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The collapsing crusade for legislation to combat climate change raises a question: Has ever a political movement made so little of so many advantages?
How did this happen? Climatologists are the world’s wealthiest, most powerful men—and they were so close to taking ultimate power—control of the United Nations. (Yes, my mind is shuddering even as I write.)
Some fools will point to the massive wealth of the energy sector in an industry that produces more than 70 million barrels of oil per day. Would they use their money to combat an idea which would threaten their profits? Highly unlikely. Anyway, I’m a political scientist, not an economist (no thank you) so I know that numbers really aren’t as important as ideas. It’s much more important to think that you’re winning a war than that you’re actually winning it.
But back to the insufferable eco-nuts. It’s counterintuitively plain & clear why Team Global Warming is now Team Losing: Bambi became Godzilla.
That is, a small band of merry skeptics became the unmerry dogmatists. (Are you buying this crap yet?) Because that is how science works. Much like the pope or the Ayatollah or Louis XIV, living in their palaces with their concubines and opium and guarded by a host of eunuchs (pretty much your typical climate scientist, from what I’ve been told). In other words, they lost touch with their roots in the mad, desperate and above all selfish attempt to save the planet on which we happen to live (for reasons I think I learned in college and have now forgotten so probably are not terribly important).
So what exactly are their roots? It’s really quite amazing. Turns out that they’re really akin to economic libertarians (not the same as your garden-variety libertarians, it seems), in that they opposed (in their merry band of rebels past) Big Science, Big Government, and Experts. And this makes perfect sense to me: After all, I have a Ph.D. and not even I seem to know a goddam thing.
And because government action has unintended consequences, it’s generally much better to do nothing. Such as when I support the invasion of Iraq—I realized that closest thing to doing nothing would be to support President Bush, as he seemed more determined to do as little as possible than any other president in history.
Big Science, after all, tried to cure polio—and we all know how that turned out (completely wrecked the iron lung industry). And a bit of lead in your paint, or your food, or your brain—did that really ever hurt anyone? Please.
In the middle of the 20th century, Americans, impressed by the government's mobilization of society for victory in World War II, were "intoxicated with social and environmental engineering of all kinds." Back then, environmentalism was skepticism. (Still not buying this crap? Keep reading.)
It was much like those who questioned the so-called experts who told us that we could win the Vietnam War. Never mind that many experts said that we couldn’t, and that this has nothing to do with climate science or really science at all. The point is that self-appointed experts have been wrong in the past. Except for me, because even when I’m wrong--I’m still right.
Yes, Iraq has been a mess—and yes, I did think it was a good idea--but just think how bad things would have been if had we not invaded. The mind shudders.
(So you see I was right after all, in case you didn't get that point that I just made about me being right as pretty much always.)
So you see, ‘experts’ are really just fallible human beings who should not be trusted. Now I don’t really know anything about physics or chemistry or the weather or sunspots of any of that—but I do know that I would never be so foolish as to be spouting off about things of which I know absolutely nothing. Why do you think I’ve been writing this column for 30 years? Because I think I’m expert? Of course not! Because I know I’m right. (Please don’t complicate things.)
As another example, a so-called ‘expert’ once thought that certain food might be unhealthy. However, current research suggests that people still die—so if a scientist was wrong once, how can we trust them now? For all we know, some people have stopped dying and we simply haven’t heard about it because the ‘experts’ want to concentrate all of the immortality power in Washington…perhaps even forming a Department of Immortality! Blast it all, where is my immortality formula? (Again, the mind shudders—they will stop at nothing!?)
At any rate, and as any fool knows, people are a load of greedy selfish bastards who will never give up their coal-and-oil--and-uranium-powered Tivos; so trying to stop global warming is simply a giant waste of time. World leaders should be concentrating on more important things than saving mankind from world-wide havoc. Such as reading one of my books about baseball.
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