Exxon used to encourage motorists to ''put a tiger in your tank.'' Well, a different animal may begin influencing traffic soon. Polar bears could force drivers to shell out even more money for gasoline.
Why? Because environmental groups are pushing to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and the Bush administration is considering their demands.
Which 88 per cent of the economy would my reader most like to kiss goodbye?
I ask this question only as a practical matter, after reading the summary of a Japanese study on the economic implications of the "global warming" fraud.
Where: St. John's University, MN; Pellegrene Auditorium
What: The Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement is sponsoring a debate on environmental policy. The central debate resolution is “Be it resolved that the free-market is best suited to protect the environment”.
Al Gore had to take the two biggest spin words of 2007 and combine them into a really scary scenario at a UN meeting with institutional investors. He warned the executives that they ought to clean their portfolios of carbon-intensive industries, as those inevitably will lead to huge losses.
I can't help but feel that there is some magic in his words, as Al Gore himself has worked hard to make it harder to run and operate carbon-intensive portfolios. Maybe I can get paid $100,000 per speech to explain the investment consequences of the policies I have promoted, that would be sweet!
He is "misunderestimating" one thing though, human ingenuity and adaptability. As energy rationing makes it harder to run carbon-intensive industries, those companies will find other energy sources and transform their companies. The other ones will die at the hands of capitalisms creative destruction. That is an investment tip from me, and its totally free!
Under the Clean Air Act, should CO2 be deemed "regulated" under the act–even if the regulation is for vehicles or fuels and is specifically not directed at stationary sources–no new or existing "major" stationary source of CO2 can be built or modified, if the modification increases net emissions, without first obtaining a PSD permit.
A lawmaker from the Silicon Valley wants to require "climate change" to be taught as "science" in all California public schools. Warmers can't convince the adults, but they can brainwash the children.
Andy Revkin has an interesting post up about per capita emissions in various countries around the world. What countries have a per capita emissions level consistent with an 80 percent reduction from the world's current total emissions?
The answer, as can be seen above in an image that I use in lectures (data from US EIA), is Haiti and Somalia. If everyone in the world lived as they do in these two countries, we'd have the emissions challenge licked.
What about the eco-sensitive UK? Sorry, if everyone lived as they do in the UK global carbon emissions would be more than twice the current world total. What about everyone lived as they do in eco-friendly Sweden? Sorry, emissions would be about one and a half times the current world total. United States? Don't even ask. China? just slightly below the current world total (and growing fast).
Bottom line? No country, save Haiti and Somalia, is currently producing emissions at a level even remotely consistent with levels consistent with an 80% reduction in the world's totals. Hence, all of the finger pointing and debates in political negotiations are based on relative hypocrisy ("We're doing relatively less bad that you are!") or faith-based assumptions in the efficacy of future policies ("Our targets are more aggressive than yours!").
There remains huge hurdles to achieving emissions reductions of the sort called for in current political debate. Until we see evidence of it actually occurring, somewhere, we should be very cautious about picking what policies will ultimately achieve results. Instead, we should try a diversity of approaches and see what works.
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