Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Rightly or wrongly, Global Warming offers disaster for our planet. Countering it has become a consuming concern. Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) focus on carbon dioxide. “A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself,” observes Bjorn Lomborg, whose Copenhagen Consensus found 36 better ways to accomplish the goal. Carbon dioxide is the by-product of fossil fuel, chiefly oil, which provides 85% of our energy. European attempts to decrease CO2 have failed while being extremely expensive. Nearly every European country has higher emissions today than when the Kyoto Protocol which started it was signed in 1997. Cap and Trade (C&T), a favored approach, is “the biggest income tax on industry yet devised,” in the opinion of Senator James Ihhofe (R, Oklahoma). Nevertheless some influential firms welcome it. “Cap” would put a lid on the emissions each plant can produce through “allowances” distributed by government or some other authority. “Trade” is to enable fir...

The Senate debates the Lieberman-Warner bill on Global Warminig. Over 31,000 scientists sign the Oregon Institute of Science petition rejecting Global Warming. Twenty-five 6th-grade pupils in the David A. Brown Middle School in Wildomar , California, sent eight letters on Global Warming to The Heartland Institute describing what they had been taught about Global Warming by reading ten articles. The articles they read were of floods in Asia, Mexico, and India, and of the shrinking of fetuses by air pollution. None mentioned Global Warming but the children made that attribution. Here are a couple of their letters, with their errors uncorrected: “I think your fools for denying G.W. you know it could kill us all & you’re just adding to it. I want you to help stop G.W. not increase it.” “We feel that they are destroying our planet by saying G.W. is not a crisis. You think GW is not a crisis but it is; you know deep down that it’s a real thing that’s happening. Everyone has a part in hel...