Recently, I attended a rather Progressively-oriented presentation on Global Warming (GW). The speaker had spent 15 years as a GW activist, conscientiously beavering away at GW whoop-de-do's all over the world.
The speaker's message was pure Berkeley: The sky is falling; we have models of the future; government please take over. Naturally, no evidence of why these models, out of the many available, are the sworn, ultimate truth. His solution was simple: Cooperation among greenhouse gas emitting countries, plus technology advancement. At least he had the good grace to admit that, pragmatically, both of these components are difficult to achieve. As for their timely coordination---forget it!
For an expert, he was incredibly naïve in other areas. For example, he bemoaned the dearth of long-term thinking in political circles. Hey, in politics, two weeks is a long time! He also chided the U.S. for not taking the GW lead and setting the pace for change because "we are rich." Eliminating bad guy carbon from our energy menu would be a change of Brobdingnagian proportions, rivaling the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel. Simplistically mishandled, the devastation of not only the U.S. economy but, eventually, the world's, is guaranteed. And, not so naively, no mention was made of sensible carbon reduction strategies such as nuclear (a viable approach does exist), carbon capture, conservation, etc.
So, what's the point of all this hyperventilation? Nothing less than political skullduggery. Progressive do-gooders and the liberal-lefty media seek to hand over to the government a golden-egg-laying goose the size of a titanosaur. Thus, the consequence of transferring virtually limitless power over carbon elimination to the powers-that-be would be a politically centralizing, mega-tentacled gift of such magnitude as to exceed the wildest dreams of even the most ardent, far-left socialist.
