Warm and Fuzzy Global Regulation
AIM Column | By Bethany Stotts | June 4, 2008
But is America about to go the way of Europe?
With
Lieberman-Warner coming up for a vote, it becomes all the more important to
examine the motivations behind global warming activism. Václav Klaus, President
of the Czech Republic, told a
Competitive Enterprise Institute audience last week that he believes climate
change is the ideal political issue because its dogma cannot be disproven.
“Now I am afraid it will take centuries to
come up with a convincing proof that the planet has not been destroyed, or does
not find itself on the brink of destruction and that’s the trick of the current
environmentalism,” Klaus said at the Competitive Enterprise Institute annual dinner.
“The ambitious politicians who try to mastermind the world and their fellow
citizens have been dreaming for decades to to find such a marvelous, from
reality immunized doctrine,” he said.
This type of climate
alarmism is not without cost, Klaus argues, and is inherently inimical to human
welfare. “If we take the reasoning of the environmentalists seriously, we find
theirs is an anti-human ideology. It sees the fundamental cause of the world’s
problems in the very expansion of homo sapiens,” writes Klaus in his book, Blue Planet In Green Shackles.
Klaus was the
recipient of this year’s CEI Julian Simon award for free market ideas. Blue Planet in Green Shackles was translated into English by CEI, and has been produced in other languages such as German,
Dutch, and Polish. It will soon enter Russian markets.
Major news coverage
of Klaus’ two speeches was limited to CSPAN and Fox News, given that the Washington Post,
Los Angeles Times, and New York Times virtually ignored his visit.
“And finally
thanks to you all for giving me such a good reason to again visit your great
country which—with all the so much-needed and in many respects more-than-justified
criticism—remains to be the most free country in the world and the inspiration
for all of us,” Klaus told the audience. He added, “I emphasize it here and now
mainly because of my growing frustration with the developments on the other
side of the Atlantic, where I have
just come from.”
But is America about to go
the way of Europe? The Lieberman-Warner bill would impose
cap-and-trade on America’s carbon
emissions, requiring a 70% drop in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
According to
the Heritage Foundation, American gross domestic product (GDP), a key indicator
of wealth, could drop $436 billion by 2030 as a result of the legislation.
Heritage’s new report shows that the bill will also raise household energy
costs by $447 annually and could lead to the loss of a million American jobs.
According to
the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would impose $90 billion in
private-sector mandates annually between 2012 and 2016. This exceeds the legal annual cap of $136 million
established under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), reports the CBO.
Klaus drew a
conceptual link between Marxism and modern-day environmentalism while at the
National Press Club. “Like their predecessors, [environmentalists] will be
certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their
idea reality,” he said. “In the past, it was in the name of the masses or of
the proletariat; this time in the name of the planet. Structurally, it is very
similar,” he said.
The Czech
President admits that his present perspective is influenced heavily by his life
under communism, but said that he “would like to stress that I do not live in
the past and do not see the future threats to society coming from the old and
old-fashioned communist ideology.” Rather, the threat comes with a new name but
similar goal: government restrictions on freedom.
“We are
witnessing the absolutist interpretation of the cautionary principle being used
by environmentalists to justify any kind of regulatory intervention or ban,”
writes Klaus in Blue Planet in Green
Shackles. “All they need to implement such regulations...is simple
moralizing, noble preaching about the future, and demonstrating their ‘concern’
about humankind à la Gore,” he continues. Far better, he argues, is the
cost-benefit analysis.
Critics of
cap-and-trade and other economic engineering schemes argue that the costs of
climate change alarmism could be quite dramatic. “If we eliminate the nitrogen fertilizer,
then that will cut the world’s crop fields in half immediately,” said Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute. “Half the world will be hungry.”
Another
government-headed program, ethanol mandates, provides a disturbing prequel of
what Lieberman-Warner could entail. “What we have done in the U.S. and in
Europe is create a situation where—for a variety of reasons, but primarily
environmental—we have called for the burning of food as fuel and the
destruction of environmental habitat to make room for that food, to grow that
food,” argues CEI Fellow Iain Murray, author of The
Seven Really Inconvenient Truths.
“Under the
mandate as passed in the energy bill last year, the United States will burn even
greater quantities of food as auto fuel in a world that is not fully fed right
now and whose food demand will be more than double in the next 40 years,” he
said.
Lieberman-Warner
may be even worse than ethanol mandates. “Yet the challenges posed by the
ethanol program are a small fraction of those posed by [Lieberman-Warner],”
write the Heritage study’s authors. They classify the bill as promising
“extraordinary perils for the American economy.”
On a more
humorous note, Klaus’ press club jokes about Al Gore’s carbon-capping schemes
shed a more personal light on what the future might have in store for America. He said,
“I was the only
voice in the room to ask, ‘please, can I get [water] without ice?’ And then my
neighbors at the table started to argue ‘this is very European because in Europe they have small
refrigerators and they don’t have enough ice.’ And I said, ‘Fred, to be
consistent, you should go home this evening to throw away your big refrigerator
and to buy a new small one. That’s the only way how to follow [the]
prescriptions of Al Gore.”
Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer for Accuracy in Academia, and can be contacted at
19 Comments | Post a Comment
I appreciate Václav Klaus speaking up in public and stating what many of us have been saying for years. I cannot comment on his work since I have not read it.
I think that most U.S. politicians are simply part of the machine, trying to do the right thing. Politicians like Pelosi, Gingrich, Bush, or Lieberman are not smart or even ambitious enough to be pushing such an agenda IMHO. Besides, this environmentalist push has been present for 30+ years, with doomsday predictions that have repeatedly proved to be without merit.
Has Gore managed to clean up his own house and property in TN? The toxic waste and all?
In the late 90s, Gore was tasked with coming up with regulations to improve security for airlines. I must admit, he came up with a pretty decent list of good ideas.
THEN the airlines complained that it would be too costly. But, knight in shining armor Gore came to their rescue by removing the deadlines for such changes, making them utterly irrelevant. What a guy!
Still, the US is hounding Israel to do the same thing we did when attacked by terrorists over the course of decades: don’t retaliate. As history has shown, this is a winning strategy…NOT!
Al Gore is a publicity hound much like Bill Clinton without the charisma and acting abilities. Global Warming is simply his vehicle.
Yet he refuses to debate the topic with Czech President Václav Klaus. Meanwhile, the UK newspapers have been debunking the myths that prop up this Global Warming hoax. The climate may change (it has ever since there was an earth with a climate to change), but mankind simply isn’t the cause of it.
There is a good point - there is no way anything can be ‘proven’ in this one way or another. We can talk about the polar bears, ice caps, etc., but definitive proof that ‘global warming’ is/is not causing this is and will be elusive.
We can see that there are problems in this country, and the world, concerning pollution. That is not ethereal or a hundred years from now, etc. It’s here. So what are we doing - we are debating global warming. Something that can be discussed, debated, argued almost forever. . It will serve the purpose of keeping the focus off things we really could and should be doing.
It’s funny when they speak of global warming, they never suggest we should quit purchasing so many cheap, junky Chinese goods whose production is contributing, ever increasingly, to pollution, that is drifting around the world.
We are buying that trash in obscene amounts. There are piles of it in this country. It would be an eyeopener to those who do not frequent garage sales and thrift stores to see the veritible mountains of clothing, appliances, and geegaws that has been purchased, and is now unwanted. Check out the back of some of the thrift stores at the amount that is simply thrown into the dumpster - helping to pollute even more.
We are hearing about global warming in the US and that our autos are responsible, and we need to stop it. Yet, those same politicians (all of them) support illegal immigration. When illegals comes to this country, as soon as the family makes enough money, they purchase a vehicle, and that vehicle is almost never a small compact auto. It is usually a SUV or pickup. That is adding millions of polluters to this country and the world. They also become great purchasers of this same trash - creating superconsumers to purchase cheap, shoddy, throwaway goods. This keeps the Chinese releasing tons of pollutant into the air and this country ending up with having to deal with this trash that no one seems to want anymore.
It reminds me of the constant mantra during the 60’s and 70’s about over population. WE were constantly told in this country we needed to cut back on our family size or we would be in trouble in this country.
Now, our reduced childbirths is what the politicians are using against us to justify illegal immigration. They say because we are not having enough children in this country, we need the illegals.
The politicians are smart enough, all of them, to understand their role in this - whichever side they pretend to take - and talk about it - but do nothing. They may not have a clue about global warming - I’m thinking few actually do.
Al Gore is an opportunist - but he is no different from any other politicians. He needed something to keep him in the limelight - this ‘idea’ needed someone to put out front.
ladytexan,
Good and interesting points! Although I would argue that automobile pollution is only one factor of many, and that industrial pollution and electricity generation is a far greater source of pollution. The obvious answer to clean up that source of pollution is nuclear power (as the waste can be much more easily contained and controlled), but environmental activists have killed that pretty effectively as to make it super-taboo. An example of this is the recurrent issue of Yucca mountain (1 million year containment is simply ludicrous), as well as the absence of new reactor construction.
Like I said earlier, most people (including myself) support alternative fuels and energy sources. And the approach should start first and foremost with more efficient use of the fuels to cut pollution. I find the gloom-and-doom scare tactics to be counterproductive though, as most people will simply ignore the obvious problems because of the faulty logic and rhetoric of the left.
I hope to see you post in other stories about immigration. Since I do not live in a border state, I am not as familiar with the situation as you might perceive it 
ScienceDada,
I’ll talk immigration anytime I get the chance. Personally, I think this and the changes that are being allowed because of it, is the worst danger this country faces. It is destruction from within. We can overcome a terrorist attack, we can overcome a depression, but we won’t be able to overcome having our country destroyed from within - not for generations - if ever. It truly is an invasion in every sense of the word.
Oh, of course, gasoline is not the only thing. The fact that many illegals come from a situation that is a fairly simple life - not super consumers. We let them in, let them work, give them benefits and we are creating millions of super consumers. They not only consume gasoline in their autos, but in all ways citizens do. They begin to buy the junk that is sent here, waste utilities, etc. They are no worse, just adding more to an already bad problem.
When the illegals first started coming, and bringing their families and before food stamps and WIC was available to them, it was interesting to watch them buy groceries. They didn’t buy junk food, prepared food. They bought fresh veggies and fruits, and they didn’t buy hamburger meat. They bought good cuts of beef and cut it up to use. Their food always looked so healthy. Now you see them buying cereal, pop tarts, unhealthy and expensive food.
The negative effects of illegal immigration hasn’t been a one-way street, the illegals are going to have health problems.
I will confess to being one of those who have reservations about nuclear power. Not because I don’t think it can be safe, it seems to be working in other parts of the world and on our submarines - from what I have read.
When I think of nuclear power, I am aware of the corruption in our government and in business and the alliance between the regulatory agencies and big business. A lot of businesses, and I’m painting with a broad brush, haven’t shown themselves to be honorable in the last couple of decades. Our regulatory agencies haven’t had a stellar record either. The ‘closeness’ of the agencies and big business makes me afraid shortcuts could be taken, dangers overlooked, etc.
If I trusted government and if I trusted big business, I might have a very different view on it.
All you have to do to see proof of the fallacy of global warming - or man’s role in it - is to take a course in geology, assuming you don’t get an instructor who’s a typical dimlib.
“Rather, the threat comes with a new name but similar goal: government restrictions on freedom.”
Exactly! All legislation is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to increase the power of the government and thereby increase the power of the politicians.
The so-called “cap and trade” is a blatant attempt by the Congress to create a new scarce commodity (carbon credits) which they control, sell, and allocate to their favored factions. The monies they collect are then also spread around to their favored factions so as to keep them in office.
Government regulation is exactly equal to government corruption. The less regulation, the less corruption and opportunity for corruption.
ScienceDada:
You haven’t read much of the postings here, or you’d know that ladytexan is a one-trick pony. Any issue or article brings a rant about immigration from her.
BTW, your handle is something of an oxymoron: Dada (Dadaism) is anti-rational, while science is totally rational.
Regarding Yucca Mountain and the disposal of radioactive waste: it is totally irrational to set a requirement there be no radiation leakage for 1 million years.
Homo Sapiens has only been around 200,000 years or so, and lived as hunter-gatherers until about 10,000 years ago. The pace of technological development has increased incredibly in the last 200 years.
Our descendants will figure out some good usage for our radioactive waste in the next couple hundred years and will be cursing us for making it so hard for them to recover the stuff from the vitrified cylinders that will be entombed in Yucca Mountain.
Oh, John!!!
This country is being ‘deconstructed’, piece by piece, with the idea of our just being part of a union - ultimately ‘the really big one’.
There are many things being used to do that, our energy problem is one of them, our education system, the oursourcing of jobs, the many, many regulations on everything we do - importation of legal foreign workers, and illegal immigration.
Tying immigration into the problems we are having is one thing we all need to open our eyes and see. Those who want to offer platitudes such as ‘we are a nation of immigrants’ (means nothing, but sounds good) are attempting to divert attention from what is being done through this invasion - and that is what it is.
The one truck ponies are those who are determined to support this because they benefitting from it.
It is only one of the dangers - and I comment on any I know.
Sorry John, good try.
There is nothing political about it. It is science and it is fact - the world temperatures are getting hotter, and the storm activity associated with it is evident. Politicians did not fabricat the FACT that for the past 20 years, each year’s average temperature has increased. That is a fact. Whether or not we helped cause it with human activity,or whether or not a change in human activity can affect it are both left to be seen. Global warming is real…of course that doen’t negate the fact that some politicians will try to use a potential natural disaster to their own personal advantage.
Melodie,
While the surface of the Earth is measurably warming, the question of *why* is not addressed by science, but by speculation. If it is natural, then there is little-to-nothing we can do by changing our actions and policies; if it is anthropogenic, then humans would arguably have a practical and moral obligation to change our policies to correct it for future generations.
The left tends to dogmatically state that it is anthropogenic, and try to force the rest of society politically into compliance. It is entirely political.
I have never met an individual who is informed that denies the earth is warming; that would be ludicrous. But just as “stem cell research” is a fuzzy term (as adult stem cell research has very different moral implications than does embryonic stem cell research), so is “global warming.”
Melodie
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts (or FACTS, as the case may be). Somebody famous said that, but I don’t recall at the mome.
The earth has warmed and cooled since it has existed…and well before mankind was there to manipulate it, not to suggest that mankind has this ability.
I suspect that a volcano would cancel out trillions of spending to fight a natural phenomenon.
Then again, maybe mankind is responsible for volcanoes. This is no more ridiculous than the global warming hoax.
Note that there is global warming on Mars, too. Just how did WE cause that? Or perhaps the sun and varying solar activity has something to do with it.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the ice age predicted in the 70s. Seems like it’s taking forever!
;>)
Melodie, where did you hear global temperatures are going up? There is no such thing as global temperature. The world is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, so there is no single global temperature that can be forecast. What we measure is through local thermodynamic equilibrium. It has no global meaning, and some statistic or number does not establish whether the world is warmer or cooler than it was 10, 100, 1000 or one million years ago. How can science predict such a thing.
What are we going to do with the liberal media? Information such as this article is not covered nor heard except by a few. This reminds me of the propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation perpetrated by the USSR during the Cold war. If all the Amnerican public hears is the leftist mantra of GLOBAL WARMING and how we’re in dire danger, who will tell them different? Who speaks for us heretics on the right who believe this is all bunk? It is scarey where we’re headed, real scarey…God help us.
The question should be ‘what are we going to do about the media?’
We loose our way when we deem the media as liberal. It isn’t. It is corporate. It will follow the corporate line everytime.
How can we call it liberal when they were supporting this President and everything he has chosen to do? They have either reamined silent when they shouldn’t or actively spewed propaganda for this adminsitration? This President isn’t conservative, but I’m assuming anyone who calls the media ‘liberal’, thinks he is.
I don’t know all the brother/sister corporations in the conglomerate that owns various news outlet, but they are diverse. There is no way they are going to tout global warming unless it somehow helps big business. They just aren’t.
So, with that thought in mind, why would they continue to support the theory and at the same time tell you it will destroy business? Keep in mind they ARE business?
We do have pollution problems in this country. We have a fresh water problem - I know those getting flooded right now don’t think so. There is a huge portion of this country that is already having or will have fresh water problems.
Many of our lakes and rivers are diminishing and are polluted to the point of not being usable.
Let’s face it, our air is not clean. We are not dropping like flies but do we wait until that happens?
So, along comes corporations and they don’t want the finger pointed at them. They do not want to be held responsible for the problems they are creating. They can come up with this ethereal, debatable, sometime in the future, idea of global warming. They can focus the discussion on that for the next 20 years, and no one is thinking about the real problems that will begin to really bite us in the next ten years.
Also, any solutions will give more and more power to our government - owned and operated by corporations.
Once again remember, the media is corporate. They aren’t going to say or do anything that will cause them any harm.
ladytexan,
I would say the media is biased by a liberal worldview. That does not make them Democrats, nor does it make President Bush a conservative. I would consider him to the right of center, but definitely a moderate (just as Gore was slightly left of center). But that is a global approximation for a complex viewpoint.
I think I can represent most Americans by saying that while politicians may be considered liberal or conservative, these really apply to multiple levels of society:
* Strong central vs. strong state/local government
* Strong corporations vs. strong “workers” (be that unions or small businesses)
* Strong families vs. alternative lifestyles
* Human rights vs. humans as slaves/commodities
On these issues, I would be where most Americans are: strong local/state government, less power to corporations, strong families, human rights. For example:
* I abhor strong corporations (ex. Bush letting the Microsoft monopoly continue) but see that strong unions are almost just as bad;
* I abhor strong central government (heavy federal taxation, welfare state)
* I support strong families—I recognize that homosexual “marriages,” living out of wedlock, no-fault divorce, and other similar phenomena harm children and break down the fundamental unit of society, which are the root of virtually all of our problems in America today. Other people will live the lifestyles that they choose (and they will deal with the consequences as well), but I should not not be forced to accept them as “normal,” fund them, have my children indoctrinated in their ways, nor have my own marriage cheapened as a result of their agendas. Stable and healthy marriages between one man and one woman for life are the best hope for society.
* I support human rights—people should not be slaves to the government, corporations, or other people. Abortion deprives the most innocent and defenseless people of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (those rights which we Americans hold as self-evident) and is murder, so should not be legal under any circumstances where another life is not at stake, nor should they be harvested as a commodity to have their parts sold for Frankenstein-type experiments.
Does the media support these stands? Almost invariably, the media as a whole is biased toward everything that I am against. Incidentally, so is the Democratic party. Sadly, on many of these issues, the Republicans as dominated by neocons are moving away from many of these stands as well.
Does that mean the media is “liberal” or “conservative?” While most Americans would call it liberal, perhaps it is not. But whatever they are, I (and most Americans, who are not in urban populations) probably take the opposite position, just as I would have taken toward the Nazis or Bolsheviks.
ScienceDada - I am in agreement with you 100% - except that the media is liberal.
The media is corporate. Even the local, small town newspapers are corporate owned and corporate run.
Example: There was a small town newspaper, 4th generation Texas family business. It simply reported local news, no agenda, no bias, just served the community with local happenings
A corporate newspaper moved into town, began giving free ads, free classified, throwing the paper free to everyone. The owners saw the writing on the wall, and sold while the price was good.
In this same area is a very large employer of illegal aliens. This has had a detrimental effect on the community. There is hard feelings, and a realization of what is happening.
This paper has features that highlight people, asking questions, or featured recipes, etc., each week. I was there two weeks and 60% of the people in the question feature were illegals and both weeks the person whose favorite recipe was featured was an illegal. They are quite a few there, but they do not represent that percentage of the population.
To some that might seem liberal, I mean equality and all that, but it was far from it. It was simply to try to form public opinion in favor of that illegal employer - a very ‘conservative’, right wing, Republican.
Yes, the media does support things like abortion, same sex marriage, stem cell research and that sounds so liberal.
These things do weaken us, but that is so the government can control and corporations can prosper.
It isn’t liberal - it’s corporate - the government is controlled by corporations.
June 5 at 8:36 am | #1 | Link
This is a wonderful article full of information but its so scarey. I am so grateful that we have web sites like /AIM. What is wrong with these congressmen?
Thanks
Carol M.