Capitol Ideas: Leading the Fanatics
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Leading the Fanatics W ithout embarrassment, Vice President Al Gore went to the climate-change meeting in Kyoto, Japan, and said that "we have reached a fundamentally...
...Five billion dollars in tax breaks and subsidies are planned to promote solar power, electric cars, wind power, etc...
...should take steps to cut emissions right now, "regardless of what other countries do...
...These studies will be paid for by the U.S...
...In brief, most greenhouse gases are the work of nature, not of man...
...Another newspaper more truthfully noted that public opinion has not yet been "formed" on this issue, however...
...or subscribe to Art Robinson's newsletter Access to Energy (Box 1250, Cave Junction, OR 97523) or Howard Hayden's Fresh from Kyoto, greenhouse guru Al Gore gasses on...
...the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Basel Convention on Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes...
...Gore was talking about the emission of greenhouse gas...
...Clinton could start implementing Kyoto surreptitiously...
...Together, they are expected to cause over half the global emissions within a few years...
...So look for more propaganda intended to form it...
...forum than by the Democratic Party...
...But it's too expensive to fix...
...Remember, emissions must be reduced below 1990 levels...
...Appliance standards can be ratcheted upward...
...Countries will be lured with foreign aid bribes and threatened with trade sanctions if they decline to go along with the American position...
...A number of other treaties are likewise waiting in the West Wing: the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Law of the Sea Convention...
...The U.S...
...In this, as in other areas (AIDS, ozone-hole, acid rain), science is completely overshadowed by politics...
...Republicans should above all insist that the scientific claims of the global warmers are devoid of all merit...
...Actually, that wasn't the New York Times, but Bill Clinton on the evening news, engaging in pure demagoguery...
...It's said that the Senate won't ratify, so don't worry...
...This is a religion most decidedly not separated from the state, and therein lies both the danger and the opportunity...
...most of the tiny recorded rise in temperature in this century took place before World War II, and contradicts current global warming theory...
...American officials realized that if they were to do what the enviros want—get the price of gasoline up to $3 a gallon and reduce energy use by one-third, among other things—this could more easily be attained in a U.N...
...A way has been found to impute a superior wisdom to the very people whose ignorance is privately relied upon...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Leading the Fanatics W ithout embarrassment, Vice President Al Gore went to the climate-change meeting in Kyoto, Japan, and said that "we have reached a fundamentally new stage in the development of human civilization...
...Those who want to know more about the science should consult the writings of S. Fred Singer (his Hot Talk: Cold Science is available for $17.50 from SEPP, 4084 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030...
...Better educated people are most likely to favor early action by the United States...
...delegation went to Kyoto pledging to cut these emissions to 1990 levels, but we soon yielded to environmental fanaticism by accepting an even stricter standard...
...Fanatics are dangerous because nothing deters them...
...Finally, trade regulations can and will be used to twist the arms of Third World countries and get them to join in the next round of the treaty, late in 1998...
...Developing countries wisely did not sign on...
...Fully three-quarters of college graduates favor acting even without a binding treaty...
...The same goes for Russia...
...Britain has shifted from coal to North Sea oil and gas, so that it, too, is safely below its former emission levels...
...Its drastic curbs on energy Tom BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...At the same time, Gore is so much the true-believer that his fanaticism could put his political future at risk...
...That baseline was carefully chosen...
...The treaty provides that the U.S...
...Nuclear power has been thoroughly demonized (even though, as France has shown, it is clean and harmless) and it will not be revived...
...Does China suffer from a deficit of democracy, then...
...As a result of this intimidation — suddenly someone wants to know what you think of global emissions and greenhouse gases—peopleare alert for cues as to the "right" answer and are only too happy to provide it...
...The widespread skepticism about global warming was detailed in Science ("Greenhouse Forecasting Still Cloudy," 16 May 1997...
...Other regulations can be brought into play, requiring sharp increases in fuel efficiency for automobiles...
...Al Gore and the U.S...
...Pollsters might now use those same words, preceded by: "The President of the United States says that if the treaty is not ratified...
...It has the beneficial effect of reconstituting the old Reagan anti-Communist coalition, including libertarians, labor rank and file, and conservatives of both neo and paleo stripe...
...But 130 countries did not do so...
...Example: Without the agreement, ice caps will melt and "huge lowland areas in the United States, including big portions of central Florida, could be completely flooded...
...Even Dick Gephardt refused to endorse the treaty as it stands...
...Conceding the facts and responding as penny-pinchers is of course the way Republicans have been trained to behave in many situations, and they seem to enjoy it...
...Pollsters assure us that they do not know the identities of those phoned, but of course when you are dragged away from dinner by a caller from the New York Times you don't think about that...
...In seeking peace with the environmentalists, then, the Clinton administration yielded to extremism, and after Kyoto it was difficult to find any politician on the record as supporting the treaty...
...If complied with immediately, the treaty would plunge the U.S...
...If two-thirds of the people strongly support action, two-thirds of the Senate should be happy to ratify...
...Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who attended the Kyoto meeting, characterizes the GOP position this way: 'We accept that the environment is going to hell...
...Now do you think the Senate should ratify...
...Its "a work in progress," he said...
...The bogus nature of this poll was plain...
...government, out of the $5 billion mentioned above, and among their most eager transmitters will be Peter Jennings of ABC News, and his sidekick Ned Potter...
...The alternative energy subsidies doled out at the time of the 1970's energy crisis will be back with us...
...04 20 February 1998 • The American Spectator...
...It is the position that the political class in Washington wants them to adopt: Concede the moral high ground and don the green eyeshade...
...Let me repeat what I have said earlier: Democracy is rule by publicity, and the intellectual class knows from experience that it can dominate that publicity (i.e., the media) and prevail upon semi-educated majorities to vote for whatever is their preferred scheme of the moment...
...But it is clear that human-agency global warming was presented as a fait accompli, with all scientific controversy excised...
...Like a good conjurer, the New York Times had us looking the wrong way with its irrelevant pollster patter ("a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points"), but preserved a careful silence about the factual basis and precise wording of the questions...
...The bogus nature of these polls, and the political aims of the organizations that conduct them, must be made explicit...
...First, politicians will be nudged with the bogus claim that "the American people" are mightily concerned about global warming...
...So, Al Gore and his enviro-fanatics could still prevail, absurd though their claims are...
...use—perhaps reducing it by as much as one-third—would throw millions of people out of work...
...18 February 1998 • The American Spectator Energy Advocate (Box 542, Storrs, CT 06268...
...All along that country has relied on nuclear power, which is clean and does not emit greenhouse gases...
...This should be the basis of the Republican attack on Gore: We don't need an anti-American president in the year 2000...
...But needless to say, our home-grown enviros rule that roost, too...
...The college educated are the most susceptible to these techniques, as the New York Times reported...
...Now we are committed to reducing gases to seven percent below 1990 levels, by the year 2012...
...Ah, that's it, if only its people could vote, they would prevail on the government to do something about this World Crisis of the Human Spirit...
...could follow suit, and replace old power plants with nuclearones...
...The U.S...
...And remember, all this will happen with little or no public scrutiny...
...Be ready for a new wave of lies, dressed up as science...
...If we are to be loaded down with tax increases, better that anonymous foreign bureaucrats take the blame than the Clinton White House...
...In the last eight years, economic activity in the former Soviet Union has fallen by about one-third...
...into depression...
...Worrying about it is the latest religion...
...The Kyoto conference achieved an anti-American outcome and was designed to do so...
...The newspaper avoided publishing the wording of its questions and the sequence in which they were asked...
...People phoned at home are easy prey to cultural intimidation...
...Such polls function to manufacture opinion where none exists, and in particular to claim a popular mandate for the preferred policies of the political class...
...The immediate thought is likely to be that the pollster has your number and, who knows, might even call your boss if you say the "wrong" thing...
...Indeed, before the conference the Senate voted unanimously that developing countries must sign on if the treaty is to be acceptable...
...Even before Kyoto, the New York Times concocted a poll finding that 65 percent of those polled (by telephone) believe the U.S...
...But as Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal said, the scary part is that Gore really believes this stuff...
...Beware of complacency, nonetheless...
...He could use the Clean Air Act—particulate matter/ozone standards promulgated by the EPA last year...
...It's true that the treaty won't be ratified any time soon...
...Today, therefore, Russia is way below its old emissions levels—although not because it has followed environmentalist prescriptions...
...One danger is that Republicans will persist in their feeble response...
...The point is that depending on the wording, any public opinion can be elicited...
...will experience hardships that other industrial countries will avoid...
...provided the institutional framework for this outcome, but notice that we deliberately used the U.N., not the other way around...
...France also escapes...
...News will also be manufactured out of new "studies" showing that global warming is getting ever more ominous...
...Germany had just swallowed up East Germany, then still using inefficient coal-fired plants...
...Understanding that this was nothing but a plan to curtail economic growth, they told American officials to come back and see them in fifty years...
...Emissions in Germany and the Soviet Union were still very high in 199o...
...The most important such gas is carbon dioxide—produced by burning oil, coal, and natural gas...
...Democracy triumphs again...
...The U.N...
...This new stage is a crisis stage, and its "spiritual roots" are "pridefulness and a failure to understand and respect our connections to God's earth and to each other...
...press called this "flexibility," showing how important control of the rhetoric really is...
...L et us note the political strategy that will be pursued in trying to get the Senate to go along...
...Now that they have been modernized and incorporated into Germany proper, the demand that emissions must be reduced below 1990 levels becomes, for Germany, a painless exercise in anti-American moralizing...
...Environmentalists believe that greenhouse emissions will cause global warming...
...The real goal of the treaty is to give the federal government an excuse to raise taxes, and to set stricter appliance and auto efficiency standards...
...But it can be kept on hold in the Oval Office...
...China deserves our thanks for standing firm and refusing to join in the folly...
...Any meteorological event will be seized on, including blizzards," said Fred Singer...
...This will take the form of news stories, not editorials...
Vol. 31 • February 1998 • No. 2
