Global Warming Quick Hits

The folks over at Planet Gore have been on their game lately, perhaps because yesterday was Lenin’s birth…uhh I mean Earth Day, and alarmists tend beclown themselves even more than usual.

Wind power has been a topic in Maryland lately as Governor O’Malley announced that lands under the auspices of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources would not be available for commercial wind power generation.

Environmentalists love to tout the benefits of wind power and they especially cite Denmark and its “no cost” implementation as a prime model for the United States to follow. However, as Iain Murray notes, the cost to consumers in government subsidies to wind generation far outweigh the savings on Danish energy bills.

Here in Maryland, wind power needs state mandates (or timely campaign contributions) for its product and federal subsidies as well in order to make a profit, because its product is expensive to produce and generate. But hey it can create well paying new jobs to replace the old one’s killed from global warming legislation, right?

Trending: Thank You

I’ve been doing a lot of research into the Marine Corps lately. I can tell you they are pissed off at Time Magazine’s latest cover, which desecrates Joe Rosenthal’s legendary photo of the Marines raising the flag on Mt. Surabachi. Kevin D. Williamson drops some righteous anger on Time and its green idiocy:

Yes, protecting the environment is important; no, enacting stricter CAFE standards or embracing a cap-and-trade system for emissions is nothing at all like our fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, whatever Photoshop shenanigans Time wishes to indulge.

Time’s green enthusiasm leads them trouble in other ways, too. Consider this sophomoric howler of a sentence from the green issue: “The green jobs that cap and trade could help create would be a big employment sector — including production of wind turbines, pollution scrubbers and more. Obama and Clinton talk about spending $150 billion over 10 years to create millions of those jobs, but it’s the sale of pollution allowances that would raise that money. No cap and trade, no jobs. That seems simple — but not to the campaigns.” Not simple, but simplistic. Time’s writers and editors apparently are entirely incapable of appreciating that the $150 billion they’re so eager to spend isn’t going to materialize out of the allegedly warming air. How many jobs would that $150 billion create if government didn’t appropriate it? And how exactly is paying for a “pollution allowance” different from paying a tax? Time never thinks to ask. Why? Because this is the moral equivalent of Iwo Jima — haven’t you heard?

The elevation of environmentalism to the “moral equivalent of war,” particularly while American troops are fighting a real war, is the cheapest sort of juvenile politics and a sop to the self-importance of Al Gore and his admirers. It’s also an excuse to stifle debate; Mr. Gore famously insists that “the time for debate is over.” One hears in this formulation a longing for the unquestioned authority of martial command, and perhaps an echo of Vladimir Lenin, on whose centenary Earth Day was first observed. Military rigors have their place. The troops at Iwo Jima did not debate with their officers about the logistics of the invasion. But we aren’t at Iwo Jima, and we certainly do not owe Al Gore or the editors of Time the ready obedience of soldiers at war. Time’s editors should be ashamed of themselves for drafting the heroic dead of Iwo Jima into their rhetorical war.



Send this to a friend