Articles

I love articles apparently.

This one I found on the Drudge Report: "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved."

I had a short conversation with a Greenpeacer at a local mall a week or so ago while shopping for Christmas gifts. He was a cool guy. He was standing there with his buddy and they were trying to get people to sign up and become members of Greenpeace. It was $15, so I didn't join up. I was hip with most everything he was telling me that they were doing, saving old trees in the Northwest, whales and stuff, until he told me about some bill they were sponsoring in Congress: a mandate for all energy production to be renewable energy by 2020. Ewww. First of all, that would be intense government meddling, hoisting expensive technologies onto companies and citizens where the ultimate price would be paid by the consumer. Well no, my Greenpeace friend would say, the government will help make it cost effective. Where is the government getting this money? From the oil company subsidies they won't be giving out anymore. Ah hah! I've been looking for figures on how much we subsidize oil companies, but haven't found any. If anyone knows it, I would love to be hooked up with that info. Second, the very fact that we are able to worry about most environmental issues is thanks to the free-ish economy we have now and any legislation hampering it even more will put environmental issues further on the back burner because more people will be poor. Emerging markets and third world countries do not worry about environmental issues like we Westerners do with all our money. They more often than not worry about eating and ensuring their family's basic material well being, not sending out expensive boats to harass Japanese whalers. (Discovery Channel's Whale Wars, check it. It's a funny time. I'm not sure where exactly they get their funding, it's got to be a lot though with the equipment they use. If consumers enjoy it enough to pay for it, that's cool. But where are the Saving Children from Slavery shows?).
In sum: Greenpeace as a grass roots organization getting people/consumers to petition for Kimberly Clark to stop using ancient trees for Kleenex is cool with me. I think they honestly try to fulfill humankind's Divine mandate to care for the earth. However, backing legislation at the federal level which would force policy the market has not deemed cost effective or has not been properly incetivized will mean reduced freedom and will only result in adverse, unforeseen effects. Poor people would pay the biggest price if energy is more expensive.