Why Rush on Global Warming?
by Max Schulz
The ABC News headline this week said it all: “U.S. Must Lead Way in
Clean Energy Technology, Agency Heads Say; Administration Officials
Push for the Swift Passing of Kerry-Boxer Climate Change Legislation.”

It’s that second part—about the need for swift passage of global
warming legislation—that tells the whole story.

Of course President Obama wants quick passage. For months the public
has focused on the bruising health care fight taking place in
Washington. Along with congressional allies like John Kerry, Barbara
Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi, Obama would like nothing better than to rush
global warming regulation through congress before the public can turn
proper attention to a proposal under which, as the President himself
has put it, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

But that’s just part of what proponents of a costly cap-and-trade
system would rather the public not hear. The president’s advisers
would like to ram through their climate proposals before the public
catches wind of the overwrought rhetoric bubbling up from the fevered
swamps of global warming alarmism.

Consider the interview Lord Nicholas Stern gave to The Times of London
decrying the carbon content of people’s food. “Meat is a wasteful use
of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he said. “I am not
sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the
kind of changes that will be necessary” to stave off global warming.

Give up meat to save the planet? That seems to be what he is saying.
The old saw used to be that meat is murder. Now it’s suicide. Lord
Stern is no gadfly crank, either. He is the most distinguished
authority on climate change in the United Kingdom, and authored a
landmark 2006 study on global warming economics. More than anyone,
Lord Stern advanced the controversial notion that we can constrain our
economies today to ward off tomorrow’s climate catastrophe. Now he
says we must become vegetarians too.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, claims failure to pass
a new Kyoto-style agreement at December’s global warming summit will
doom us. Literally. “If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be
in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done,
no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo
that choice,” he said. Hear that? We have just weeks to save the
planet.

Issuing imprudent and hyperbolic rhetoric about climate is not solely
a British disease, of course. Consider the warning issued by U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the New York Times recently. He
called global warming an “existential threat to humankind.” Maybe it
is, maybe it’s not. But if the Secretary General wishes to sound
alarms with Americans, he may be doing so unwittingly with another
line from his op-ed: “A deal must include an equitable global
governance structure.” In a country whose existence is rooted in its
struggle for independence, many Americans will be put off by such a
claim.

Unfortunately for those who would like to see climate change
regulation enacted, there are numerous other statements from allies
that would turn off a public paying greater attention to the issue.
Noted climate scientist Ken Caldeira, for instance, recently declared,
“I believe that we should be outlawing the production of devices that
emit carbon dioxide.” Think about that next time you drive your car.

In his books and columns, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman pines
for the authority held by China’s communist autocrats. He wishes
enlightened leaders could simply impose global warming solutions on
the American economy rather than having to approve them
democratically. Meanwhile a popular book by environmentalists Robert
and Brenda Vale, entitled Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to
Sustainable Living, argues that owning pets is even worse for the
planet than an SUV.

While certainly tongue-in-cheek compared to Friedman’s paean to
enlightened dictatorship or Lord Stern’s screed against meat, Time to
Eat the Dog shares their same worry, i.e., that people in their daily
lives are the planet’s gravest threat, and must be stopped.