The fact that the media and popular culture and academia have veered from one panic-inducing disaster scenario to another one which completely contradicts the first one is funny enough in its own right. But reading The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age opened my eyes to an even more significant aspect of this serial crisis-mongering:
The “solutions” prescribed to solve both Global Warming and the looming Ice Age are exactly the same.
In both cases, proponents of the theory-du-jour say that in order to stave off disaster, we must reverse the march of civilization, stop our profligate use of carbon-based fuels, cede power and money from the First World to the Third World, and wherever possible revert to a Luddite pre-industrial lifestyle.
Gee, it’s almost like there’s a political agenda behind this stuff.
Sigh. I wish that I were surprised by this. As a commenter says, we remain doomed to not having a presidential candidate who can explain reality to the American people.
All planning must be timid and scoped to be within the limited capabilities of what was done by past over-priced government projects. If I bought a Ford Pinto, I cannot buy a new car next time. I have to plan on car trips with the assumption that I must always own a lemon.
Quoting Homer Simpson (and apparently Lawrence Krauss)
“You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.”
Trying to change this mindset is a never-ending battle.
Biden said the stimulus would “literally drop kick us out of the recession.” But Grabell concludes that “the stimulus ultimately failed to do what America expected it to do — bring about a strong, sustainable recovery. The drop kick was shanked.”
And that’s about what you might expect from a White House run by brilliant theoreticians with no one around to do a reality check. Let’s contrast Team Obama with Team Reagan. The Gipper’s cabinet had Donald Regan, former CEO of Merrill Lynch; George Schultz, former president of engineering firm Bechtel; Caspar Weinberger, also of Bechtel; Malcolm Baldridge, CEO of manufacturer Scovill. And, of course, there was Reagan himself, the former two-term governor of America’s most populous state.
What is it about debt that Mr. Obama does not get? Please spare us any new programs or initiatives. We owe now $16 trillion. America is borrowing at the rate of $3 billion-plus a day. So please, Mr. President, no more Solyndras. We did not want or need Cash for Clunkers. There is no money for more expansions of food stamps. Nothing is left for student loan reprieves, high-speed rail, or anything else. To propose any new expenditure would first require some honest disclosure, like the following: “I wish to borrow $10 billion at 3% interest to lower student loan debt and I propose to pay for it by selling off 1000 new oil leases.”
The problem with these Obama initiatives is not just that we do not have the money and must borrow to pay for them, but that we feel most of them only make things worse, whether by subsidizing another mortgage for someone who is by market standards not likely to meet the loan payments and would be better off renting, or by paying some insider crony to make and sell solar panels at a loss. Again, chill on the new programs, and just start paying off what you already borrowed. Outside government, psychiatrists often treat with mind-altering medicines the unstable who compulsively charge things that they cannot pay for and do not need.
Newt needs to make an issue of this before Tuesday: “Governor Romney, you said that you’d fire someone who came up with a costly plan for lunar activities, and yet you just hired someone as a space adviser who was already fired for doing just that…”
Also, here’s Marcia Smith’s report on the Romney non-event today.
[Saturday morning update]
On the 26th anniversary of the Challenger loss, Byron York has a report on the two candidates’ space policies.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Mitt Romney would have fired Mike Griffin.” I’m guessing that Jim Muncy had some input into this, and that it may become a Gingrich talking point in the next couple days. I just fed Jake Tapper some questions to ask him tomorrow morning on This Week.
on the anti-human environmental movement, that looks interesting.