Yeah, I’m Breathing . . . So Sue Me!

A Wall Street Journal editorial describes a new legal tactic being used by greenies to bypass the legislative roadblocks to moving their environmental agenda forward: sue the CO2 polluters for contributing to global warming.

Of course, this strategy opens up a whole new can of worms, since every human on the planet produces CO2 simply by breathing.

In other words, the courts would become a venue for a carbon war of all against all. Not only might businesses sue to shackle their competitors—could we sue the New York Times for deforestation?—but judges would decide the remedies against specific defendants. In practice this would mean ad hoc command-and-control regulation against any industries that happen to catch the green lobby’s eye.

Carbophobia in the Age of Science

Robert Brinsmead has written an excellent paper that explains the role of carbon in the maintenance of life on Planet Earth — and the irrationality of all the hysteria about carbon among the AGW crowd. As Brinsmead explains, life as we know it would not exist without carbon.

The entire lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere is therefore saturated and permeated with carbon. Carbon is among the most ubiquitous substances on this planet. It is irrational nonsense to claim that something as ubiquitous as carbon has become a threat to either life or the environment. For every living thing, whether plant or animal, can only exist by absorbing carbon from the environment and by emitting carbon into the environment. Neither life nor the ordered existence of this planet as we know it could continue to exist without this continuing vital exchange and circulation of carbon and carbon dioxide between lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.

So what explains the irrational fear of carbon (“carbophobia”)  among radical environmentalists? Brinsmead sees a non-environmental mindset at work here.

They are biased against economic growth, industrial activity and human technology. They hate the affluence and creativity of a free economic system. They long for the day when they can dance on the grave of capitalism. Most of all, they are biased against people being free to be productive and prosperous in a free enterprise way of life. They believe that humans are the cancerous pathogens of the earth whose freedom and prosperity has to be drastically curtailed. The only future these eco-activists see for mankind is to worship at the neo-pagan shrine of Mother Nature in some sort of return to a primitive, ecotopian past.

If you want to understand the entire scope of the  carbon debate, read this paper.

Global Warming is a Religion

As I have noted before, the blind fervor of global warming alarmists has all the characteristics of a religion. Now that observation has official government sanction in the UK.

A fired British executive is suing his former employer on the grounds that he was unfairly dismissed due to religious views – his belief in global warming.

As Marc Sheppard comments,

Greenies scoffed when Michael Crichton first called environmentalism “one of the most powerful religions in the Western World” over five years ago, insisting that “settled science” was on their side. Since then it’s become increasingly evident that alarmists’ warming beliefs are based not on reason or evidence, but a trusting acceptance in the absence of either.  They outright refuse to discuss it, debate it, or abide those daring to question it.

Why Schools Are Not Producing Scholars

John Tierney relates the story of an elementary school teacher in West Virginia who led her students in a campaign to prevent school officials from shutting down a garbage recycling program. The program was so uneconomical it made no sense to keep it going. But the teacher was determined to preserve her students’ status as eco-nuts.

As Tierney asks,

If we want our children to be scientifically literate and get good jobs in the future, why are we spending precious hours in school teaching them to be garbage collectors?

The Price of Denying AGW

British naturalist David Bellamy was once a popular figure on BBC nature programs. But that all changed once he came out in opposition to anthropogenic global warming scare mongering. Now he is a shunned man.

I’m still an environmentalist, I’m still a Green and I’m still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming “problem” that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world.

The global warming scare is not about science, and never has been. It’s about political and economic power, using the noble mantle of science to hide the real objective. And those who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid are subjected to all the vicious tactics of any political war.

Lewis Carroll, on the Energy Crisis

According to John Weidner, read Alice in Wonderland and the energy crisis suddenly makes sense — in a perverse, progressive sort of way.

So who’s blocking “alternative power?” “Renewable energy?” Greens. Leftists. Democrats. No surprise there; once you abandon the use of logic, anything is possible . . .

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The Role of Journalism in Airing Dissent

Ron Rosenbaum, writing in Slate, notes a basic contradition in two articles that appeared in a recent edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The editorial defended the role of journalists as giving voice to dissenters from the established consensus. But an article on climate change in the very same issue of the journal demanded that dissenters be ignored in the face of the consensus that has defined the global warming debate.

This was the contention that stunned me—that reporters must protect us from dissent—especially in light of the CJR editorial deploring the “dangerously narrow borders of our public discourse.”

As Rosenbaum points out later in his article, AGW believers are no longer practicing science; they have established a religion, and like all religions, dissent must be crushed to preserve the True Faith.

Big Al’s Big Yarns

Patrick Michaels takes apart Al Gore’s recent call for a national project to convert our entire electrical generation infrastructure to non-fossil fuel sources in ten years.

Here’s how Gore works. He’ll cite one scientific finding that shows what he wants, and then ignore other work that provides important context.

On point after point, Michaels shows how Gore’s exaggerated claims fail the test of truth. Gore has a pre-determined outcome in view (centralized economic planning), and he cherry picks the data to support that outcome.

There is no doubt that mankind will someday wean ourselves off fossil fuels. But I have much more confidence in free market forces to accomplish that feat, than in Gore’s ability to build a government bureaucracy to do it.

Reality Catches Up with Dems

For years the Democrats have gladly carried the water for environmentalists who had all kinds of plans for saving the planet using federal money and regulations. But $4 gasoline is changing the picture. Now all those enviro-wacky schemes are viewed by voters as exacerbating the problem, with little in return.

The environmental movement is facing a critical moment. Democrats who support the greenies in their most ambitious goals, and scariest pseudo-scientific rhetoric, suddenly seem woefully out of touch with American voters.

They are trying to hold the line for now, but with a major election looming, sooner or later Democrats have got to change their tune, or face a reckoning.

Democrats, after a long holiday from reality occasioned by cheap oil, are beginning to understand that either they have to take up the challenge of meeting America’s need for oil, or voters will find someone who will.

Carbon vs. Hydrogen

What will be the dominant energy source in the 21st century? Nuclear? Nope. Solar? Wind? No, and no.

It’s natural gas.

Robert Bryce looks at the numbers, and sees a growing reliance on natural gas as a primary energy source in coming decades. The world has huge reserves of the stuff, and the technology already exists to harness it.

What’s more, the molecular composition of natural gas means the world will be continuing its march away from carbon-based energy toward hydrogen-based energy.

From prehistory through the 1700s and early 1800s, wood was the world’s most common fuel. Wood has a carbon-to-hydrogen ratio (C:H) of 10 to 1. That is, it has about 10 carbon atoms for every hydrogen atom. But as the Western world industrialized, wood lost its dominance to coal. Coal was a dramatic improvement over wood with a C:H ratio of about 2 to 1. But coal was destined to lose out to oil, particularly for transportation, thanks to oil’s greater energy density and a C:H ratio of 1 to 2. Over the coming decades, natural gas will be the big winner, a result of its 1 to 4 C:H ratio. Thus, when compared to wood, natural gas has 40 times as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms.

In effect, this means the world’s economies will be reducing carbon emissions simply by following market forces, even without onerous government incentives.

Coal and oil will stay around for years, but the future belongs to natural gas.

California, Land of Fruits and Nuts

And environmentalist wackos, who are systematically dismantling the energy infrastructure underlying the state’s economy.

California’s environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages. Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.

In the not-too-distant future, California’s loony energy policies will wreck the state’s economy. Then, I suppose, we might as well cede the state back to Mexico.

When the Lights Go Out

Want to know where our government’s current energy non-policy will eventually take us? Just look at Great Britain, which is now facing the prospect of crippling power outages due to severe environmental restrictions on new generating plants.

Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments – and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels – we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall. . . .

At the moment, to meet Britain’s peak electricity demand, our power stations need to provide a minimum 56 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

Ten gigawatts, nearly a fifth, comes from our ageing nuclear power stations, all but one of which are so old that over the next few years they will have reached the end of their useful working life.

On top of that, however, we shall also have to shut down nine more major power stations – six coal-fired, three oil-fired – forced to close by the crippling cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution law, the so- called Large Combustion Plants directive.

This will take out another 13GW of capacity, bringing the total shortfall to 22GW – a staggering 40 per cent of the 56GW we have today.

America is only slightly behind the British on this curve. Eventually the impact of wacky environmental policies will catch up with us, too.

Remind Me Again . . . Who’s For the Little Guy?

Victor Davis Hanson ponders the liberals’ claim of fighting for the little guy, when their environmental policies are driving millions of little guys deeper into poverty.

What these elites don’t seem to realize is that the energy policies they tend to advocate are for the present paralyzing almost everyone else in the country — and that the truly ethical and environmental solution would require embracing positions long considered anathema to traditional liberalism. . . .

Most environmentalists think of themselves as egalitarians. So, instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn’t a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?

But it’s not about helping the farm worker or the carpenter. It never has been. Radical environmentalism is the new communism, a vehicle for gaining control of the economy in the interest of promoting a mythical “greater good.” Like the old communism, this new version will end up destroying freedom and ruining the lives of millions. In fact, the process is already underway.

Of Zealots and Heretics

Ever wonder what it must have been like as a medieval heretic struggling against the almighty power of the Church? Harry Mount in the Daily Telegraph says you can find out quite easily: “Try saying you’re a bit sceptical about man-made global warming.” You’ll find out in a hurry what it’s like to be a heretic.

Environmentalism is the new secular faith – school prayer for liberals, as an American philosopher put it. The faith is a strict one. You’re not allowed to join if you think that it’s sensible to keep an eye on the environment but don’t think that man is to blame for changes in world temperature.

You must believe in the full package. If you do, you are blessed, free from sin and allowed the pious smugness you find in the worst sort of religious believers. It’s not enough to believe in these things yourself; you must condemn others for not sharing your belief.

Human nature is universal, whether clothed in clerical robes or eco-friendly jeans. When a group of people coalesce around a shared faith, their zeal for The Cause can exceed the boundaries of common sense, and irrational arrogance is the inevitable result.

The environmental movement is overdue for a Reformation.