February 2008

A few thoughts on the heels of Sen. John McCain’s wise counsel on Fox News Sunday that “the worst thing we can do right now, Chris [Wallace], is — we’ve got some shaky economic times  — is to increase peoples’ taxes.”

Indeed.  But Congress’s newly most-prominent champion of what the Congressional Budget Office describes as “similar to those of a carbon tax [because] both would raise the cost of using carbon-based fossil fuels, lead to higher energy prices and impose costs on users and some suppliers of energy” might consider three headlines from just the past week:

n      “Industry shelving investments over EU emissions plan”

n      “Green laws and regulation risk energy crisis, say Europe’s power companies”

n      “RWE halts investments in German power plants due to rising emission costs”

Iowa's caucuses, a source of so much turbulence, might even have helped cause the recent demonstration by 10,000 Indonesians in Jakarta. Savor the multiplying irrationalities of the government-driven mania for ethanol and other biofuels, and energy policy generally.

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.

Talk about a clash of cherished green values.

In a case with statewide significance, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office cited a Sunnyvale couple under a little-known California law because redwood trees in their backyard cast a shadow over their neighbor's solar panels.

Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett own a Prius and consider themselves environmentalists. But they refuse to cut down any of the trees behind their house on Benton Street, saying they've done nothing wrong.

Utility and government officials say the region has to face the idea that its demand for electricity could overtake the supply. In a little more than three years, they say, lights could flicker off in rolling blackouts.

 To avert such shortages, electric companies have proposed a transmission line through the Loudoun countryside, a third nuclear reactor in Calvert County and other controversial projects. Even if the projects are built, they won't come online for years.

David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail. How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?

Every day, scientists hoping to see an increase in solar activity train their instruments at the sun as it crosses the sky. This is no idle academic pursuit: A lull in solar action could potentially drive the planet’s temperature down, or even prompt a mini Ice Age.