When it comes to environmental wackiness, how far gone is the New York Times? Perhaps all we need to know is that in its editorial of today the Times calls the Kyoto Protocol [emphasis added]:
a modest first effort to control global greenhouse gas emissions.
Modest? In terms of benefits, yes. According to Junk Science, it's widely acknowledged that the complete implementation of Kyoto would lead to a temperature saving of 0.07 °C by the year 2050. But there's nothing modest about Kyoto's cost. Junk Science estimates that to lower global temperatures by 1 °C would set the world economy back . . . $100 trillion.
But that's just a green hors d'oeuvre as far as the Times is concerned. The Grey Lady is counting on Barack Obama to head down that path, and sees encouraging [to it] signs that's just what he has in mind.
Excerpts from Save the Economy, and the Planet:
President-elect Barack Obama is arguing that there is no better time than the present to invest heavily in clean energy technologies. Such investment, he says, would confront the threat of unchecked warming, reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil and help revive the American economy.
Call it what you will: a climate policy wrapped inside an energy policy wrapped inside an economic policy. By any name, it is a radical shift from the defeatism and denial that marked President Bush’s eight years in office.
Still two months from the White House, Mr. Obama has convincingly reaffirmed his main climate related promises.
One is to impose (Congress willing) a mandatory cap on emissions aimed at reducing America’s output of greenhouses gas by 80 percent by midcentury.
My favorite lines come last:
At least on the surface, it seems counterintuitive to impose new regulations (and, in the short term anyway, higher energy costs) on a struggling economy. Mr. Obama will need all his oratorical power to make the opposite case.
So the Times is counting on a Pres. Obama to bamboozle Americans into buying this economy-killing claptrap. Will he try it?
