Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Future generations will wonder in bemused amusement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age-- Richard S. Lindzen , MIT physicist, 2007 Ready to lead us in a roll-back of the industrial age is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), thanks to the Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” harmful to human health and welfare, and therefore can be regulated under the Clean Air Act by the EPA. Letting no crisis go to waste, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced, at the opening of the Copenhagen Conference, EPA’s “endangerment finding”—that CO2, carbon dioxide, is a danger to human health. The Conference was to hold polluting countries, responsible for global-warmi...