Many states have adopted Climate Action Plans (CAPs) that limit greenhouse gases by 2020, and nearly identical plans are advancing rapidly toward approval in other states.
But according to a peer-reviewed study of the Maryland CAP by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Massachusetts – an economics think tank – these cookie-cutter proposals are “seriously flawed” for multiple reasons. If implemented, the plans could take other states down the same road California is already traveling. Anti-business policies that were often justified mainly on environmental grounds, have cost Californians dearly. Millions of jobs fled to lower tax neighbors like Nevada and Arizona, the state’s 8.4 percent unemployment rate rivals Michigan’s, and political gridlock over a $40 billion budget deficit could leave California bankrupt early in 2009.
It will be interesting to see how people respond to the Times of London column by Christopher Booker, who writes:
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
The practical effect, for Booker, is something Americans may need to take more seriously:
As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” – within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.
For months (if not years), we’ve been told by scientist/activists, non-profits needing sympathy donations, and Al Gore that we must change our ways immediately if we are to avert an apocalyptic climate change scenario. How did that work for the forces of panic? Not well. A massive economic downturn has changed peoples’ priority sets and put global warming on the back burner.
You can almost imagine the strategy meetings taking place right now. What do we do? People aren’t in any mood to throw their economic growth away to serve our eco-nightmares? Well, let’s tell them it’s not so tough after all!
And here you go. From Reuters, recognized as the clear leader in media perpetrators of climate change panic (the New York Times is a close second):
You see, Scrooge, there is still time to save Christmas … and at half the cost!
Had this not been so predictable it might seem more persuasive. Then again, had the enviros not changed their position their big-government solutions would have been dead in the water.
We came across this thought from the Union of Very-Hyper-Concerned Scientists — an activist group that has been forewarning of the end of the world for several decades. Apparently their doctorates were not earned in Economics, Political Science, or even in How To Guess Right By Plain Old Dumb Luck. Speaking of the super splendiferous energy team to be appointed by the incoming administration, the doctors-cum-activists told Reuters:
“If this team can’t advance strong national policy on global warming, then no one can,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to Obama’s picks for the top energy and environment jobs in his administration, which takes office on Jan. 20.
Hmm. So many thoughts.
First, doesn’t that create something of an incentive for people trying to block terrible energy and environmental policy? (Ha ha, we’ve done it!)
Then again, we suppose “strong national policy” is in the eye of the beholder. A strong policy could, oh say, take into account the crippling economic effects of creating a cap-and-trade slush fund. Or it could take a “strong” stand and say the climate may be changing but there are honest people who don’t think 1) it’s coming from man’s activities or 2) won’t be worth the crippling economic costs to address.
Will they succeed in forcing Kris Kringle to go green?
WSJ’s blog: “A different question altogether is whether Team Obama’s energy and climate posse will be enough to overcome all the hurdles facing a wholescale reinvention of the energy mix of a coal-dependent nation that’s now smack in the middle of a recession.”
CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.
“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”
