A must-read today aside from our Ann Coulter column (which in an unusual twist mocks the becrappers out of liberals like John Kerry and warns that voting democrat literally puts America at risk); and our yesterday’s Barbara Kay column (which points to anti-idiotarian Islamist-fighting Arab women who are waker-uppers of the liberal-left shouting to them that our addiction to blinkered multicult stupidity will be the end of us as the western-style nation we know and love), was my first read of my day today, so I’m going out on a reading prediction limb here. But it’s about part “29-C” of the liberal-left moonbat campaign —the climate-change stupidity campaign — so it’s a solid limb to climb out on.
From the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com:
Saving lives versus saving planet Earth.
Two scientific events of note occurred this week, but only one got any media coverage. Therein lies a story about modern politics and scientific priorities.
The report that received the headlines was Monday’s 700-page jeremiad out of London on fighting climate change. Commissioned by the British government and overseen by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the report made the intentionally shocking prediction that global warming could eliminate from 5% to 20% of world economic output “forever.” Meanwhile, doing the supposedly virtuous thing and trying to forestall this catastrophe would cost merely an estimated 1% of world GDP. Thus we must act urgently and with new taxes and policies that go well beyond anything in the failed Kyoto Protocol.
The other event was a meeting at the United Nations organized by economist Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center. Ambassadors from 24 countries—including Australia, China, India and the U.S.—mulled which problems to address if the world suddenly found an extra $50 billion lying around. Mr. Lomborg’s point is that, in a world with scarce resources, you need priorities. The consensus was that communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition and hunger, and education were all higher priorities than climate change.
We invited Mr. Lomborg to address the Stern report, and he takes apart its analysis brick-by-brick here. To our reading, there isn’t much left of this politicized edifice. But we’d stress a couple of points ourselves.
[…] Unlike the Stern report and its patrons, those of us who take a skeptical approach to these doomsday climate scenarios aren’t trying to end the discussion. The Earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and this may be partly attributable to human behavior. But everything else—from how much warmer, to the extent of mankind’s contribution, to the cost of doing something about it—remains very much in dispute.
Some of the Stern review’s recommendations, such as carbon trading rights, are also worth debating. But most of its proposals are merely openings for government to expand its role in allocating investment, raising taxes and otherwise controlling economic decisions. Socialism was supposed to have died with the Soviet Union, but it is making a comeback under the guise of coping with global warming.
Wakey wakey, non-socialists.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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