Debra Saunders is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted on 09/13/2007 10:54:53 PM PDT by goldstategop
For years, supporters of global warming alarmism have repeated an odd refrain: Even if we're wrong, we're right.
Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, D-Colo., said it in 1988, as the National Journal reported. "What we've got to do in energy conservation is (to) try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."
I regularly receive e-mails with similar arguments. Or, as one reader put it: "If global warming is not real, and we spend money trying to fight it, what harm will come of our mistake? Cleaner air? If global warming is real, and we do nothing, what harm will come of our laxity? On which side should we err?"
Savor, if you will, the lack of science in that argument. The global warming contingent loves to don the Mantle of Science as the reason to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But its backup argument is: It's OK if we're wrong, because we mean well.
What will come of the mistake of changing policies because of global warming alarmism?
The very question presupposes that the sacrifices that Americans will have to make are small.
Viewers of Al Gore's flick "An Inconvenient Truth" were warned of the dire changes on this planet and then were referred to a Website that tells people to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs, properly inflate their tires, drive less and turn off electronic devices when not in use. As if those changes would stop the predicted catastrophe.
Some of the most well-known global warming promoters are big-time energy guzzlers. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed landmark state global-warming legislation, has his Hummers and leases a private jet. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, reported that, despite their signature issue, the Gores burned 221,000 kilowatt hours last year, or 20 times the national average, in one of their three homes.
To global warming glitterati, the noble approach to the issue is to push for treaties, laws and regulations that make other people and other industries do the heavy lifting on energy conservation.
Last month, a United Nations conference in Vienna approved a nonbinding agreement directing industrialized nations to cut their emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020.
If the United States were to sign onto such an agreement, Washington first would have to reduce emissions by some 15 percent just to reach 1990 levels. Then America could work toward the new goals. In effect, Americans would have to halve their greenhouse gas emissions in 12 years.
How do you do that?
As for me, while I am a global warming agnostic, I am not stopping anyone from taking the bus. Schwarzenegger and others have argued that new technologies can light the way. But those that exist cost too much, which means that only effective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is to pass huge energy tax increases.
Newsweek columnist and economist Robert J. Samuelson, a reasoned voice on global warming, wrote that he supports gradually raising the gasoline tax of $1 to $2 per gallon. I wonder how many Californians would be willing to not only pay $4 or $5 for a gallon of gas but more for every commodity. And Samuelson is clear that his modest gas tax can't do much to reduce greenhouse gases.
America's sacrifices could be for naught, as long as China -- which is or is about to be the world's greatest generator of greenhouse gases -- is exempt from any global warming pact.
To go the distance supported by global warming alarmists requires big changes.
If the alarmists are right, the whole world will have to change and it will be onerous. If the global warming alarmists are wrong, much of the sacrifices they demand will have been for nothing.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“The global warming contingent loves to don the Mantle of Science as the reason to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But its backup argument is: It’s OK if we’re wrong, because we mean well.”
Notice she had to go back 20 years to quote anyone making that argument, and even then can only find one person to quote. But that doesn’t stop her from attributing the same argument to anyone who thinks global warming is a problem.
I don’t know Debra Saunders. Is she stupid or just dishonest?
That says it all about Al Gore, really.
I hear that argument all the time. A random search of the phrase got me this:
"Even if global warming isn't happening, what's the harm in putting laws in place that protect the environment? Oh, yeah, that's right, the corporations will lose money. Maybe if we call it a "preemptive strike" against future environmental disasters, then Bush will get behind it." http://blogs.phillyburbs.com/blog.php?p=10338&cat=
"Even if you don't believe in global warming that doesn't mean that we can't take sensible steps to simply help the environment as a whole." 8/27/07
http://safeashouses.blogspot.com/2007/08/state-gop-sky-isnt-falling.html
"Yes, global warming may not be as damaging as some predict, and you might have invested more than you needed, but it’s just as Pascal said: Given all the possible outcomes, the upside of being ready and prepared for a “fearsome event” surely beats the alternative." - 5/27/07 Jack Welch
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/how-should-a-corporation-think-of-global-warming/
If they are wrong about Global Warming, they are wrong, period. Trying to make cars more fuel efficient or looking for a feasible electric car does no harm. But then, GW, has already caused harm in if nothing else squandering funds that could be used better elsewhere. Also there is the stupidity of ethanol which is as big a hoax as Global Warming itself. All the “let’s save the environment” hype convinced consumers to go out and buy those pig-tailed energy saving light bulbs. Hmmmm, let me see C02 which is essential to life, or Mercury? So there is plenty of harm that can come from them being wrong.
When I was an undergraduate geology student, the big worry was about the coming Ice Age.
Warming is not such a threat at this latitude, where 12,000 years ago where I am sitting was covered by a kilometer or two of ice.
What few realize is that the early seed money for much of the 'environmental' movement came from the Soviet Union, who deemed it a cost-effective way to undermine western industrial capability.
That legacy lives on, and has wildly succeeded with the assistance of well-meaning but often misinformed people.
Look at our ability to produce what we needed in say, 1970, compared to today.
There were some problem areas, which have generally been addressed, but then the folks who did the cleanup needed to keep their jobs, and started raising the bar. Standards since then have been a moving target, and those standards in flux are the reason there are no new refineries, steel plants, and the like.
Instead, they are built across the Pacific, where there are no rules, and the pollution is many times worse, just not in our back yard.
The problem with that, of course, is that we all live on the same planet, and lopsided rules become economic sanctions.
It is an essential cornerstone of the liberal paradigm to punish the successful, after all, they must have cheated, enslaved, or screwed someone along the way, or else, according to liberal philosophy, they would not have been successful. Besides, such thought justifies the socialistic redistribution of wealth and lets them throw around Marxist phrases, wear t-shirts with dead dictator wannabes on them, and be chic.
Global Warming is just another excuse, once the data has been corrected, (which seems to be happening more every day), to stifle the West, give the Communists in the world the 'pollute the planet free' card, and further cripple the manufacturing economies of the free world.
“Debra Saunders is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.”
Will they let her continue to live in the Bay Area?
Yeah. And in a lot of cases (damned low-flow toilets come to mind) we've paid for it and suffered because of it.
Worse than Social (in)Security and the (no so)Great Society? Not quite yet, but gaining steam.......
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