Erik Falkenstein remarks that the UK’s Minister for Europe was surprised to learn that some Americans thought climate change was a pretext for a liberal agenda:
I guess the idea never occurred to him because as Al Gore noted, the science is over.He noted that the upside of Global Warming is there are tons of ‘green collar’ jobs to be had! And he has a point. If we don’t let companies burn fossil fuels like coal or gas, and don’t build any more nuclear plants, all of us will have full time jobs collecting biomass for fuel as they do in Africa, or washing our clothes in the river, or walking to work. The smell of dung can really add a little zest to your smoked ribs.
Living in Minnesota, we could use a couple more degrees. Indeed, cold spells are generally worse for mammalian life than heat spells, but that’s no mind. The reason why some of us think there’s a pretext here is we have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain, Carter’s malaise speech about the 70′s energy crisis, the ozone hole, deforestation, and then when the metrics don’t continue their trend and life goes on, they find a new boogie man. There’s always a greater good, whether it’s not discussing the gulag when coming back from the Soviet Union, exaggerating the risk of heterosexual AIDS, downplaying the corruption by the latest African kleptocrat, or promoting the “4 food groups”, many, if not most ‘big ideas’ are merely pretexts for people wanting to push various selfish agendas.
Unthinkable.