Cap-And-Trade For Babies? Posted 10/19/2009 07:57 PM ET
Earth: An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints?
It's long been a mantra on the left that people are a plague on the earth, ravaging its surface for food and resources, polluting its atmosphere and endangering its species. Now we are endangering its very climate to the point of extinction. Even the result of our breathing — carbon dioxide — has been declared by the EPA to be a dangerous pollutant.
Treaties like Kyoto and the upcoming economic suicide pact to be forged in Copenhagen have focused on the instruments and byproducts of our civilization. Now the focus is shifting increasingly to the people who built it.
New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not.
Participating via Web cam, Revkin volunteered that in allocating carbon credits as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, "if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?"
He went on to say that "probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children."
"More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions," Rivkin has blogged, wondering "whether this means we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation." Save the trees, not the children.
Rivkin's views are unfortunately shared by people with power and influence. Jonathon Porritt, chairman of Britain's Sustainable Development Commission, believes that "having more than two children is irresponsible" and that people should "connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint."
Earlier this year, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi defended federal contraceptive initiatives as an effort to "reduce costs to the states and to the federal government." For Pelosi, mother of five, the fewer the merrier.
Would this proposed carbon-credit carrot turn someday into a large stick? Would child exemptions disappear after the first child or worse?
After all, we have a White House communications director, Anita Dunn, who considers mass murderer Mao Zedong her favorite philosopher. China has its one-child policy, which it vigorously enforces.
This brave new world is not too far-fetched for science adviser John Holdren, who has advised taking population control to quite another level. He has at various times advocated forced abortion and sterilization and views people as a burden, not as the ultimate resource, as we do.
In a recently rediscovered book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren wrote that families "contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children" and "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility."
Holdren envisions that a "Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits ... the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits." In other words, China on steroids.
The view that human beings are inexorably outstripping the globe's capacity to sustain them is one of the most vivid, powerful and enduring economic myths of the modern era because the Chicken Littles who spread it forget one simple fact — with bodies come minds.
We are not cattle that graze until there's no grass. Our species, unlike all others, can consciously apply problem-solving techniques to the project of expanding its resource base and providing new and cleaner sources of energy. Minds matter economically as much as hands and mouths. And minds arrive only in company with bodies.
Lawyers' Next Victim Posted 10/20/2009 07:20 PM ET
Abusive Litigation: Which industry will the trial lawyers go after next? A suit filed by Mississippi property owners who had losses from Hurricane Katrina might provide a glimpse of the mischief to come.
In less than a month, two federal appeals courts have reversed trial court decisions to throw out global warming lawsuits.
Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a class-action suit against energy companies can proceed. In Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, the plaintiffs are alleging that 30 oil, electric and coal companies are liable because they have made products that contributed to the global warming that intensified the effects of Katrina. The plaintiffs are Mississippians whose property was damaged in the 2005 storm.
On Sept. 21, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City reinstated Connecticut v. AEP. In this suit, eight states, the city of New York and three land trusts are seeking an injunction that would order six power companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
Both cases are alarming. Courts shouldn't let plaintiffs sue over global warming when it's nothing more than speculation. But the Comer case is cause for greater concern.
"It is a private class action for compensatory and punitive damages, not a suit brought by states or municipalities for injunctive relief," professor and defense attorney Russell Jackson explains on his legal blog Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts. "And that means contingency fees. And thus the promise of copycat lawsuits."
Despite the shrieks and roars from global warm-mongers who firmly believe man is causing the planet to heat up with the carbon dioxide he is emitting, there's no way to prove that that is the case. As the lower courts ruled in both suits, the issue is nonjusticiable, meaning that it is inappropriate for judicial review.
But that won't matter to acquisitive plaintiffs, rapacious trial lawyers, politically minded judges and gullible jurors. They'll plow right through the science to shake down corporate victims out of spite and greed.
Through frequent filings of abusive medical malpractice lawsuits, trial lawyers have already contributed to rising health care expenses. They would be happy to do the same to energy costs, invoking Comer v. Murphy Oil USA as their inspiration. Unless future courts make better rulings than the Second and Fifth circuits have, or lawmakers address the problem, trouble lies ahead.
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Cap-And-Trade For Babies?
Posted 10/19/2009 07:57 PM ET
Earth: An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints?
It's long been a mantra on the left that people are a plague on the earth, ravaging its surface for food and resources, polluting its atmosphere and endangering its species. Now we are endangering its very climate to the point of extinction. Even the result of our breathing — carbon dioxide — has been declared by the EPA to be a dangerous pollutant.
Treaties like Kyoto and the upcoming economic suicide pact to be forged in Copenhagen have focused on the instruments and byproducts of our civilization. Now the focus is shifting increasingly to the people who built it.
New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not.
Participating via Web cam, Revkin volunteered that in allocating carbon credits as part of any cap-and-trade scheme, "if you can measurably somehow divert fertility rate, say toward accelerating decline in a place with a high fertility rate, shouldn't there be a carbon value to that?"
He went on to say that "probably the single most concrete and substantive thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the light or driving a Prius, it's having fewer kids, having fewer children."
"More children equal more carbon dioxide emissions," Rivkin has blogged, wondering "whether this means we'll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits for avoiding deforestation." Save the trees, not the children.
Rivkin's views are unfortunately shared by people with power and influence. Jonathon Porritt, chairman of Britain's Sustainable Development Commission, believes that "having more than two children is irresponsible" and that people should "connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint."
Earlier this year, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi defended federal contraceptive initiatives as an effort to "reduce costs to the states and to the federal government." For Pelosi, mother of five, the fewer the merrier.
Would this proposed carbon-credit carrot turn someday into a large stick? Would child exemptions disappear after the first child or worse?
After all, we have a White House communications director, Anita Dunn, who considers mass murderer Mao Zedong her favorite philosopher. China has its one-child policy, which it vigorously enforces.
This brave new world is not too far-fetched for science adviser John Holdren, who has advised taking population control to quite another level. He has at various times advocated forced abortion and sterilization and views people as a burden, not as the ultimate resource, as we do.
In a recently rediscovered book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren wrote that families "contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children" and "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility."
Holdren envisions that a "Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits ... the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits." In other words, China on steroids.
The view that human beings are inexorably outstripping the globe's capacity to sustain them is one of the most vivid, powerful and enduring economic myths of the modern era because the Chicken Littles who spread it forget one simple fact — with bodies come minds.
We are not cattle that graze until there's no grass. Our species, unlike all others, can consciously apply problem-solving techniques to the project of expanding its resource base and providing new and cleaner sources of energy. Minds matter economically as much as hands and mouths. And minds arrive only in company with bodies.
Be fruitful and multiply — while you can.
Lawyers' Next Victim
Posted 10/20/2009 07:20 PM ET
Abusive Litigation: Which industry will the trial lawyers go after next? A suit filed by Mississippi property owners who had losses from Hurricane Katrina might provide a glimpse of the mischief to come.
In less than a month, two federal appeals courts have reversed trial court decisions to throw out global warming lawsuits.
Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a class-action suit against energy companies can proceed. In Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, the plaintiffs are alleging that 30 oil, electric and coal companies are liable because they have made products that contributed to the global warming that intensified the effects of Katrina. The plaintiffs are Mississippians whose property was damaged in the 2005 storm.
On Sept. 21, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City reinstated Connecticut v. AEP. In this suit, eight states, the city of New York and three land trusts are seeking an injunction that would order six power companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
Both cases are alarming. Courts shouldn't let plaintiffs sue over global warming when it's nothing more than speculation. But the Comer case is cause for greater concern.
"It is a private class action for compensatory and punitive damages, not a suit brought by states or municipalities for injunctive relief," professor and defense attorney Russell Jackson explains on his legal blog Consumer Class Actions & Mass Torts. "And that means contingency fees. And thus the promise of copycat lawsuits."
Despite the shrieks and roars from global warm-mongers who firmly believe man is causing the planet to heat up with the carbon dioxide he is emitting, there's no way to prove that that is the case. As the lower courts ruled in both suits, the issue is nonjusticiable, meaning that it is inappropriate for judicial review.
But that won't matter to acquisitive plaintiffs, rapacious trial lawyers, politically minded judges and gullible jurors. They'll plow right through the science to shake down corporate victims out of spite and greed.
Through frequent filings of abusive medical malpractice lawsuits, trial lawyers have already contributed to rising health care expenses. They would be happy to do the same to energy costs, invoking Comer v. Murphy Oil USA as their inspiration. Unless future courts make better rulings than the Second and Fifth circuits have, or lawmakers address the problem, trouble lies ahead.
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