Mob-controlled construction companies in a certain state built deficient roads with substandard concrete sold by mob-controlled firms. The overweight trucks of those companies then broke up the poorly built roads, necessitating more construction. It was a businessman�s �dream.�
In the same way, a politician�s dream is a societal problem � real or imagined � on which no exertion or expenditure, however great, can ever produce improvement. Optimally (for politicians), the �solutions� spawn new problems requiring ever-greater expenditures. Politicians love this because it assures endless streams of money and ever-growing power over people.
Right now, the richest, smartest, most productive and prosperous nation that ever existed is letting itself be driven to economic ruin by the silliest quest in all of history: an attempt to change the climate � or, more accurately, stop the climate from changing. The Greeks called this �hubris.� It happens to a nation when its people think they can accomplish anything � or when they become too stupid to differentiate the possible from the impossible.
Green politics originated in the 1960s to stop air- and water-pollution. Decades of uncontrolled pollution had done many American waterways almost to death, and air quality was poor in many places. In industrial towns like Pittsburgh the smog was sometimes so thick that drivers had to keep their headlights on at midday.
Most of these dangers are now either gone or much abated because we passed laws that stopped destructive practices, mandated clean technology, and heightened public awareness on protecting the environment. The Greens helped us in these efforts. Their mission has been accomplished.
But political organizations do not cope well with success. People who strove for decades to solve a great problem are reluctant to dismantle social machinery that has become their reason for being. They must find a new cause. Thus, Greens have moved from fighting pollution to a new cause of stopping climate-change. In the process, these two �causes� have become so entangled that the public now has them confused. Politicians and sympathetic news media are encouraging the mistaken notion that questioning efforts to stop climate-change equals approval of pollution.
There was a clarity about defeating pollution that the man on the street could grasp. When you have temperature inversions lasting days at a time, or air so smoggy that you can�t see, you know there�s a problem. Cleaning streams and lakes also made sense.
But fighting climate-change lacks that same clarity because the science is still up in the air (so to speak). Politicians like Al Gore, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been preaching that the climate science is �settled,� but it ain�t necessarily so. They claim that we’ll destroy the planet if we keep burning hydrocarbons. Real scientists, though, are not in agreement on the answers to several key climate-questions:
- Is the world�s climate really changing?
- If so, is it warming or cooling?
- Is human activity causing the change, if change is happening?
- Can anything really be done to stop it?
- Will the change hurt us, if it is happening?
Each of these represents a scientific debate that is far from �settled.� The answer to the first two questions is that some places seem to be warming; others are cooling; and still others are seeing no change. But the time-span being considered is too short for inference of a real trend. The Medieval Warm Period spanned AD 850-1250; the �little ice age� went from 1350 to 1850. In 1980, we heard warnings of an impending new �ice age.� But three decades later Al Gore told us we were going to roast. What can we tell from a time-sample of just 30 years? Scientists raise this inconvenient question, but politicians and reporters dislike having their paradigm upset.
As to question #3, some scientists estimate that human emissions cause no more than 5% of CO2. Thus, eliminating all human activity might reduce climate-change by just 5%. It�s the statistical equivalent of chasing a mouse in the attic while ignoring the elephant in the parlor. Increasingly, scientists are realizing that climate flux is caused primarily by variation in the sun�s heat. Volcanic events can also perturb the climate far more than human effects.
Questions 4 and 5 produce many political answers � mostly involving more taxes and radical technology changes � but few scientific answers. Serious scientists and engineers � particularly those not dependent on government monies � tend to hold back on suggesting “solutions” until they know: (1) that we really have a problem; and (2) what is causing it, if it is a problem. Pols don’t hesitate to act on a theory if it looks like it will produce more taxes and more control.
Politicians deal with these and other bothersome questions by declaring the issue �settled,� and by stifling debate. The climate-bandwagon is rolling, and Al Gore is attracting strange fellow-travelers, like mega-church pastor Rick Warren, to his profitable quest to arrest climate-change via radical technological change. (The scientific credentials of both men could fit on a postage stamp.)
Writing for the Catholic News Service, Junno Arocho Esteves quotes remarks made by Pope Francis during an event held at Rome�s Pontifical Urban University, on May 19 of this year. After consulting with noted climate-expert and U2 singer Bono, the pope declared that women will lead the fight against climate-change:
�Defending nature means defending the poetry of creation; it means defending harmony. It is a fight for harmony. And women know more about harmony than us men.�
These papal remarks expanded on the pope�s 2015 encyclical, when he called on the world�s 1.2 billion Catholics to join the fight against climate change.
Eighty-six evangelical Christian leaders have also endorsed a major initiative to fight climate-change. Pastors, entertainers and political hacks have joined forces in a concerted attempt to stampede the public on the most important scientific issue of our time.
Climate-change is the politicians� dream � an endless cornucopia of money and political control. Greens could control the world economy with it, if we let them � and they�re on their way. If enough voters can be scared into believing that we are going to destroy the planet by driving cars and heating their homes, they will accept higher taxes and ever-tightening controls on their lives. There will be money to burn on dubious technology.
Recognizing this opportunity, a gaggle of American corporations has joined the U. S. Climate Action Partnership. USCAP advocates �strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.� A score of members include Alcoa, BP America, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, and World Resources Institute. More will follow as CEOs see the advantage of getting in on the green ground floor.
Writer Steven Milloy calls USCAP part of the new �eco-industrial complex.� Many early members hope to sell high-priced, politically favored �green technology� to the rest of us. But Mr. Milloy warns that some firms might support USCAP�s climate-goals in return for political concessions, like governmental subsidization of high health-insurance costs.
On the international scene, Western governments, including the USA, have agreed to block industrial development in Africa to reduce CO2 emissions and �stop� climate change. In a 2009 speech at the United Nations, President Obama called on Africa�s countries to remain primitive to save the earth from climate-change.
Obama�s remarks were met with a decidedly cool reception, however. Cameras didn�t show African delegates rolling their eyes, but many were probably wondering what spaceship Mr. Obama arrived on. No sane Third World politician wants his country to remain primitive, undeveloped and dirt-poor.
Some 2 billion people in the world lack access to electricity. Most cook and heat with smoky, open fires � burning wood or animal dung in unhealthy indoor atmospheres that cause the deaths of some 4 million children from respiratory ailments every year. There is no electricity for lights, hot water, refrigeration, heat, or cooling. Industrial development is impossible. The modern life Americans enjoy (and expect) simply does not exist.
One African official said the West cannot imagine how hard life is without electricity. He bitterly denounced �romanticizing� a primitive African existence that no westerner would tolerate for ten minutes. This anti-development demand is certainly racism at its ugliest, most degenerate level.
But the �Africa must save the planet� story covers an even dirtier secret. The continent contains proven reserves of a trillion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, plus incalculable coal-reserves. Tapping these vast resources would transform the continent into a modern industrial power that could eclipse Europe and even the USA. A modernized Africa�s 800 million work- and nutrition-starved people would be a serious threat to Europe�s declining population, stagnant economies and high unemployment.
African nations need only a cadre of western engineers and technicians to help them develop their resources and build their industrial bases. Some analysts say Africa could become the �China� of the late-21st century. Thus, the UN�s Keep Africa Primitive movement looks very much like a move to block the competition that continent might pose, if allowed to develop.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that greenhouse gases already emitted will warm the climate for 1,000 years. (Wow! No kidding?!!) Meteorologists can�t reliably predict next week�s weather, but we�re expected to believe thousand-year predictions made by computer models that can�t even account for our current climate.
We are going crazy over a natural process that is not clearly a problem and is certainly not changeable by us. If ignorance prevails over science and common sense, our economy, our government and our lives could be wrecked. China is slyly watching it happen.
Climate scientist Dr. S. Fred Singer quoted H. L. Mencken: �The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.�
Americans, of all people, should see this. The global climate-crusade needs to be stopped before politicians� ever-advancing dream becomes a nightmare.
�Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.� (Proverbs 16:18)
