Features

Most global warming alarmists focus on changes  supposedly occurring to the world we live in, but GW is also having an effect on another world—the world inside our heads. For instance, a recent study by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) showed that 80 percent of Sweden’s young people (ages 15-25) worry about how climate change will affect their future. Moreover, half of the respondents think about climate change once a week or more often, and no less than 25 percent experience stomach pains or unhappiness when they do so.

This is actually not a new phenomenon. In the 1990s, something known as “eco-anxiety” came into existence. It involved feelings of helplessness, despair or of not being able to do enough about climate change. Margaret Anderson, who holds a master’s degree in eco-psychology, calls it “that underlying feeling of fear and anger about the state of the Earth”. One person explained her melancholic feelings this way:

“The sight of an idling car, heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from the tailpipe, would send me into an hours-long panic, complete with shaking, the sweats, and staring off into space while others conversed around me.”

Another anxious reporter explained it as follows:

“Whatever steps I take to counter global warming, however well-intentioned my brief bursts of zeal, they invariably end up feeling like too little, too late. The mismatch between the extremely dangerous state of the earth and my own feeble endeavuors seems mockingly large.”

While eco-anxiety might be an unknown concept for most, that hasn’t stopped it from becoming quite a lucrative business for some. One website has compiled a database of people who identify themselves as providing therapeutic or educational services related to ecopsychology. In the U.S. alone, there are over one hundred people listed–charging up to $250 per hour–ranging from ecotherapists and ecologists to shamans.

Climate change/eco-anxiety has an eerie resemblance to another condition that popped up back in 2009: “Avatar blues”. The movie Avatar, which basically showed dirty mankind exploiting beautiful Na’vi people on the beautiful planet Pandora, caused people to experience depression–and in some instances—contemplating suicide. As one viewer said to CNN back in 2010:

“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning … It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”

The common denominator between eco-anxiety and Avatar blues seems to be the notion that earth is a unclean place, soon-to-be inhospitable to polar bears and on the brink of overall destruction. On its face this is similar to the “nuclear anxiety” that was widespread in the later half of the 20th century; the difference, however, is that fear of nuclear war was rather well-founded, while the alleged mega-catastrophes of GW have yet to appear.

Fortunately, there are ways of overcoming eco-anxiety, such as realizing that earth isn’t such a dull place. Our friends the ecotherapists have constructed more ingenious methods, such as advice on becoming more in tune with nature by always carrying around a small rock or twig. According to Carolyn Baker, a psychotherapist who offers eco-anxiety coaching, it helps to realize that “it’s OK to give yourselves a break for a few weeks or months,” and “focus on positive things, go see a comedy, [or] read a trashy novel”. Thanks, Carolyn. [click to continue…]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seldom lets Senators vote on amendments to bills, but last week he agreed to a “vote-a-rama” on the budget bill.  Hundreds of amendments on all sorts of issues were offered and many of them are being voted on.  Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) offered an amendment (#261) to put the Senate on record against any tax or fees on carbon dioxide emissions.  The Senate voted on this anti-carbon tax amendment on Friday, 22nd March.  Fifty-three Senators voted in favor, with 46 opposed. Sixty votes were required for passage under Senate rules.

All the no votes were from Democratic members.  The 45 Republican Senators were joined by eight Democrats in voting for Blunt’s amendment.  The Democrats were: Max Baucus of Montana, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

The newspaper industry has named this week Sunshine Week to focus attention on the importance of open government and public access to information.  The Obama Administration has gotten into the spirit of Sunshine Week with daily posts on the White House blog and the Department of Justice blog, which talk about the importance of transparency and trumpet the Administration’s achievements.  President Obama after all promised in the 2008 presidential campaign that his administration would be the most transparent in history.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.  For example, CEI’s Chris Horner has filed multiple ongoing lawsuits to try to force the Administration to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests.  The Republican minority staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have been having fun with daily posts that chronicle example after example of Obama Administration stonewalling and failures to comply with federal open government laws.

But it’s no longer just a partisan complaint.  Glenn Greenwald published a column in London’s Guardian this week headlined, “Obama’s secrecy fixation causing Sunshine Week implosion.”  The sub-headline reads, “Even the most loyal establishment Democrats are now harshly denouncing the president for his war on transparency.”

With the Maryland’s Senate passing the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013, it looks as if the U.S. is likely to build its first off-shore wind farm east of the Ocean City. The initiative has been widely endorsed by environmentalist groups, such as the Coalition for Wind Works for Maryland. As the coalition states on its website:

“Bringing offshore wind power to Maryland will effectively stabilize electricity rates, create jobs, reduce pollution, and provide us with a local source of clean, renewable energy.”

According to current plans, any offshore windfarm built pursuant to the legislation would be approximately 10 nautical miles (11.5 miles) from the Atlantic coast and produce 200 megawatts – supposedly providing about 1 percent of the state’s electric needs.

As we’ve frequently pointed out, wind power plants are inefficient, costly and in need of heavy subsidization. But the cost may not only be measured in dollars–reports show that the turbines are in fact quite dangerous as well. For instance, two windmill accidents have been reported in Sweden in the few weeks alone.  In February, a blade fell down while a turbine was being repaired, crushing a parked car. This past Sunday, a windmill spun out of control after a safety mechanism failed, forcing the nearby residents to evacuate for 24 hours until two blades finally came off in the strong winds.

And not every accident leaves people unscathed. Last December, a German crane operator was killed when a blade fell on his cab during the installation of a windmill. A survey performed by RenewableUK, a wind power trade association, estimated that 1,500 accidents had occurred between 2006 and 2011 in the UK alone, including 300 injuries and 4 deaths. Focusing on wind farms, the Health and Safety Executive’s figures showed three fatal accidents between 2007 and 2010 and a total of 53 major or dangerous incidents during the same time frame.

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There’s an ongoing quest to find signs of global warming in every aspect of everyday life. Over the last few years a rather unique kind of local indicator for GW has emerged, namely the predicted peak cherry blossom bloom of Washington DC’s Tidal Basin.

The peak cherry blossom bloom period has been used frequently as a GW indicator for the last three years. In line with GW claims, the predictions for peak blooms were moved ahead in both 2010 and 2011; in 2010, the revised predicted peak dates were April 1 to April 4; in 2011, they were even earlier– March 29 to April 3.  In 2012, the predictions of a peak between March 20 and March 23 were regarded as a first-class sign of GW, with DC’s cherry blossoms being called a “Global Warming Canary” by the Huffington Post. It seemed that the hugely popular cherry blossom festival was in danger of becoming a winter, rather than a spring, event.  As stated in a 2012 Washington Post article “Could cherry blossoms one day be blooming in winter?” there is a future possibility of “a blooming period in February instead of March, and a peak bloom in early March, instead of early April”.

So what are the predictions for this year’s cherry blossom? The National Park Service has announced that the peak bloom for Washington’s Global Warming Canary will be March 26 to March 30 — about one week later than last year. Although the actual bloom dates will be determined by the weather in the coming weeks, this year’s prediction of a later peak period does not fit into the alarming predictions of earlier years, or the notion that the shift towards earlier dates will continue.

Given the decades-long nature of climate trends, later peak blooms in a single year don’t prove anything either way about GW.  But that was just as true of the 2010 to 2012 cherry blossom seasons, and yet those dates triggered quite a bit of GW alarmist commentary.  This year’s prediction hasn’t.  Press coverage of GW “evidence” apparently omits incidents that run counter to alarmism.  Perhaps that’s not a surprise, but it’s not a healthy sign for public understanding.

And no matter when the blossoms appear this year, let’s all enjoy them—even the GW alarmists among us.

It was a busy week for promoting and opposing a carbon tax.  Two studies on the economic effects of a carbon tax that draw opposite conclusions were released by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Brookings Institution.  Kevin Hassett, Ph.D., director of economic policy studies at the “pro-business” American Enterprise Institute, continued his advocacy of a carbon tax at a Resources for the Future forum.  And most interestingly, former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, said at a conference that, “The strongest advocate on our task force for a carbon tax was ExxonMobil.  I had previously thought that was a public relations thing — I didn’t think they were quite interested in it.”

The National Association of Manufacturers released a study by NERA Consulting on the Economic Outcomes of a Carbon Tax. The NAM study concludes that a tax starting at $20 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted and increasing by 4 percent per year would have a range of negative effects that would ripple through the economy.  In particular: “The negative impact of a carbon tax on total manufacturing output would be significant, with output from energy-intensive manufacturing sectors dropping as much as 15 percent and output from non-energy-intensive manufacturing sectors dropping as much as 7.7 percent.”

The NAM study also argues that: “A carbon tax would have a net negative effect on consumption, investment and jobs, resulting in lower federal revenues from taxes on capital and labor. Factoring in lost revenue from reduced economic activity, the net revenue from a carbon tax available for deficit/debt reduction and lower tax rates is relatively small.”

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