This simpleton is literally saying that Global Warming will cause major wars. By this logic, summertime causes war. It presupposes that people are unable to think clearly when the temperature goes up from 80 to 82 degrees and, in their fevered states, they will start wars.
2009
In Sunday’s Washington Post, James R Lee suggests that rising temperatures will lead to a U.S.-Canada conflict over newly exploitable natural resources. That’s a preposterous prediction if there ever was one.
Rather than fanciful warming scenarios, international security experts like Mr. Lee should concern themselves with the harmful effects of global warming policies.
Expensive energy policies to fight global warming could cost trillions more than the cost of rising temperatures. That would dramatically inhibit global economic growth (see part 2 of Global Warming 101, "The Costs"). Of course, poverty and political instability go hand in hand.
To prevent carbon “leakage” (ie, the outsourcing of energy intensive industry to countries that don’t have expensive carbon rationing policies), many policy makers advocate trade restrictions. But history shows that trade wars are prone to becoming real wars.
In fact, a global warming policy has already led to instability in the developing world. Only a couple years ago, environmentalists promoted ethanol as a “green fuel.” They were wrong. It turns out that ethanol production leads to land use changes that release more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than is saved by ethanol use.
Worse, ethanol is made from food—corn and soy in the U.S., palm oil and wheat in the European Union. In 2008, ethanol production policies in the developed world contributed to steep inflation in the price of food, which caused urban unrest in developing countries dependent on the international grain market.
Lee needs to take a step back and ask himself what’s worse, the warming or the policy?
As temperatures dropped below zero across much of Europe, the Russian prime minister instructed the head of Gazprom: "Cut it – starting today."
How has the scam that humans are causing global warming worked so effectively? One answer is exploitation of fear, the technique of which was accurately explained in the late Michael Crichton’s book “State of Fear.
One of the more sober arguments in favor of radical action to combat perceived climate change is that doing nothing would be economically calamitous. That was certainly the conclusion of the controversial Stern Report in the United Kingdom. Economist Nicholas Stern concluded that we should spend 1 percent of the global economy every year to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Now even if you take Stern's numbers as correct—and many think he wildly overestimates the economic risks of doing nothing—he still advocates spending $700 billion a year on the supposed problem. Failure to do so could risk global GDP being up to twenty percent lower than it would be otherwise.
How does $8-a-gallon gas sound? Few Americans would want to see that happen. Unfortunately, President-elect Barack Obama's choices for the governments two highest energy posts have expressed a surprising level of comfort with sky-high gas prices.
On yesterday’s Chris Matthews Show, Joe Klein of Time reported that there is a foreign policy angle to President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Dr. Steven Chu as the Department of Energy chief. Klein claimed that Chu, a Nobel Prize winner, is revered in China, and his superstar status could help in climate change negotiations with the Chinese.
Obama plans climate change diplomacy is still unclear. He has made high profile yet vague commitments to engage the international community, most prominently at an international climate summit hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was Obama’s emissary to the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change at Poznan, Poland this past December.
Of course, Obama is constrained by the Senate, which must approve any international treaty. Even in its current composition, it is unlikely that the Senate would go along with any treaty that did not include commensurate sacrifice from China (reducing emissions also reduces economic growth, which is why no one has yet to do it). To date, Chinese leaders have asserted their country’s “right to develop” using inexpensive, hydrocarbon energy.
Klein suggested that Obama picked Dr. Chu because he could break this impasse, get the Chinese to play ball, and thereby win Senate approval for an international climate change treaty.
It will be interesting to see what will be Dr. Chu's role at Copenhagen.
When major green groups charted "greenhouse gas" emissions for 1991 (they sent me a lovely colorful graph, showing America as the "worst offender," of course) they listed the Philippines as a quite small producer, way "down the curve." This is because the Philippines are a "good" country, you understand, where people "know their place" and have properly resigned themselves to living in poverty, mostly doing without private motorcars or air conditioners, fertilizing their rice fields with human feces, etc.
IN ONE OF HIS FIRST public policy statements as America’s president-elect, Barack Obama focused on climate change, and clearly stated both his priorities and the facts on which these priorities rest. Unfortunately, both are weak, or even wrong.
CEI Adjunct Scholar Steven Milloy just sent around an email reporting that Carol Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s new energy czar, is a member of the Socialist International, perhaps the world’s preeminent socialist organization.
Browner is on the SI’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. See for yourself.
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