Dennis Prager has a column up over at Real Clear Politics that captures what is going on right now with regards to global warming. Or rather the discussion about global warming. Taking Ellen Goodman's column from last week as a starting point, Pragar takes a look at what he calls a campaign of villification. He's right, I have pointed out the same thing.
In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers . . . "
This is worthy of some analysis.
First, it reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.
Those who deny the Holocaust are among the evil of the world. Their concern is not history but hurting Jews, and their attempt to rob nearly six million people of their experience of unspeakable suffering gives new meaning to the word "cruel." To equate those who question or deny global warming with those who question or deny the Holocaust is to ascribe equally nefarious motives to them. It may be inconceivable to Al Gore, Ellen Goodman and their many millions of supporters that a person can disagree with them on global warming and not have evil motives: Such an individual must be paid by oil companies to lie, or lie — as do Holocaust deniers — for some other vile reason……
…… the Ellen Goodman quote is only the beginning of what is already becoming one of the largest campaigns of vilification of decent people in history — the global condemnation of a) anyone who questions global warming; or b) anyone who agrees that there is global warming but who argues that human behavior is not its primary cause; or c) anyone who agrees that there is global warming, and even agrees that human behavior is its primary cause, but does not believe that the consequences will be nearly as catastrophic as Al Gore does.
If you don't believe all three propositions, you will be lumped with Holocaust deniers, and it would not be surprising that soon, in Europe, global warming deniers will be treated as Holocaust deniers and prosecuted. Just watch. That is far more likely than the oceans rising by 20 feet. Or even 10. Or even three.
Read the whole thing, he makes a number of very good points.
CAIRO, Egypt: Measures to reduce global warming would not be devastating economically, and the United States has been “particularly delinquent” on the issue, Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said Tuesday.
Speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Volcker said the argument that taxes on oil or carbon emissions, for example, would ruin an economy was “fundamentally false.”
“First of all, I don’t think (such a step) is going to have that much of an impact on the economy overall. Second of all, if you don’t do it, you can be sure that the economy will go down the drain in the next 30 years,” Volcker said, referring to the impact forecast by a U.N. report last week.
“The scientists seem pretty well agreed that (global warming) is still potentially manageable if we act decisively, beginning now into the next decade or so, by taking measures that are technically and economically feasible.”
Speaking of vilification: Senator Inohofe was just bloviating at a hearing, comparing California’s Pacific Gas & Electric, BP and other companies that have instituted global warming prevention changes already and have not lost money, to Enron.
As a California small business owner (neither in energy or tourism), I can attest that my energy savings didn’t cost my business any, and our state has grown over the last 30 years while keeping our Co2 emisssions stable, unlike the rest of the country.
So I know this is doable, and I’ll take a California type innovation-based economy over Inohofes Oklahoma any day.
The sad thing is if it was not for coal and oil interests there, keeping the state “barefoot and pregnant” it could be a great state too, with a thriving economy.
Russia has a destroyed environment. Tourism is nonexistent. Their birthrate has been decimated by from pollution to where they can’t find workers for their new energy industry.
Is that how we want America to be?
California has exported its pollution by making it difficult to build new power plants inside the state. So they get built outside in other areas. The net effect is the same, but California gets to feel good about itself.
No, when California buys energy (what energy we buy outside the state,)we buy only from clean plants (coalfired electricity with the carbon removal), so in effect California is using its economic clout to gradually swing the dirty energy states to clean energy states, even if they can’t get rid of their lobbies for not cleaning up.
Idealy, I think new clean companies like Nanosolar (print solar cells on sheets of film) should set up pilot production programs in the dirty energy (oil and coal) states to help those states make the transition to clean energy production without a break in their economies during that transition.
Like a Marshall plan for development.
Untill we knew what we know now, they were the backbone of our economy. We should all (as a nation) help them transition their economies, while safeguarding our future.
What DOES that Latin mean?
I learned Latin as a kid, but practically no remnants:
summum is like the total, the sum, right?
and diem the day or is it days?
and is optem something visual related? or optimum like?
I really loved the logic of that language as a kid.
Hard to believe how little I know now!
Coal fired plants with carbon removal? Really? Only a little energy from outside the state? Really?
Stunning. Absolutely stunning.
I dare say that economic insecurity, bad healthcare, widespread alcoholism and an extremely high abortion rate have contributed as much or more to Russias plunging birthrate and low life expectancy than pollution. Besides, implementing a command economy, whether motivated by class warfare or environmentalism, is the surest way to get where Russia is today
Sure, saving energy through better technology can make sense. Who´s against sensible measures that pay for themselves? It is usually the global warming ideologues who shy away from doing the oldfashioned cost-benefit analysis because that would limit their ambitions. That´s why their prediction have to be so apocalyptic – how else to justify the kneecapping of the global economy? The problem is eco-nutters advocating world revolution, scaffolds and all.
I don’t know anyone who espouses kneecapping the economy, and I am around a lot of people who are seriously alarmed that this issue is being misrepresented by the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh as if its merely a political battle between saving jobs and kneecapping America.
As a result people believe that people advocating for taking sensible measures to insure our future are crazed communists who care nothing about our future where if anything the reverse is true.
How can we buy car seats and insurance and plan for our kids futures and yet pretend this is not happening, and advocate for ignoring it.
I like the way Goodman conflates time. Denying the future, forsooth.
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