Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/07/2008 3:36:56 AM PST by Clive
Whether the next American president is black or white, the leading contenders have already declared themselves "green."
John McCain on the Republican side and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democrats, all promise to take dramatic action against man-made global warming if they win.
The problem is they all cloak this pledge in the same false, comforting, political rhetoric.
That is, that moving away from a fossil fuel based economy will be relatively painless once the "know how" of big business is applied to the task under their leadership.
We hear similar simplistic rhetoric in Canada from Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, who has declared we'll make megatonnes of money by cutting megatonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The irony is that people truly committed to dramatically cutting GHG emissions are often more honest about its negative implications for economic growth.
That's why many environmentalists advocate redefining what "prosperity" means.
Indeed, they contend Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) is a poor tool for measuring our economic success, because it measures the wrong things.
For example, they argue, the cost of cleaning up environmental disasters caused by global warming, such as rebuilding New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, contributes to GDP growth in the U.S., thus interpreting it as a positive event economically, when it should be viewed negatively.
NEW ORLEANS
Let's leave aside that the destruction of New Orleans was not caused by global warming, but by the stupidity of building a major coastal city on land below sea level, with inadequate levees, in a hurricane alley.
The larger point made by environmentalists is true. Fighting global warming will mean a foreseeable future not of economic growth, but of contraction, at least as we define those terms today.
While some environmentalists dream about replacing income taxes with carbon taxes so that the total burden on citizens will be revenue neutral, that's not what's happening.
Governments, often in cahoots with big business, are introducing add-on carbon taxes (it's already started in Quebec). Inevitably, consumers will pay much more and thus consume much less of everything sensitive to the cost of fossil fuels. This means almost everything.
British environmental journalist George Monbiot is one of the few who has proposed a detailed plan to cut GHG emissions so that, at least according to the current science, it will actually have a chance of significantly reducing global warming.
That would mean a 90% reduction of global emissions below 1990 levels by 2030, making Kyoto's target of an average 5% cut for developed nations between now and 2012 pale in comparison.
While arguing this transition must be made as painlessly as possible in his book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, Monbiot accurately observes that fighting climate change is actually a campaign for "austerity."
HOW TO CUT GHGS
This should come as no surprise. Countries that have most dramatically cut their GHG emissions didn't do it because of policies they pursued after ratifying Kyoto.
They did it through economic collapse and recession -- Russia and the former East Germany being the most dramatic examples following the implosion of the Soviet Union.
Don't look to McCain, Clinton or Obama to mention this on the campaign trail.
Then again, they might just be talking tough about cutting emissions while planning to do nothing if they win. In other words, the Chretien strategy.
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The market for fossil fuels is by no means as in-elastic as is commonly thought, but even so, economists and scientists both know that reducing consumption and emissions to the levels advocated by the envirofascists is simply impossible to do.
It’s not impossible to reduce carbon emission levels as the enviro whackos wish. There would be a mass die-off of human beings to accomplish this, but it’s not impossible.
I wonder what these socialists/Marxists will do when they find that we are in a global cooling stage? There may be global warming, but it is not man-made. As with global cooling, global warming on Earth, Mars, Venus, and the other planets is primarily caused by the Sun.
I wonder how they plan to pay for a huge health care entitlement when everyone is broke.
I was kinda assuming that in order to achieve the reductions we would need people to actually do the reducing...
Oh that’s easy. Once we are in a carbon-neutral state and in absolute harmony with “Gaia”, our ying will equal our yang, our ping will equate to our pong, and all will be peace and love. Disease and illness and suffering and even death will disappear (apart from for the products of unwanted surplus births - but that’s their fault for disturbing the balance with the earth-goddess) and hence there will be no health care needed, certainly not invasive, male-dominant, non-natural western type health care anyway. Thus no bills!
Are you stupid or something, not figuring that out?
With manmade climate change they are either the dupers, the duped or the countless people going after the billions of federal of dollars.
There has always been climate change. All the economically strangling implications will be put in place and when there is no global catastraphe the cry will go up, “We did it! We saved the planet”.
It’ll be just like the rooster crowing then thinking he caused the sun to rise.
Your analysis is clear and concise, but incomplete.
AFTER there is no global catstrophe and most of the duped are patting themselves on the back, the dupers and the tax dollar grabbers will immediately refocus on another man made “crisis”, the nature of which is at present uncertain, in order to justify their existence and keep the money flowing. Remember, before global warming there was the “hole in the ozone layer”. Before that was “acid rain”. Before that was “oil running out”, and so on. I think we should run a “book” on what the next one will be.
Leading contenders are:
Antibiotic resistant germs
Asteroid impacting on the Earth
Continental drift
Phosphorous/copper/iron/some other mineral shortage
Denuding agricultural land through over farming
The martians are landing
Volcanoes
NB Global Cooling has been declared a non-starter on the grounds of too obviously revealing global warming is a con
Your analysis is clear and concise, but incomplete.
AFTER there is no global catstrophe and most of the duped are patting themselves on the back, the dupers and the tax dollar grabbers will immediately refocus on another man made “crisis”, the nature of which is at present uncertain, in order to justify their existence and keep the money flowing. Remember, before global warming there was the “hole in the ozone layer”. Before that was “acid rain”. Before that was “oil running out”, and so on. I think we should run a “book” on what the next one will be.
Leading contenders are:
Antibiotic resistant germs
Asteroid impacting on the Earth
Continental drift
Phosphorous/copper/iron/some other mineral shortage
Denuding agricultural land through over farming
The martians are landing
Volcanoes
NB Global Cooling has been declared a non-starter on the grounds of too obviously revealing global warming is a con
While the “green” agenda would have the rest of us live in cracker box “energy efficient” homes, give up our cars and air conditioning and put the government in charge of our thermostats, Al Gore, RFK, Jr. and the Hollywood lefties will still be living in mansions, riding in limos and flying in private jets to wherever they please. The whole global warming business is steeped in hypocrisy.
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