February 3, 2007
They certainly picked the perfect day for this announcement
On the day when Woodstock, Illinois commemorates the filming of a movie in their quaint town and people around the country turn to a rodent for weather prognostication, it seems fitting that a major international panel issued a report confirming global warming and blaming it on human causes. It’s also fitting that global warming’s financial enemies were ready to decry this report like a frightened groundhog seeing it’s shadow.
Fun groundhog aside… Wikipedia just informed me a ground hog is also called a whistlepig. I really think there should be a movement to change Feb. 2 to the much more fun Whistlepig’s Day.
But back to the report… The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their report on global warming after six years of study by scientists from around the world. They said warming is real, it’s due to carbon dioxide emissions, but warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action.
“Policy makers paid us to do good science, and now we have very high scientific confidence in this work — this is real, this is real, this is real,” said Richard B. Alley, one of the lead authors and a professor at Pennsylvania State University. “So now act, the ball’s back in your court.”
Oh, and act they did. As expected Our Fine President and his crew were out in full force to say they stand behind this report. They have always been for the environment. See his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs — “more money than any other country.” That last quote comes from Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Of course the U.S. contributes more greenhouse gases to the environment than any other country. It’s a quarter of the total emissions, and we can do all that despite having just 5 percent of the population. We’re number one, we’re number one. Oh wait, sorry caught up in the patriotic fervor that sweeps over me every time I hear about something else the U.S. is best at.
But leave it to Bodman to belittle out accomplishment. “We are a small contributor to the overall, when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution,” he said. Then he went on to explain why it’s a bad idea for the government to cap emissions. You see it might hurt some big companies and thus cost us jobs. Then those jobs might go oversees to other polluters. As Bodman put it, “There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would — may — lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap,” Bodman said. “You would then have the U.S. economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions, potentially even worse emissions.”
So, if I follow him correctly, we should continue polluting as much as we like because if we don’t someone else will and why should they get all the fun. I think this approach sells our international influence a little short. Are we not the great world leaders who spread our democracy around the globe like so much delicious populist jam? How can we bring people freedom but not convince them to join us in being better stewards of the planet? Oh wait, I guess we haven’t been as good at spreading influence there.
But still, there’s this global warming thing to deal with. Capping emissions would accomplish the job and force people to adjust to realities they will need to adjust to at some point. But telling business what to do is never a good idea. After all businesses will take care of themselves and don’t need government interference to do the right thing. Our Fine President will simply ask people to reduce gas consumption without actually requiring anyone to do it. That’s always worked and the oil industry is really ready to relinquish some of their record profits.
Well, not directly anyway. Of course their proxy, The American Enterprise Institute is offering cash payments to any scientist who will publish something critical of the U.N. Panel’s report. The oil industry plans to continue their campaign to discredit the idea of global warming at the same time they’re seeing record profits. They figure that making money now will leave them better prepared for the environmental disaster that comes with their profits.
Then we have the people who just flat out deny the concept that the earth might be warming and most other modern science. Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe is always one of the most outspoken in the anti-science camp. He called the report a “corruption of science” and a “political document.” The Senator who receives the most money from the oil industry continued to assert that global warming is a hoax, that seems like a strange coincidence.
The evidence continues to grow. The way we run our society is suicidal in the long term and if change isn’t started now it might be too late. It’d be nice to see the leadership of the world’s largest polluter take decisive action to secure that there will be an above sea level future for our homeland, but of course that’d mean forgoing all those profits to be made in the present.
It’s better to hide in a fake tree stump. Environmental disaster sure can’t hurt you when you’re ducking down in a plastic whistlepig hideout.