join me in welcoming nick lawrence. [applause] >> thank you all for coming here today. it promises to be an educational and exciting event with our speaker. learning about these issues for a while, at the global recession hit you have seen a shift in the green movement away from warning about the catastrophic consequences of climate change and shifting toward the green jobs position and moving towards a clean energy economy and these policies have such far reaching implications on american households, on businesses and to arrest on a shaky set of assumptions about the scientific consensus when it comes to global warming and that is putting it lightly. our speaker will be more blunt about this, is troubling. the policies in the united states, you can list them endlessly. you have policies that artificially drive the price of energy up so people will use less. biofuel mandates, energy efficiency regulations that restrict consumer choice and ignore the trade offs consumers make when purchasing a plants or light bulbs or vehicles. all these policies fundamentally alter the