The UN Climate Change Czar has taken the position that the US is somehow "bound" by the rhetorical promises at Copenhagen made by the master of lofty talk, President Obama. The Austrian born Dutch citizen, who is accountable to none outside of the carnival by the Hudson, blew off the reluctance of the Senate to act favorably on the potentially economically crippling "cap and trade" proposal put forward by the ever-so-green Obama administration.
With a serene detachment of the sort which might accompany another proclamation from Mount Sinai, the UN factotum told the press that Americans were slavering and drooling after "green" jobs (as opposed to any job of any color) and would not tolerate a failure to deliver on the Obama promise. Mr de Boer also opined that the Environmental Protection Agency could pick up the ball should the Senate be so ill-advised as to drop it.
In making this Olympian declaration Mr de Boer demonstrated the sublime ignorance of American political realities which only a member of the UN bureaucracy--or a True Believer in the Progressive Agenda--could essay. The "Czar" left aside such bagatelles as the possibility that the Congress might, in the face of an electorate less than thrilled with the current state of play on the Hill and in the Oval, legislatively remove the power to regulate carbon dioxide from the EPA's portfolio. He also ignored both the incompetence of the EPA and the net effect upon informed public opinion of the IPCC's extreme economy with the truth.
Additionally, the detached Mr de Boer overlooked the impact of an increasing awareness on the part of Americans that further sacrifices on its part can be more than offset by the actions of other nations. This is a critical matter which has also eluded the EPA.
To highlight this ground truth and its implications, the Geek invites you to consider the matter of ground level ozone. This noxious form of oxygen is responsible in large measure for the unpleasant phenomenon known as smog. To control the emission of ozone the EPA has not only put in place stringent limits on human activities (such as operating motor vehicles) which result in the production of ozone but is in the process of increasing the limitations.
The EPA also monitors ground level ozone. It is this part of the agency's mission which detains us at the moment. Let's focus on two areas of the United States. One is small and remote. The other is both large and important in all facets of American life.
The small one first. In southern New Mexico there are three counties. They extend from the border between New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico to the northwest. In order they are the El Paso bordering county of Dona Ana, Luna county, and Grant County. With the exception of Dona Ana which centers on the 100,000 person (more or less) city of Las Cruces, the counties are small in population, feature large expanses of either high desert (Luna) or pinion forested mountains (Grant.) None are noted for industry although Grant county still hosts a Phelps Dodge copper smelter currently engaged in reprocessing ancient tailings dumps.
Ground ozone monitoring shows that over the past three years each of these counties have been out of compliance with the current standards. They would be even more non-compliant under the proposed new standards. Dona Ana is the worst "offender," with Luna in second place, and distant Grant country bringing up the rear of the "law breakers." The EPA has already made the usual threatening noises of fines and loss of federal highway money should the counties and their municipalities not bring the areas into compliance beaucoup schnell!
There is only one difficulty with the EPA's findings, conclusions, and dark hints of penalties to come. None of the counties are responsible for the elevated ozone levels. No. As anyone with access to a map showing prevailing winds could discover in a matter of seconds, these three counties lie downwind of Cuidad Juarez. This Mexican city currently best known for a level of violence exceeded in very few war zones is usually noted for its level of air pollution.
There are no, repeat, NO, effective, enforceable limits on the production of ozone, particulate matter, or any other ingredient of air pollution in Juarez. And, if there were, a little bit of money changing hands ends the "violation."
The EPA with the supreme confidence of a totally out of touch with reality bureaucracy has chosen to ignore the real source of the ozone, instead flexing its muscles on a triad of totally inoffensive American counties. The worthies of the EPA appear completely indifferent to the underlying reality that no amount of American sacrifice, no degree of penalty, no amount of economic deprivation will solve the problem.
Now for the bigger problem. Ground level ozone monitoring shows that there has been a significant increase in the evil chemical despite the severe restrictions which have been in place in California, Washington, and Oregon. To the surprise (and dismay) of all, the level of ozone has increased even as the costs of restriction have elevated. Obviously more costs, tighter standards, more monitoring will not have any effect on the steadily worsening situation.
That gloomy conclusion results from the simple and easily demonstrated fact that the ozone levels rise and fall in tandem with the direction of the prevailing winds. When the winds come from the general direction of Asia (read China) the levels increase, when the winds blow from some other direction, the ozone slips away to the happy low levels resulting from the efforts of the past forty years.
Perhaps because California and its neighbors have a lot more voters than the three miscreant New Mexico counties, the EPA will have to acknowledge its powerlessness in the face of made-in-China ozone. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps EPA will demand admission to the US foreign policy community.
Not that the foreign policy community of the US is currently underpopulated. Nearly every cabinet department has a seat. The new, expanded National Security Council has a (very large) seat. Then the Congress is amply if usually parochially represented. With so many oars of varying sizes in the murky, choppy waters of foreign affairs it is no wonder that the ship of state so often is in peril of foundering on the rocks of one overseas "crisis" or another.
The introduction of the EPA, or the current administration's climate "czar(s)" will in no way improve our capacity to address any realities which might reside behind the scrim of distortions, junk science, special pleading, and drives-for-power created by the climate change Warriors of the Good Cause. The mere mouthing of "pledges" by the US government or the government of any other country without both a sound basis to justify the needs underlying the "pledges" and a verifiable mechanism of unquestionably reliability and disinterestedness is an exercise in feel-good meaninglessness.
The best that might be adduced in support of making pledges and similar exercises in political masturbation is that such an exercise does far less damage than does invoking the bureaucratic force of some remote, out of touch agency to impose counterproductive sanctions on an innocent public. It is just this that Mr de Boer and his ilk both inside and without the UN desire to do.
Pace Mr de Boer, but the only effective, authentic way to address whatever (if anything) which might reside within and under the term of "anthropogenic climate change" is the slow, messy means of political give and take. This means not only the political process of diplomacy but also, at least in those few countries where democracy reigns in a relatively untrammeled form, the even more messy process of achieving a domestic consensus on what should be done, what might be done, and how to do it.
In turn this requires that folks like Mr de Boer abandon their automatic love affair with top down fiats and diktats. It demands that Mr de Boer and company surrender their reflexive reliance upon central commands. It means there is finally no substitute for trusting the self-organizing, decentralized capacities of an informed public.
An informed public means a public which is not lied to by "scientists" who believe with the terrible sincerity of an al-Qaeda leader in the justice of their desired ends allows for the employment of any means. The perversion and prostitution of the methods of science--including constant testing, constant criticism, constant doubt--cannot be allowed to stand. There can be no more well-intended lies, no more silencing of critics, no more running roughshod over doubts.
A good start in this direction would be the disestablishment of the IPCC. It has no more credibility. It has surrendered all rights to be heard. It must be replaced by an open body which includes all the doubters, the sceptics, the agnostics. True beliefs, compelling agendas, needs for power and prestige will only assure that no informed public can or will exist.
Mr de Boer and others who share his perspective must also go. They do not and cannot accept that bureaucracies do not have all the answers, that central commands are not likely to result in long term success. And, worst of all, they distrust, perhaps even despise the good sense, intelligence, and capacity for effective self-organization of the hoi polloi.
As the soldiers of Cromwell said to the Long Parliament, "You have sat here too long to do any good. Get hence!"
No comments:
Post a Comment