“Big Green had a big impact on the U.S. Administration in the 1990s, deserving much ‘credit’ for the Kyoto cap-and-trade-with-offsets, which led to sharply accelerated global carbon emissions.“
“Most marchers tomorrow [September 21, 2014] will be liberals. The truth they must face is the fact that prescriptive liberal policies have no chance of solving the global climate problem.”
In Speaking Truth to Power—and to Friends (September 20, 2014), James Hansen continues to denigrate the efforts of the Big Green/Obama establishment to address climate change. For reasons that Hansen repeatedly stresses in his posts (regularly summarized at MasterResource), climate alarmists may wish they had more Green Party candidates to vote for next month.
Hansen and many other eco-alarmists might Go-Green-Party at the 2016 ballot box to support the climate section of the Green Party’s ecology platform:
[W]e especially support the reduction of consumption of the world’s raw materials by the industrialized Northern Hemisphere. We are appalled by our country’s withdrawal from serious efforts to limit greenhouse gases that are contributing mightily to global climate disruption. The Green Party strongly urges the United States to adopt an actively responsible position in this crisis and to take significant action to address the problem.
Here are some quotations from Hansen’s latest post critical of cap-and-trade and bottom-up prescriptive regulation now championed by the Political establishment and Big Environmentalism.
“Once when I was giving a public talk at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, where I was about to be presented an award by Governor Brown, who was sitting in the front row, I described California’s newly minted cap-and-trade program as ‘half-baked’ and ‘half-assed’. I admit to being tactless, but it got his attention, which was my intention.”
“California is one place that could have demonstrated an approach to the energy & climate problem that could have a huge national and global impact.”
Obama Ignores Hansen in Favor of ‘Big Green’
“Admittedly, President Obama is limited in what he can do domestically in his two remaining years. This fix is his own doing. He started with 70% popularity and both houses of Congress controlled by his party. His campaign had noted our “planet in peril”, and he had economic, energy security, and national security reasons to give priority to the matter. But it seems no one had the gumption to pound on his desk about the urgency and the nature of what was needed. I could not find anyone in his administration to even deliver my letter to him.”
“[T]he fact is that Big Green, ~$100M/year environmental organizations, has ready access to the President. Big Green, heavily staffed with lawyers and public relations people, has political clout because they can deliver votes. Unfortunately, Big Green has demonstrated little understanding of the global energy and climate matter and has become one of the biggest obstacles to solving the climate problem.”
“Big Green had a big impact on the U.S. Administration in the 1990s, deserving much “credit” for the Kyoto cap-and-trade-with-offsets, which led to sharply accelerated global carbon emissions.“
“Now Big Green has used its access to persuade the President to use his authority to issue as many domestic regulations as possible. There will be plenty of work for the lawyers.”
“We cannot allow international negotiations, culminating in Paris in December 2015, to yield a Kyoto-like debacle that again fails to address the real issue.”
“But what do we hear from Washington? Nations should improve their emission goals and caps!”
“Conservatives are not the enemy of the planet…. The political divide occurs because conservatives fear that liberals will use the climate issue to increase taxes and government intrusion. Policy prescriptions proposed by liberals stoke those concerns and provide fertile ground for anti-science nut-cases to flourish.
“Most marchers tomorrow [September 21, 2014] will be liberals. The truth they must face is the fact that prescriptive liberal policies have no chance of solving the global climate problem.”