“We need to start in January making significant changes…This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis.”—Former Vice President Al Gore in a recent telephone interview with Associated Press.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the political composition of Congress—and not the clear, scientific basis of the phenomenon—will be the critical factor in determining whether the government acts to control “man-made” global climate change in the coming Congressional session.
Now, normally, in pursuit of a policy meant to avert an alleged disaster, the imminence of the danger would be the critical factor in determining whether the government will act. The more immediate the threat, the more likely the government is to act. This metric traditionally dominates debates over foreign policy actions, domestic economic interventions, and other crises that, some argue, require the government’s attention.
Implicit in the Green spiritual mentor’s message, however, is that the best opportunity to act to avert the climate “crisis” is not necessarily when the weight of scientific evidence illustrates an imminent danger to the nation or the world, but rather when enough “believers” have been elected to create the political probability of enacting legislation that will mandatorily limit carbon emissions of America’s smokestack industries.
Indeed, it is not as if there were a growing consensus behind the “science” of “man-made” global warming. Quite the contrary. As ALG News reported in Monday’s edition, a growing number of scientists have risen in opposition to the dogma that mankind’s normal economic activities—necessary to support and sustain the growth of civilization and to feed the world’s population—are destroying the environment and rendering it uninhabitable.
And recent findings by Lord Christopher Monckton conclude that the Green Crusade’s oracle—the UN International Panel on Climate Change’s computer models that project rampant global warming—is flawed and has failed to accurately predict climate phenomena of the past decade. Further, he warns that such an all-encompassing public policy should not be enacted when so many questions remain as to the severity—if any—of “man-made” climate change. “In short,” writes Lord Monckton, “we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong.”
In the meantime, adherents to the belief in “man-made” climate change tout the “conclusive” scientific “consensus” of the phenomenon. That consensus predicts impending catastrophe should governments fail to reduce carbon emissions now, thus necessitating immediate action. As indicated above, the only problem is that the “consensus” may be even more bogus than the dogma itself.
In a democracy, where true consensus is slow to build and definitive action requires a uniformity of opinion, economic central-planning is not so easy to implement. It would require a degree of consent not only from the people’s representatives in government, but from the people themselves.
And such lockstep uniformity simply does not exist.
A tyrannical executive dictate or EPA regulation could satisfy the Left’s power base. But it could also undermine the public’s will. Politically, and in the long-term, Congress needs to exercise its responsibility to engage in informed debate and bring the issue to an open vote.
The political cycle in coming elections will probably find Congress less—and not more—inhabited by liberal Democrats who tend to be supportive of radical environmentalism. The radicals, realizing this, are making their voices heard loudly. They don’t think they’re going to get another shot at this. As such, the “scientific”, computer-projected findings from the environmentalists will become ever more dire, such as reported in Sunday’s AP story, quoting President-elect Barack Obama after meeting with the Prophet Albert:
“‘The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over,’ he said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. ‘We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.’”
And, some more alarmism from the same story:
“Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding ‘tipping points.’
“‘We’re out of time,’ Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. ‘Things are going extinct.’
“U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists’ worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.
“The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.”
“In the early 1990s, many scientists figured that the world was about a century away from a truly dangerous amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Mike MacCracken, who was a top climate scientist in the Clinton administration. But as they studied the greenhouse effect further, scientists realized that harmful changes kick in at far lower levels of carbon dioxide than they thought. Now some scientists, but not all, say the safe carbon dioxide level for Earth is about 10 percent below what it is now.”
“Gore called the situation ‘the equivalent of a five-alarm fire that has to be addressed immediately.’
Although couched in scientific rhetoric, it is only convenient that suddenly the matter of curbing carbon emissions is all the more urgent right at the very moment when it becomes all the more likely for such legislation to pass. The Hard Left is reaching. And overreaching.
Such is the state of the “debate” on governmental environmental policy. Consequently, Congress will be motivated in the coming session to act, not on the basis of scientific evidence, but on the basis of political imperative. Because the window of opportunity will rapidly diminish if they do not.
As such, the political imperative—and its diminishment—is the real emergency for the environmentalists. Not clear, scientific evidence of the Mother Earth suddenly reaching the kindling point.
Robert Romano is the Editor of ALG News Bureau.
