Climate Change Debate Continues

There are some high minded idealists who have fundamentally believed that human reason can be used to immediately and deliberately contrive a solution to any problem, no matter the magnitude.  Modern liberalism, with its roots in the French rationalist school of thought, believes that there are no potential errors or limits to human reason.  Even the most impossible task of unilaterally altering the world’s climate is possible.

These propositions represent the indefatigable spirit of hubris and ignorance.

China and India show no willingness to even the semblance of complying with climate change regulations. To the Chinese, cap and trade legislation proposed by the radical environmentalist organ of the Democratic Party, means we cap our competiveness and they increase their trade.

China is trumpeted as an idyllic investor in green jobs and purchaser of carbon credits.  They are also perpetually pummeling the environment with prodigious amounts of smog and there industrial sector contains few environmental protections.  China practices an unrelenting all of the above energy policy with a heavy reliance on traditional affordable energy sources such as nuclear, coal and oil.  However, they do trade carbon credits with the European Union in a green Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA), in a House Energy and Power subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, groaned that Republicans are “allergic to science”.   Still, the science on climate change is not settled and the consensus is not uniform amongst scientists.  The climate gate scandal in East Anglia shows that human reason is not infallible and individual self-interest is irrepressible.

One of the gaping holes of liberal orthodoxy (which at times resembles Swiss cheese) is that they exalt themselves as the true omnipotent representatives of the people.  But when the people disagree with utopian and economically suicidal cap and trade schemes, recalcitrance is met with back door bureaucratic impositions and political recriminations.  In turn liberal policy conspicuously morphs into arbitrary ad hoc decrees and a stark divergence from representing the people.

Ben Franklin said famously, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.  At least let us have the choice.