March 23, 2007
MISTAKING THE BAKER'S WINDOW FOR THERMOPYLAE:
The Cost-Free Catastrophe: What will new energy policies cost? (Rich Lowry, 3/23/07, National Review)
Maybe the next Al Gore film should be called How to Profit From the Coming Global Meltdown. The former vice president told Congress during his star-turn there that, in the course of combating global warming, we can "improve our economy's productivity and performance."It is a common argument among advocates of greenhouse-gas restrictions and clean-technology subsidies that these measures will be an economic boon. When John Edwards unveiled his plan to "halt global warming," he promised to create a million new jobs as part of "a new energy economy." If global warming can be stopped while adding jobs to the economy -- what are we waiting for? We can have all the economic growth we want and save the planet too.
As it happens, serious efforts to combat global warming in the U.S. will create new jobs, but most of them probably will be in China and India. It was just four years ago that Democrats were attacking "out-sourcing." Now they are willing to contemplate measures that would encourage it in the cause of reduced American carbon emissions.
It would be difficult to be more wrong, though that';s not atypical of the Right on such questions. China and India aren't innovative and won't be the ones to come up with replacement technologies, America will. And you can't very well out-source the physical work of upgrading our energy delivery and conservation systems, that construction work'll be done by Mexican immigrants, not that the Right grasps that either... Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2007 10:57 AM
Yes, but if you pass a law like Kyoto, the lazy solution to reducing CO2 is easy; you just outsource your manufacturing to China (where they do the same thing, producing twice as much C02 in the process as you ever did).
Posted by: Mike Earl at March 23, 2007 12:01 PMYes, but if you pass a law like Kyoto, the lazy solution to reducing CO2 is easy; you just outsource your manufacturing to China (where they do the same thing, producing twice as much C02 in the process as you ever did).
Posted by: Mike Earl at March 23, 2007 12:05 PMYes, that's why the U.S. is probably the only country that is really doing anything useful for the environment.
Posted by: erp at March 23, 2007 12:36 PMNo one's talking about Kyoto. It's dead.
Posted by: oj at March 23, 2007 3:14 PMThe next move in the global warming front will be direct payments to Hugo Chavez (and Lula, and African kleptocrats) - bribes to "stop" deforestation.
Of course, none of the money will ever save even one tree. But the Left will trumpet the line item on their balance sheet to high heaven. and just wait until it becomes a tax, and not a 'suggestion'.
Posted by: ratbert at March 23, 2007 9:45 PMNope. It'll be carbon taxes, as it should be.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2007 5:37 AMTrackBack
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Former Vice President Al Gore, hoping to spur action on legislation to fight climate change, warned [Read More]