“Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts…. Negative CO2 emissions, i. e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
– James Hansen, “Young People’s Burden.” October 4, 2016.
“The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts.”
– James Hansen, “We Hold Truths to be Self-Evident“ December 2, 2016.
What a difference a few months make!
Just in time for holiday season, and for the Trump Administration, the father of the climate alarm, formerly a climate scientist with NASA/GISS, and now a full-time scientist/activist, has ameliorated his grand climate alarm. The 10-year ultimatum announced in 2006, made more dire in 2009 and since, is now moderated.…
…“Enron, and no one more than Ken Lay, time and again pledged allegiance to free enterprise, deregulation, privatization, and competition. Come the implosion, that rhetoric was taken at face value. If Enron was capitalism, then capitalism was prone to flim-flam, deception, and even fraud.”
“Enron was a paragon of crony capitalism and a master of politicized regulation. Like no other company in history, Enron leveraged non-market government opportunity in myriad and sustained ways that ultimately came at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and investors.”
“Classical liberals applauded the fact that the market, not regulators, exposed and ruined Enron. True enough, but the broader point and the deeper moral of the story is this: Enron and Ken Lay, as they were and became, would not have existed in a truly capitalistic economy.”
“Our country stands at a crossroads of two incompatible forces. On one side is the historical opportunity our country now has to become the world’s energy superpower while restoring vigorous economic growth and full employment. On the other side is coercive federal and state policy to supplant fossil fuels and thus block the energy boom and the economic resurgence it promises.”
It has been my privilege to have participated in the previous two conferences in this series, Crossroads I in Houston (2014) and Crossroads II in Austin, Texas (2015).
With great fanfare, this year’s event will be held in Washington, DC, now that a new era in environmental policy–demoting the faux environmentalism of carbon dioxide as a negative externality–is about to begin.
The real promise of climate-policy reform is to disengage the US from international climate control, which can fracture the international climate complex to promote people and shrink government, worldwide.…