The environmentalist Left is ecstatic that President Obama is finally doing something about global warming.
What I found rather interesting is the reaction from some supporters of Obama's plan. The New Jersey Star-Ledger shouted that NJ should applaud Obama crackdown on power plants.
Yes, crackdown; on a major source of our vital electricity supply! The editors open with:
President Obama’s announcement yesterday of new carbon rules to fight global warming is the most important thing he’s done in office, along with health care reform.
No question that, from a statist's perspective, this is true. The editors continue:
Think about it: If we make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels, companies will invest more in alternatives such as natural gas, solar and wind power.
Do you notice something odd about this list of power sources? More on that below. In conclusion, the editors write:
None of this is to say, of course, that the United States can solve the global greenhouse gas problem by itself. After all, China emits more carbon pollution than we do. We’ve been on a downward curve with our emissions, while the Chinese are skyrocketing up. But the key impediment to getting other countries on board with carbon controls has been our own inaction. Why should they sacrifice when much richer countries of the West will not? Remember, while China is now the top emitter of carbon, most of the historic pollution in the air that’s fueling global warming was put there by the West. We have a responsibility to take the first steps — and Obama clearly hopes to use this initiative to prod the rest of the world to action.
Where are the usual grand pronouncements about the economic and jobs boom that will allegedly result from a government-imposed "green" economy? Apparently, even the Left-leaning Star-Ledger understands that no net good can come out of Obama's initiative. In the end, the coming altruistic American energy sacrifices are all about setting an example—and Western guilt.
I left these comments:
"Think about it: If we make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels, companies will invest more in alternatives such as natural gas, solar and wind power."
The absence of nuclear power—the ultimate "green" technology—on this list is the tip-off that demolishes the myth of the environmentalist Left's alleged concern for human well-being. (The plug for natural gas is phony window dressing, as witness the environmentalist crusades against nat-gas pipelines and hydraulic fracturing. And what does anyone think will happen to wind and solar, once America starts getting paved over with windmills and solar panels?)
Carbon dioxide is not a "pollutant" like mercury. It is a gas without which life as we know could not exist. All animal life emits carbon to survive, as their nature requires. Humans are no different. Since humans by their nature need to produce what they need through productive work, clean, reliable, affordable industrial-scale energy is vital. CO2 emissions, such as they are, are a natural by-product of man's life requirements. Fossil fuels, including plentiful coal, are vital and, contrary to environmentalist myth, have made our air and environment immensely cleaner, healthier, wealthier, and safer—unless you consider the smoky, smelly result of openly burning wood, coal, dung, and whale oil for heat, cooking, and illumination as superior to clean central heating, A/C, electric stoves, lighting, indoor plumbing, and water purification plants. Before widespread use of fossil fuels—and the 1.4 degrees of global warming—the environment was immensely dirtier, life expectancies were half, and climate related extreme-weather deaths, especially from droughts and floods, were 50 times more numerous. Things are environmentally much better today than 150 years ago.
There are pollutants that are demonstrably harmful to human life. Curbing harmful emissions as technology allows is a good thing. CO2 is not one of the pollutants. Forcibly curbing fossil fuel use, including oil and coal, will only make it harder for people to deal with the droughts, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, and other weather extremes that humans were once at the full mercy of. Environmentalists always ignore the life-giving benefits of fossil fuels, as they push their "green" myth of "renewable energy" (as if the immense infrastructure required to capture wind and solar energy does not have to be produced and installed through mining, manufacturing, and construction, and replaced [renewed] as it wears out!).
The final nail in the coffin of the myth of the environmentalist Left's alleged concern for human well-being is broadcast loud and clear at the bottom of this editorial: The sacrifices Americans are being forced to make won't even "solve the global greenhouse gas problem by itself," the editors acknowledge. Americans are to be punished for their prior "pollution"—i.e. prosperity—to set an example for developing countries, who will allegedly be stupid enough to follow our lead by crippling their own emerging prosperity!
The environmentalist Left's crusade against fossil fuels smells more like a world-scale egalitarian crusade against America than a desire for cleaner industrialization, and the labeling and control of CO2 as a "pollutant"—a gift to the Left from G.W. Bush—is their statist tool.
Perhaps America's free enterprise innovative and entrepreneurial might will bail us out of the statists' delusions of grandeur, yet again. Let's hope so, because a failure to do so—and given the increasingly onerous regulatory straitjacket and the history of the environmentalists ability to hamstring economic progress and violate individual rights—will be ugly, indeed.
Related Reading:
Climate Change Alarmists Ignore Life-Giving Fossil fuel Contributions
Perhaps America's free enterprise innovative and entrepreneurial might will bail us out of the statists' delusions of grandeur, yet again. Let's hope so, because a failure to do so—and given the increasingly onerous regulatory straitjacket and the history of the environmentalists ability to hamstring economic progress and violate individual rights—will be ugly, indeed.
Related Reading:
Climate Change Alarmists Ignore Life-Giving Fossil fuel Contributions
2 comments:
We need more than science, technology, entrepreneurs and the peep-holes of freedom that are left. Those are only passive reactions and, despite their benefits, actually reward the statists the way things are now. We need active measures to remove statists to the sewers and backwaters.
'The absence of nuclear power—the ultimate "green" technology—on this list is the tip-off that demolishes the myth of the environmentalist Left's alleged concern for human well-being.
Absolutely! This is exactly what clued me in so many years ago about the greens and why they were not concerned about human well-being. Personally, I've railed about oil and coal and gas before - because uranium is so much better, cheaper and safer. But there is something even better than uranium and but for the efforts of the environmentalists we would have it now. Thorium - it can power small engines and huge power plants - and is the future of mankind, if we are to have a future.
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