Of people and climate change

An editorial from the Early August 2013 North Woods Call

     Here’s something sure to irritate those who swoon over carbon taxes and plead for ever more U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations.  But it has to be said.
     The President of the United States recently declared war on climate change—especially coal-fired power plants—and signaled that he would prosecute that war with executive orders and bureaucratic decrees.  To heck with Congress, or anyone else who belongs to the “Flat Earth Society” and isn’t smart enough to know that human activity is the primary cause of this “crisis.”
     The simple fact that many politicians, scientists and environmentalists know this “inconvenient truth” is apparently enough for them to force even the most draconian and costly actions on society to correct the problem.
     Never mind that some other scientists disagree with these conclusions, and that a large portion of the population isn’t yet “enlightened” enough to understand that fossil fuels and industrial activities will soon render the earth uninhabitable.
     And never mind that the nation is broke, or that many of its hard-working citizens are unemployed and financially stressed.
     More taxes, more spending and more government mandates are the remedies for all our woes, they seem to believe.
     We’ve said before that we don’t know how to sort through all the conflicting testimony in this matter.  If the climate is indeed changing—and there’s some short-term evidence, at least, that suggests it may be—what is the real cause?
     The president and Al Gore, among others, tell us unequivocally that it’s our fault.  We drive too much, manufacture too much and generally live beyond what a finite earth can sustain.  Maybe so.
      But why should we believe THEM?  After all, they’re politicians and they’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they routinely lie about almost everything.
     If this is such an urgent matter that requires the emergency subversion of our representative republic to correct, why does the president seem to be in the air more than he is on the ground—burning  hundreds of thousands of gallons of high-octane jet fuel during never-ending campaign and vacation trips?  Why doesn’t he and other advocates of global warming and climate change model the behavior they demand that we adopt?
     The same question might be posed to members of often left-leaning and self-righteous environmental groups, who seem to drive, fly and consume fossil fuels as much as anyone else.
     We don’t claim to be Nobel Prize-winning climatologists.  Nor do we claim—as so many others do—to know the absolute truth about this contentious issue.  But we think it deserves a more honest, serious and much less politically influenced conversation.
     The way forward, in our opinion, is for those who embrace the notion of man-made climate change to offer clear and easily understandable arguments—backed by verifiable science—that will convince the naysayers of the validity of their position.
      As it is today, there’s way too much mocking and demonizing of those who prefer a more careful examination of such evidence—pro and con—before agreeing to further line the pockets of politicians, crony capitalists and bureaucrats who seem to be much more interested in themselves than in saving the world.