Boulder City Council--"We'll Solve Global Warming From Council Chambers"

Today the local college rag The Colorado Daily is reporting that Boulder's City Council will be debating tonight whether to allocate $7,000 of taxpayer funds towards having the city attorney (Joe de Raismes) perform the necessary legal work involved in joining a lawsuit (to be filed by Greenpeace and other environmental groups) against the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank the United States, both of which are federal agencies. The suits would address the funding of overseas projects that don't meet U.S. environmental and labor standards and don't require U.S. style environmental impact statements (the documents environmentalists use to fight targeted projects on the public stage).

This is so typical of Boulder, which signed its own (supposedly binding) version of the Kyoto protocol last May. As I write, I'm trying to juggle my schedule so as to be in attendance at the meeting and vent my piece as a citizen of Boulder. What the Council needs to get through its thick skull is that we live in a representative democracy--and our U.S. congressional representatives (as opposed to state and local politicos) are the ones that are charged with handling foreign policy issues. Those are the people we voted for to balance the pros and cons of international foreign policy, and they are the ones who should handle the problem--if indeed one exists-- not some bush-league city council member who will get behind any policy initiative that has "environmentalism" stapled to it.

Boulder just can't seem to find an issue that is beyond its jurisdiction....which is why leftists are so scary. They're always wanting to compel others to do things their way. In this case, they have an issue that has been packaged by various interest groups as being an environmental one. With striking similarities to the "sweatshop" crusade that has been ever-so-fashionable over the years in liberal circles, the real issue has to do with labor--specifically making sure that foreign nations are required to adopt the same outrageously expensive environmental and labor policies that we have in this country. The result would effectively strip them of any competitive advantage as a trading partner, while mitigating the consequences of implementing American "living wage" and price support policies favored by the Left.

Of course, it's difficult to restrict trade when free trade is so obviously beneficial to third world workers, so the next best thing is to de-fund the economies of those countries. Is this what we want to do? Talk a big game about the benefits of freedom, sovereignty and the free market, while surreptitiously removing the means of achieving economic independence by constantly creating hurdles and hoops for the rest of the world to jump through?

Boulder City Council can't even effectively manage an inconsequential small town blessed with an affluent and homogenous citizenry. They should work on improving their own local job skills before attempting to tackle international issues with which they have little or no understanding.
Kevin Kelley
Update: As expected in this politically lame-ass town, Boulder City Council approved backing the suit.....Read about it here >>

Yes, people in Colorado have long referred to it as the People's Republic of Boulder. It is as other-wordly as Ithaca. What is is about college campuses that impedes the ability of people to reason? The city of Boulder has set aside so much "green space" that normal people can't afford to live there any more. It has got to be one of the most politically correct places on the planet, exacerbated by the fact that the University of Colorado is located there, so the inmates are definitely in charge of the asylum. Common-sense Coloradoans have formed a sort of cordon sanitaire around it with little bedroom communities of real people with working brain parts.

I was going to post the following but found your thread in article serach, so I'll just add it here
and BTT

Here's the related story from CNS news

Boulder, Colo. Sues Federal Agencies Over Global Warming
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
August 22, 2002

(CNSNews.com) - The Boulder, Colo. City Council will join environmental activists in taking legal action against the federal government to try to control greenhouse gas emissions which environmentalists say is the cause of "global warming."

Boulder City Council members voted Tuesday to join with
Greenpeace U.S.A. and Friends of the Earth, in a planned lawsuit that could end up costing local taxpayers $7,000.

The lawsuit would attempt to force the federal Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export Import Bank to require U.S. taxpayer supported energy projects in other countries to detail their projected greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on climate change.

The Vermont law firm of Shems, Dunkiel & Kassel will file the suit on behalf of the City of Boulder, Greenpeace and FOE and plans to cite standards under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as the legal basis for the impact studies. NEPA requires all major federal projects to conduct an environmental impact study before commencing.

Boulder City Attorney Joe de Raismes told the Daily Camera newspaper that the city is trying to raise awareness about how the federal government's funding of U.S. corporations overseas is contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes, is causing global warming.

"It is a test litigation," de Raismes said.

However, Ron Arnold, vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, suspects the planned legal action is a "publicity stunt" and would amount to "a frivolous lawsuit."

"The city council is stabbing in the dark," Arnold told CNSNews.com.

Arnold said unless the lawsuit shows legal merit, someone could conceivably counter-sue on the grounds that the city and the environmental groups are acting "for mere harassing purposes."

But Mark Helm, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, said the vote by the Boulder City Council was a direct message to President George Bush regarding government policy on climate change.

"The City of Boulder made it very clear [Tuesday] night that across the political spectrum, individual citizens, city governments and states are going to move forward when it comes to addressing the problem of global climate change, despite the resistance of the Bush administration," Helm told CNSNews.com.

"It was a unanimous bipartisan vote by the Boulder City Council to join in on a lawsuit if one happens," Helm added.

But Arnold sees no reason why the Boulder City Council would get involved in the lawsuit.

"If the city council used the same logic to repair their pot holes in the street, I pity the drivers in Boulder," Arnold said.

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