No Sign Al Gore Will Pickup The Debate Challange

June 1, 2008

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on reason, freedom, and the climate alarmists

The world leader with an underlying political philosophy closest to that of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. Both men are trained economists, influenced deeply by free market principles as articulated by Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Freeman, and others who understood that individual freedom cannot be sustained in a command-control economy.

Only one of these men has stood firm against the hysteria of the global warming/climate change enviro-extremists, and their champions of the left who tell us that the only solution is more national and international control over economies - and it ‘aint Harper. Vaclav Klaus never misses an opportunity to expose the Al Gore-led international-socialists-posing-as-green-activists for what they are, and summarized it brilliantly last week in his appearance at Washington’s National Press Club. You’ll find the full text of his remarks here on his web site.

Carbon Tax or Cap-and-Trade?

Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 07:02 PM Comments: 16

Let's say that for political reasons, there is going to be some sort of carbon pricing regime. Maybe we'll do it to combat global warming which is stupid because:

• The planet isn't warming.
• The planet is warming, but it has nothing to do with man-made emissions.
• The planet is warming, but Canada's 2% contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, and a 10% cut, or a 20% cut, or a 50% cut, or even a 100% cut in a negligible contribution is a negligible improvement.

But hey, it wouldn't be the first time things are done for stupid reasons. Heck, stupid reasons notwithstanding, carbon pricing might still be a good thing to do, for some good reasons:

• Pollution is bad, and assuming a correlation between greenhouse gas emissions (probably harmless) and other sorts of emissions (certainly nasty) is a strong one, then cutting back on carbon emissions means cutting back on other forms of real pollution.
• Energy efficiency is good, and carbon usage as a function of GNP might be considered a measure of efficiency, one that can be shifted in the more efficient direction.
• Maybe there's a way to make money from this.

And then there is the most important reason of all:

• Despite the best efforts of better informed members of society, the majority has drunk deeply of the global warming Kool-Aid, and demand something be done, even if it makes no good sense at all.

One particular carbon pricing scheme has always made more sense to me. If we need to do this thing, let's at least do it right. Or at least as right as is possible to do something that is intrinsically ridiculous.

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