The Opinion Blog

While $4 gas is great, $8 gas would be ideal

Ripped from the wires ... Joel Stein explains why he loves $4 gas:

By Joel Stein

I love $4 gas. It makes me appreciate freedom. I watch as the dollars spin and think, "You, Triceratops, did not get squished by an asteroid in vain. You got squished for a $60 drive to Vegas.''

So I didn't go to Wednesday's MoveOn.org protests against high gas prices, which included one at the most expensive gas station in the Los Angeles area, the Union 76 in Beverly Hills. MoveOn's news release explained: "We want to make sure the world knows that Beverly Hills residents are fed up with gas prices and want a president in the White House who will bring the cost of gas down.'' MoveOn always understands the problems plaguing Americans, such as the cost of gas in Beverly Hills. If the group succeeds on this issue, I hope it will next tackle the onerous two-year contract on the new iPhone and how late heirloom tomatoes arrived this year.

Global warming makes political big time at last

Ripped from the wires ... In an editorial Wednesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer cheers the Senate's discussion on the Lieberman-Warner-Boxer global-warming bill:

Senate debate this week on climate change is a step forward, even if it doesn't produce a law limiting carbon emissions.

A vote on such legislation was unthinkable as recently as two years ago. President Bush had set a hostile tone in Washington, denying that global warming existed and attacking the sound scientific research that had documented the problem.

Now, Bush concedes global warming is a reality. But he still isn't likely to sign the bill that the Senate is debating, believing that it could impose trillions of dollars in new costs on consumers and businesses.

POINT: Planet will suffer unless U.S. acts

Ripped from the wires ... Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair explains why Americans must embrace and attack global warming:

By Tony Blair

The climate change bill that senators are to begin debating next week is a hugely important signal of intent on behalf of U.S. legislators. Yes, negotiations could still alter the legislation. But the bill's core proposition is correct: Unless the United States radically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, along with other major emitters, the damage to the climate will be irreversible.

Radical reduction is unlikely to happen through voluntary action alone. Measures in the bill, through a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme, would reduce emissions 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. These cuts would be based on a carbon market incentive system that moves with the grain of action around the globe.

COUNTERPOINT: Global warmists talk through their hats

Ripped from the wires ... Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer shows how the "Church of the Environment" promulgates its faulty global-warming dogma:

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Forget global warming; fear environmentalism

From the morning e-mail (to be taken with a grain of salt) ... A conservative think tank touts a new book arguing that environmentalism poses a bigger threat to our economic health than global warming:

Czech President Exposes Climate Alarmism in New Book

Washington, D.C., May 27, 2008
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is proud to announce a provocative new book on environmental policy, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles" by Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. President Klaus makes the case that policies being proposed to address global warming are not justified by current science and are, in fact, a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity around the world.

If you think energy's too expensive now ...

Ripped from the wires ... Ben Lieberman of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, decries the proposed American Climate Security Act, which -- he says -- would drive up the prices Americans pay for gasoline, natural gas and electricity.

By Ben Lieberman

Millions of vacationers will pay record prices for gasoline as they hit the roads this Memorial Day weekend, and only those who've been in the sun too long would like to see prices climb even higher. Yet several members of Congress seem determined to guarantee that they will.

They're trying to pass a bill that would raise pump prices. Why? Because they think it would force people to use less. The America's Climate Security Act, sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., would also increase electricity and natural gas costs, all in the name of supposedly fighting global warming.

Uh oh: McCain joins global warming cult

Ripped from the wires ... Cal Thomas takes issue with John McCain's recent declaration that humans are influencing climate change and must help fix the problem:

By CAL THOMAS

In an effort to win over those "moderates'' who believe that global warming is about to destroy the planet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain spoke Monday at a Portland, Ore., training facility for Vestas Wind Technology. He claimed, "The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington.''

There certainly is more "hot air'' on this and a lot of other subjects in Washington, but that isn't what he meant. The era of big government is so not over, as Bill Clinton claimed it was in 1996. It is just beginning and increasingly the political contests seem to be about who will manage its growth, not who will reduce its size, cost and reach.

Our economic woes have their sweet side

Ripped from the wires ... Normally, I would not go back to Froma Harrop so soon after posting her other piece, but when she's right, she's right. Here, she discusses the positive aspects of our economic slowdown.

By FROMA HARROP

The morning after overdoing it, some of us take pleasure in the cleansing process. The carrot juice goes down smoothly, and a simple walk feels virtuous. One vows to exert more self-control and give yoga another try.

The current economic downturn creates its own kind of a hangover and also a potential learning experience. For many consumers, it has tolled closing time on too much borrowing, too much spending, too much sweet talk about real estate. The game is over. But while the dawn may seem cruel, it sheds light on certain truths that had been suppressed. Enrolling one's finances into a 12-step program is a healthy thing to do.

Wasn't England was supposed to gone by now?

Ripped from the wires ... Columnist-economist Walter Williams explains why it's a bad idea to ground public policy in "scientific" environmental predictions.

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.'' C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.''

MB no better than DHEC on toxic inactivism

Today's editorial critiques better-not-to-know attitude that apparently prevailed at the city of Myrtle Beach after a 1995 study showed toxic contamination in Withers Swash:

"Well, well. Turns out the Myrtle Beach city government was informed years ago that toxic trichloroethylene might have contaminated the groundwater in the south-central part of the city. So much for city officials' contention earlier this year that the state Department of Health and Environmental Control had kept city government in the dark about this problem.

"The vilification to which some city leaders subjected DHEC at a public meeting earlier this year was obviously misplaced and misdirected. These officials led residents to believe that the city's first inkling about the TCE groundwater pollution was the filing last fall of a private lawsuit against the company responsible for the problem, AVX Corp. Not true.

"As The Sun News reported this week, the U.S. Geological Survey in 1995 alerted the city to the possible existence of toxic groundwater contamination. That was the same year AVX self-reported the contamination problem at its plant on 17th Avenue South to DHEC.