Writing in today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer blows the whistle on an end run by the Executive Branch intended to bring a huge swath of US private-sector activity under the direct control of the EPA, in yet another example of fantastic utility of the Global Warming “crisis” as a justification for statist and socialist power-grabs on the most audacious scale.
Krauthammer explains why Global Warmism has become the Swiss Army Knife of the activist Left:
Politically it’s an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.
Read the article here.
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Wake me up if Charles Krauthammer is ever right about anything.
1) There is the usual ad hominem argument: those who advocate doing something about global warming do so not because of its potential catastrophic results, but because it is a political ploy designed to stimulate “every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt.” Liberals don’t act on anything because they believe that it is the right thing to do; their acts are the direct result of being enfeebled by guilt.
2) The EPA did not “claim jurisdiction,” any more than the Department of Justice “claims jurisdiction” when it prosecutes a case in court. The EPA is charged with regulating pollutants and the environment. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Its effects on the environment are well established. This is not a “power grab.” It is simply an agency of government doing the job it has been charged with since it was first established by noted Socialist Richard Nixon.
3) Not only is the regulation of carbon dioxide within the EPA’s legitimate jurisdiction, but it was ordered to do so in 2007 by the Supreme Court, which said that it had not only the authority but also the obligation to do so. An inconvenient fact which is ignored by Krauthammer.
4) Presumably Krauthammer prefers the modus operandi of the previous administration, which hired an energy industry lobbyist to remove evidence of global warming from EPA reports, and which refused to open an EPA report which outlined how climate change harms the national interest (because if they opened the envelope, the report would be part of the public record). The Bush administration preferred to stick its head in the sand rather than deal with a difficult issue. So does Krauthammer.
Carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant”; it is an essential and naturally occurring component of the atmosphere — and it is, by the way, what plants eat. Crops, for example, tend to do better with higher concentrations of CO2. We aren’t talking about sulfuric acid here.
There would be no fuss whatsoever about CO2 were it not for the global warming “crisis”.
And then, lo and behold:
Nah, no “claiming of jurisdiction” there. Just a “much-anticipated announcement” of a new regime of regulation, put in place by executive fiat.
Normally, I’d have said something like. “Wake me when it’s over.” I mean all this talk of warming had me feeling blue.
But now it appears, I’ve got something else to pin on Mr. Gore. Know any good lawyers?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34369734/ns/health-mental_health/ns/health-mental_health/
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/global-warming-lecture-postponed-due-to-cooling