Free trade a capitla flows helped Europe and Japan both grow startlingly after WWII; the same is finally happening now -naturally – in China and India because they`ve opened their markets and businesses and investors are responding. Only mercantilists believe that this spells the end of the US or Europe.

The US has already experienced and adapted to substantial de-industrialization. Chindia has already adapted to substantial industrialization. If the US federal government actually imposes “80% by 2050″, the adaptations will proceed to their endpoints.

My guess is that their policies reflect not only their long-frustrated desires for climate change policy from Washington, but a broken-windows fallacy-based view that, if they push for clean energy in California they`ll not only feel better morally but that California will benefit in net when demands for greener technology grow.

They may also be thinking that acting in California is a good way to get businesses to pressure Congress to pass legislation that overrides CA.

Sensible statements about global warming are very rare, and I was amazed to find this one lurking among typical alarmist statements.

“If the temperature of the Earth’s surface is changing, something needs to be done to mitigate the effects.”

Of course, that is what humans have been doing for thousands of years. Actually, adapting to change is what humans do best.

What do we know about the temperature of the Earth’s surface that is incontrovertible?

Simple.

We know that it is constantly changing.

And we know that we must do something to mitigate the effects of these constant changes.

In Minnesota we put on a thick coat. In Alaska we put on a couple of thick coats. In Oregon and Washington we wear rain clothes and carry umbrellas. In Hawaii, we take off almost everything. In California we complain about everything, demanding perfection in our weather as we do in all things.

Looking back in time, less than 20,000 years ago North America to points south of the Great Lakes was covered by mile-thick ice sheets. Come to think of it, the Great Lakes were a product of that Ice Age.

Obviously, humans mitigated the effects of that climate change by waiting for the ice to melt before living in Chicago.

In more recent years, Americans living in the populous northeastern states found they could find employment and live more comfortably in the warmer southern and western states, and a massive exodus from the colder states ensued. This movement in favor of global warming was abetted by the invention of air conditioning, which mitigated the effects of voluntary climate change.

In the 1930s heat and drought afflicted the Plains States – in particular northern Texas, western Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, and eastern Colorado and New Mexico. Many of the residents of the Dust Bowl area took action to mitigate the effects of the climate change – they loaded up their trucks and moved to Californy.

Today Canadian and New England “Snow Birds” migrate to Florida and Arizona each winter to mitigate the effects of climate change. For them, warmer is better.

People also move in great masses to mitigate the effects of political climate change, but that’s for another article.