A preventive war worked out so well in Iraq that Washington last week launched another. The new preventive war — the government responding forcefully against a postulated future threat — has been declared on behalf of polar bears, the first species whose supposed jeopardy has been ascribed to global warming.
Prague- Czech President Vaclav Klaus will visit the United States next week and meet Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Edwin Feulner, head of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, in Washington. During his four-day visit, Klaus will promote his book Blue, Not Green Planet, campaigning against what he calls "climate alarmism." Klaus, who is sceptical of the global warming theory, has been engaged in the global discussion on the climate for a long time.
In an article by Thomas Friedman article in today’s New York Times, Mr Hot Flat and Crowded says:
“It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”
Actually, what baffles me is that the President has to go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months to beg the Saudi king for an oil price break when Congress could easily give the consumers one by lifting its restrictions on Americans exploiting their very own resources that currently lie out of bounds in ANWR, the Rockies and the Outer Continental Shelf, behind legislative lock and key with a regulatory sign on them saying "Beware of the leopard."
As for Gal Luft's laughably overblown comments about the Saudis buying up Apple, see my paper from a few months back:
“Non-Terrorist Use of Petrodollars. Overseas acquisitions from the Arab world in 2007 amounted to a mere $68 billion. Middle Eastern individuals and companies own a total of $8 billion of U.S. direct investment, less than that owned by tiny Belgium, at $10 billion. But even if the numbers were bigger, there is no fire in this alarm.
Foreign investment raises labor productivity, income, and employment. Workers are better off with more capital rather than with less, and are usually indifferent to the investor’s nationality. Middle Eastern investment increases capital in its recipient countries, which directly increases labor productivity and GDP. Because about two-thirds of GDP goes to labor as wages, salaries, and fringe benefits, rising output means higher wages or more employment. In essence, the Arabs are using our petrodollars for our benefit as much as theirs. Foreigners, never mind Arabs, continue to own a negligible amount of American capital, so fears of an “Arab takeover” are overblown.”
Let's face it, given the amount of oil wealth sitting in Alberta, we should be worried about Canada buying us up!
Shock and awe — we are living it! We stand, mouth agape, staring at the pump — at $4 gallons and fast-emptying pocketbooks. Even worse, with crude oil already costing more than $120 a barrel, many predict this wave has yet to crest.
Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place. Politicians and much of the public lose sight of the unavoidable fact that for every created benefit, there's also a created cost or, as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman said, "There's no free lunch."
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who says that global warming "demands aggressive action," last week signed an agreement with the United Kingdom "to share experiences and strategies" in the fight against rising temperatures. Given the diffuse language of the agreement, it would be easy to dismiss Doyle's climate diplomacy as a stunt, but there is in fact a great deal that Wisconsin can learn from Britain.
An effort by Senate Democrats to let California regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles is drawing opposition from one of the party's traditional allies, the United Auto Workers, ahead of a pivotal vote Wednesday.
The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams – in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.
The environmental movement has never been short on noble goals. Preserving wild spaces, cleaning up the oceans, protecting watersheds, neutralizing acid rain, saving endangered species — all laudable. But today, one ecological problem outweighs all others: global warming. Restoring the Everglades, protecting the Headwaters redwoods, or saving the Illinois mud turtle won't matter if climate change plunges the planet into chaos. It's high time for greens to unite around the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
E&E News has an advance copy of Senate EPW Committee Chair Barbara Boxer’s summary of the newly revamped Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, and it is much, much worse than I had thought it would be.
Titles II-IV (“Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Reducing Emissions through Offsets and International Allowances; Establishing a Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Trading Market) describe how a “cap and trade” program will take $5.6 trillion from American energy consumers through 2050.
Titles V-XI (Federal Program to Prevent Economic Hardship; Partnerships with States, Localities and Indian Tribes; recognizing Early Action by Companies; Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Low Carbon Electricity and Advanced Research; Future of Coal; Future of Transportation) apportion the $5.6 trillion to every conceivable special interest.
I had thought at least she would leave out those twin evils of modern society, oil and coal, but they are in fact well positioned at the trough ($34 billion and $16 billion, respectively, in adjustment payoffs). And it never occurred to me that the truckers would get 4 billion, or that natural gas processors would get $20 billion. This later giveaway is especially egregious because natural gas is a huge winner under any cap and trade, as coal—its main competitor for electricity generation—is priced out of the market.
In reworking the Congress’s leading climate bill, Senator Boxer’s staff took the spineless Farm Bill approach: print enough money to placate every objection. Woe to us all for having such crummy leaders.
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