Once again, the Obama Administration is screeching about "climate change," not because there is anything new to report on the subject, but because the political priorities of the left demand that it do so. The report released yesterday by the White House sheds no light on anything. It merely doubles down on the political stance that has been the Democratic Party's stock-in-trade for decades now: Man is causing climate change and we must act!
And it's the "we must act" part that's really the problem.
Understand this: The only reason Democrats push the notion of man-made global warming is that this is their current favorite excuse for the expansion of government power. It matters not at all whether it is actually happening or not. If the absence of global warming was the rationalization for expanded government power, they would be insisting it is not true and assailing anyone who believes in it as alarmists.
Democrats treat the global warming orthodoxy in the same way they talk about federal spending. If times are good, we need to spend more because revenue is booming. If times are tough, we need to spend more to stimulate the economy. The times call for action! And always the same action, regardless of the nature of the times, because the agenda of the left was always the reason we were having this discussion to begin with.
Yesterday on Fox News, conservative heavyweights George Will and Charles Krauthammer laid the smack to the left's narrative by pointing out - as many have in other venues - that "science" doesn't work in the way left-wing politicians are trying to say it does. Krauthammer's insight about the way "consensus" is established in the psychiatric world is especially noteworthy here:
I got into a debate some months back with a liberal friend who is one of the biggest pushers of man-made global warming, to the point where he regulary mocks anyone who questions the so-called scientific consensus. I said what I've said in the past: I don't claim advanced scientific knowledge in questioning the "consensus" because I am not a scientist of any kind (nor is he, for that matter), but I question it based on the agenda of the pushers. The global warmists are not satisfied just to have you believe it's real. They need you to also embrace their proposed solutions, which are all on the order of massive federal and international intervention into markets and industry.
His rejoinder to me was this: "So you question it because people are proposing solutions?"
Actually yes, but I would put that a little differently. Massive expansion of government on every level is a solution looking for a problem, and global warming is the perfectly positioned problem (excuse is actually the better word) if you can sell it. It's a looming global catastrophe that must be stopped and in order to stop it, we must act now, and only government can act because we're all in this together or whatever.
And what actions do they propose? Why, a massive carbon tax and extensive new regulations on industry - the very things Democrats want anyway, precisely because it shifts more power and more resources from the private sector to government, which is perfect for the party of government.
If man-made global warming were proven this afternoon to be a complete hoax such that even the left could no longer push the idea, the left would turn to some other rationale for massive new taxes and regulation. It is what they do. The rationale of the moment is merely window dressing.
I have said and I say again: If man-made global warming were real, I would still not support the policy prescriptions Democrats want because massive controls imposed by central planners never solve any problem. Technological innovations birthed in the private sector are far more likely to reduce carbon emissions over the course of the next several decades, and probably will do so regardless of whether global warming is real or not.
So no, I don't believe the "scientific consensus," because I don't trust the agenda of the people pushing it. The agenda is what this is really all about, and the agenda of bigger government, higher taxation and expanded regulation is a bad idea regardless of what may or may not be happening with the climate. No matter how many "reports" the White House offers, attempting to use global warming to justify its political agenda, that will continue to be the case.
