we produce electricity, and it’s just not true. We’re not having a climate crisis. But what we are having is we’re having a crisis of common sense. And the only way we’re on the fourth amendment to this bill and the only way to fix it is to have amendment number five in throw CEJA in the garbage and start over! Thank you Mr. Speaker.
