Posted on 08/12/2015 6:28:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
n the political battles over climate change, there are three distinct and relevant questions. First, does mankind have a material affect on the Earth’s climate? Second, if mankind does impact the climate, is that impact harmful? And third, if we assume that mankind is harming the environment, will any given American policy or collection of policies have a meaningful beneficial impact? So far, the conservative movement has mainly pushed back on the “scientific consensus” related to the first question — the extent of human influence over the Earth’s climate. To see a textbook example, watch Ted Cruz’s recent interview with Katie Couric earlier this year, when he confronted her with the miserable recent history of environmentalist predictions:
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO...
Make no mistake, that pushback has worked. Earlier this year, Scientific American lamented that while 87 percent of scientists believe that “climate change is mostly due to human activity,” only 50 percent of Americans agree, with the differences falling along ideological lines. Yet the danger of the 50–50 split is obvious — as with so many issues in our polarized times, it’s extraordinarily difficult to create a coalition sufficiently strong to stop ideologues from destroying American industries, raising utility bills, and throwing away billions of dollars in unproductive quests for “renewable” alternatives to efficient and powerful fossil fuels.
But is there a path to consensus in the third key political question, whether climate-change regulations will have any meaningful impact on the climate? Climate-change activists constantly say that “we have to start somewhere.” But what if in fact we’re starting nowhere? What if we’re asking Americans to sacrifice to no purpose? What if America can’t stop climate change?
That’s Carly Fiorina’s argument, and it may represent the best, and most easily defensible, path forward to consensus. Here she is, like Ted Cruz, making her case to Katie Couric:
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO
The short version of Fiorina’s argument is this: If the scientific consensus is that man-made climate change is real, there is also consensus that America, acting alone, cannot stop it. Indeed, the Chinese are only too happy to watch us constrict our economy as they capture the market in clean coal.
California enacts regulations that will make no difference in global climate. The Obama administration enacts regulations that will make no difference in global climate. Yet Americans are asked to pay the price for — to take one example — climate regulations that, by 2030, would only save the world the equivalent of slightly over 13 days of Chinese emissions. We’ve already been made to pay the price for the veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline when even the State Department declared that it would have “negligible impact” on the environment.
The Left doesn’t seriously dispute the notion that American regulations aren’t going to save the planet, but they justify the demand for American sacrifice by essentially ascribing a mystical power to our national policies — as if our decision to fall on our own sword will so move India and China and the rest of the developing world (which has a lot of fossil fuels left to burn to lift its people out of poverty) that they’ll essentially have their own “come to Jesus” movement in defiance of national interest and centuries of national political culture. “America leads,” they proclaim. “The world laughs,” is the proper response.
Nations, as the saying goes, do not have friends, only interests. Our geopolitical competitors will not sacrifice their strategic interests for the sake of combating global warming. Nor will developing nations sacrifice their economies, or their people’s lives, by restraining their own economic growth.
Americans have proven time and again that they’re willing to sacrifice — if convinced that their sacrifice has a purpose, that it accomplishes an objective. There’s certainly room for Cruz’s climate-change skepticism in the national debate, but there just may be more room for Fiorina’s economic, scientific, and geopolitical realism. The Left is asking America to sacrifice for nothing — for no true economic benefit, no true climate benefit, and no true or meaningful “global leadership.” That’s a bad deal even for those who believe in man-made climate change, yet that’s the “deal” the Left demands.
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer for National Review.
When talking to a Leftist remember: there is no talking to a Leftist.
#factsdontmatter
Who cares about her. She is a muslin sympathizer. Sorry but she is not going to win.
The point is not to elect her, but to learn how she handles gotcha questions like these.
Here in Pittsburgh some winters are colder, some are warmer, some summers are warmer, some are cooler; some springs are wetter, some autumns are drier, but all-in-all, it's the same climate it has been during my 71-year lifetime.
To be sure, the air and waters are cleaner, but that's not climate change.
Question: How many of those 87 percent receive government funding and how many would take that same stance if they didn't receive it?
She accepted the premise which is a mistake. It is time to take that fraud down since there is no proof and then go into her argument.
Pray America is waking
Why use the language of the left? Why accept their terminology of ‘climate change’? The first question should be: Is Global Warming occurring? The best evidence to date suggests that it is not - at least for the past 15 to 20 years. That answer moots every other question posed in this article.
Win or Lose - even if she’s not your candidate, I gotta admit:
Carly NAILS IT.
This is the nicest way to answer global warming issues. I of course would be more direct. But again, this is a GOOD answer by Carly, and the other GOP candidates should adopt it.
That was one of the best retorts to the climate change hysteria that I’ve ever seen. Succinct with a healthy dose of common sense.
“The short version of Fiorina’s argument is this: If the scientific consensus is that man-made climate change is real, there is also consensus that America, acting alone, cannot stop it. “
IF???? The mention of the word “if” in the above statement and the phrase citing “America, acting alone, cannot stop it” indicate to me that she BELIEVES in climate change.
If she did not, she would have stated that climate change was nothing other than a political and scientific farce.
That worries me.
I like that Cruz stated something I’ve been asserting all along -
whether the globe is facing destruction through cooling or warming or change,
the left’s solutions are always the same - more government control over our lives.
Succinct.
How does Carly address the left on the DREAM act?
“I’m with you guys”.
That’s why the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 was doomed to failure: China and India should have been subject to its regulations right from the start, which would have forced these two countries to aggressively clean up their coal-fired power plants and switch to far cleaner burning natural gas for their new power plants. And that would have meant by 2015 China’s cities would enjoy far cleaner air because the emission from coal-fired plants would be severely limited and other power plants would burn natural gas, which is very easy to clean up emissions.
When the left’s solutions don’t just happen to line up with their overall agenda,
then we’ll start to listen to them about whatever crisis they’re pushing as an excuse.
Once al bore’s scientists starting fixing the tests it was no longer science it’s an agenda.
Here in Pittsburgh some winters are colder, some are warmer, some summers are warmer, some are cooler; some springs are wetter, some autumns are drier, but all-in-all, it's the same climate it has been during my 71-year lifetime.
To be sure, the air and waters are cleaner, but that's not climate change.
Uh no.
The premise of David French’s essay is flawed and dangerous. It promotes the bizarre and Lysenko-like notion that Science is settled by consensus, by convincing people to ‘vote’ on scientific truth.
If people were truly informed, they would castigate such arguments into the dens of opium addicts to be parlayed among the Geisha consumers, never to see the light of the public square.
In other words, politicians have no place infringing on science and climate change history nor should they be allowed to promote scientific cranks for political purposes.
Read the consequences of allowing this to be chatter fare for the Fiorina’s of the day:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
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