I stumbled onto an interesting item from Maine state-house candidate Jon Reisman, excerpted below:
There may be near unanimous agreement on desiring good stewardship and sustainability of natural and human resources, but there is no agreement on what exactly that might mean in practice. What is or is not “sustainable” depends on assumptions about technological change, economic systems, and human nature. Thomas Malthus (father of the population explosion hysteria) made such assumptions and predicted mankind’s collapse. His heirs in today’s environmental movement employ similar tactics. Predicting apocalypse and crying wolf get you attention and funding—especially if you take steps to assure you won’t be held accountable for repeatedly and incorrectly crying wolf.
Global warming is the latest and most successful effort along these lines. Al Gore got a Nobel Prize for it. And after all, bending a little science in the name of saving the planet isn’t really a mortal sin, is it? Just a little green lie. . . .
As part of Maine’s efforts to “fight” climate change, in August 2001 Maine signed an agreement with the Maritime Provinces and the other New England states to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change Action Plan is essentially an updated regional version of the infamous Kyoto Protocol. (The Kyoto Protocol was of course famously rejected by President Bush in April of 2001. Somewhat less famously, the U.S. Senate rejected the terms of Kyoto 95–0 in 1997, and President Clinton, for some reason, never took it to the Senate for ratification after that.) Maine has also signed an agreement with a number of other “blue” states to implement reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This initiative, like the Kyoto Protocol, will stealthily and perhaps substantially raise energy prices, yet will avert essentially no global warming. Legislation to require disclosure of those facts was derailed by Maine’s environmental left in 2005. It seems that transparency, honesty, and accountability just won’t do in climate change policy. . . .
Perhaps someday the environmental left’s stranglehold on Maine’s political culture will be broken. If that ever happens, here are the principles that must guide environmental policy:
- Good stewardship is based on facts not fears. . . .
- Wealth makes health. . . .
- Technological innovation and entrepreneurship are critical for human progress. . . .
- Socialism is not sustainable. . . .
The day “green” looks like that, even I’ll drink the kool-aid.
But what caught my eye initially was that Bangor Metro illustrated the piece with the image below — I wonder if Ivin at Green Cool-Aid knows: