Cost of Green

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Dick.

Let us, on this holiest of Earth Days, pause to consider.

“The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy,” President Obama told an Earth Day celebration in Iowa. Meanwhile the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide as dangerous to public health.

Carbon dioxide?

That would be the stuff we breathe out. Oddly, that would also be the stuff we breathe into drowning victims when we perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

What the President said today is good economics and good science. What the administration did today is bad economics based on bad science.

Global Warming is a good example of the politics of the Far Green overwhelming the truth of science. The popular press and the Congress would have us believe that all scientists agree on the causes and outcomes of Global Warming. And yet. And yet the National Climatic Data Center reports that global temperatures in 2006 were the third coldest on record. And yet 32,000 thousand scientists say “Hey, global warming doesn’t happen the way the politicians say it does.” In fact, as Weather Channel founder John Coleman wrote, “the climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.”

Thanks to the EPA ruling, synthetic trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the air could suck a trillion dollars per year out of the economy. That’s more than the Administration has sunk into Wall Street “banks.” A lot more.

Last month the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered the FDA to allow 17-year olds to buy the “Morning After Pill.” The ruling took the FDA to task for allowing ideology to trump the scientific evidence. The Agency had ignored its own scientists in creating the overturned regulations.

The court’s decision is the second major case this year that forces the government to put science ahead of politics.

I don’t like using a judicial decision to determine science but that does seem to be all the Administration understands. It is time for a court to tell the Administration what more than 30,000 scientists already know. It is time for science to trump ideology.

Or we could all hold our breath.

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