Are they Nuts? Oh, wait, it is the United Nations!
By Jonathan Bean • Saturday December 12, 2009 7:10 PM PDT • 4 Comments
With its usual grandstanding, the U.N. calls for developed nations (that’s us) to cut their carbon emissions up to 95%. It’s a nice way to eliminate the entire history of industrialization, human progress and all the attendant problems such as longer lives, better education, and no fear of hunger.
Meanwhile, the federal EPA has declared carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant. Funny, I thought it was necessary for life but life causes emissions and we can’t have that, can we?
I’m sure some people were happy living in 1870 but I’ll stick with the 21st century, warts and all.
Apparently, the Obama administration will slit our economic wrists to “make up for lost time”–not since 1870, mind you–but since the Dark Ages of G.W. Bush. Oy vey.
Tags: Environment, Global Warming 
Every sane person knows there is no way, ever, that this can be accomplished with current technology, and none of the new technologies currently being talked up (other than nuclear power) are in any way capable of providing the energy we need – they just are not.
As far as I can tell, not one of the nations that signed on to Kyoto ever got their emissions down to what they agreed upon, and those were meager goals. So really, like most everything else about the U.N. this is just political posturing and an attempt to shame successful nations into coughing up more money for them to waste.
RickC | Dec 12, 2009 | Reply
Funny how the rest of the West isn’t feeling so “successful” these days and will not pull the trigger on their heads. It’s up to the (supposed) cowyboy capitalists in the USA and UK, led by the Great One.
Don’t underestimate the power of the EPA ruling and, this is important, resulting lawsuits to create what Bob Higgs calls “regime uncertainty.”
Constant crisis is good for “social causes,” bad for business. Too bad we live in the one nation dumb enough to replay the script of the 1930s and 1960s: two decades that began with mild, run-of-the-mill recessions and ended in utter disaster.
Jonathan Bean | Dec 12, 2009 | Reply
Hi Jonathan,
Actually, I think the EPA’s ruling, clearly at the behest of the Obama Adminstration, to be one of the most blatant power grabs in U.S. history.
All one has to do is consider the ramifications of the ruling. It means that the government, through the EPA can now regulate/control every aspect of every Americans’day-to-day lives. Everything we do, even breathing, emits carbon.
Are we all going to be given quotas? If I go for a run today will I generate too much carbon and go over my quota, especially if I take a shower and drive to and from the place where I run? By exceeding my limit will I have to pay a sin tax? This short trip down Absurdity Lane sounds ridiculous I know but now that the door has been opened who’s to know? I’m sure the lawsuits are being put together even now. It’s yet another disaster and further proof, as if we needed it, of Dr. Higgs’ thesis.
Also, it seems to me, and many of my friends feel the same way, that the “new” message of Obama and the progressives surrounding him is nothing more than the stale, warmed-over, tried and failed ideas of early 20th century progressivism. It says something about the power of ideas, especially bad, utopian based ones. I keep hearing the echo of Eric Hoffer.
RickC | Dec 13, 2009 | Reply
I’m in Europe right now, and the media here was reporting this afternoon that a last-minute deal is being brokered at the COP15 (climate change conference) in Copenhagen. However, earlier today, the media was reporting that the conference was essentially falling apart. French President Sarkozy was blaming the Chinese for not wanting to play along. (Who knew?)
It looks as if the conference is going to end up being a huge bust, and Mr. Obama is going to walk away empty-handed. He’s also going to take a political hit in America for simply showing up. I don’t really understand this move politically. The President threw a bone to his political base, but he is irritating the rest of the country.
Alex Berezow | Dec 18, 2009 | Reply