In his Deepwater Horizon speech, President Obama erroneously compared the effort required to reduce per capita emissions of carbon dioxide to what they were in 1867 — which is the goal of the cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House last summer — to our landing men on the moon. He implied that it’s okay to go this route, even if we don’t know how to do it. In fact, we knew how to send men to the moon: with big rockets and a disposable lunar lander. We have no idea how to reduce the per capita carbon consumption of 400 million Americans to what it was immediately after the Civil War — absolutely no idea.

President Obama promised the most transparent administration in history. Saying things that aren’t true and making false analogies is hardly transparency.

– Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.