Glbl Wrrng

Debra Saunders talks about people who suppose that whether or not Global Warming is real, we should act as if it were. That way, either we mitigate a real problem, or we save energy and cut down on pollution. She sums up their reasoning thus: "It's OK if we're wrong, because we mean well."

My position is that there is clearly no Global Warming. There is definitely regional climate change, in some places warmer, in some cooler. If the Glowarms are right in their predicted catastrophes, then there is no amount of florescent bulbs and lo-flo toilets that will make the slightest difference. If complete compliance to the enviroprop of the Kyoto Protocol were actually achieved, it would have no meaningful effect. The supposed twenty-foot rise of sealevel would be nineteen feet and nine inches. And in rescuing those three inches, the economies of the industrialized world would be ruined.

That's if it's real, which it isn't. Thus, as I say in Endangered Speciousness, "'If fully implemented, its energy rationing provisions could cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually but would, according to its proponents, avert only 0.07 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050.' This, compared to the egregious reality that the non-signatory third world countries would be busily deforesting and igniting hydrocarbons to their hearts' content. (Say, here, here, here.)"

It has to do with clarity of thought. There are plenty of phony dangers. They are generally the product of neuroses. Might we somehow levitate ourselves off the chat-therapy couch and analyze the world in realistic rather than ideotropic and symbolic terms? We do, after all, have other concerns, more pressing. Transfats are indeed a health hazard. UV rays do indeed pose a risk. Power grid failures are certainly a problem. But I'm a vegetarian who uses sunscreen, and I turn the lights out when I leave a room. Get it?

Risks that are neutralized are not risks. The planet doesn't need saving. It's been rolling along for six thousand years now, surviving Noah's Flood and Joshua's long day, and mass Cambrian-Ordovician-Silurian extinctions -- oh where have all the trilobites gone? -- how we weep, weep for the archaeocyathids and the conodonts! But we must soldier on. For all that we might mourn the imminent passing of coral, we must brace ourselves to face the world as it is.

Islam, you see, has sharp edges. Its sacred crescent is both the moon and the scimitar, and it is dangerous to bump up against it. When Islam leaves its proper reserves and encroaches into the very heart of Christendom, mighty towers fall like Jericho walls. Who do you suppose will rebuild Babylon? Whose blood will slurry the bricks? We must know that appetites in the land of Sodom have not been sated by the fast of centuries. Allah is his more recent name, but Chemosh still craves blood.

Well. With some dangers it's okay if we're wrong. I expect that would be only for phony dangers, though. In our culture of abundance, we can afford to be neurotic. We'll be taken care of. Or should I be speaking in the past tense? In any case, we need to address the future. Not the immediate future. We certainly have time. A whole generation. But if during that time we do not go Spartan on ourselves, well, the Persians and the Assyrians and the mixed multitude will point out that flaw to us.

Global Warming. It really does seem a little neurotic. Maybe it's just a spelling error? Global Warring? Yes, I think so. The desert is moving in.


J