What's A Government To Do?

That is the question Mark Steyn asks in this NRO post. He points out that President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg have talked a good game on global warming issues and frequently warned about the effects of "rising oceans". But, despite the talk (and trillions in spending) there is precious little to show for it.

Steyn points out that a sea wall that would have protected NY harbor would have cost $10 billion, far less than the cost of the damage done by Sandy. Its also less than 2% of the famed Obama stimulus which neither stimulated the economy nor left behind any material physical manifestation of its expenditure.

Steyn notes that our political "leaders" no longer even attempt, let alone complete, produce serious, major accomplishments. After discussing building the protective seawall that could have been with only a fraction of the stimulus money, Steyn sums up our current situation:

"And yet it never happened – and, if we’re honest with ourselves, in today’s sclerotic America, you can’t even imagine it happening, can you? Let us go to Nanny Bloomberg himself:

But with so many prescient warnings, city authorities are struggling to explain why so little was done. Mayor Bloomberg has said it was difficult to translate such warnings into concrete action.

They can chisel that on the epitaph of the republic."

Yet, as Steyn notes, he protected New Yorkers from too much soda:

"What does Nanny B ever translate into “concrete action”? Why, here he is posing with a desktop of carbonated beverages. This is what passes for political leadership in America. Can you imagine this ridiculous man or the spendaholic president he’s endorsed ever actually building a flood barrier?"

Read the whole post. It includes a link to a longer Steyn article about Big Government failures in big crises.

But He's Trying!

The Saturday edition of the Democrat and Chronicle included a guest essay from RIT Professor Ronald Amberger. The essay was titled Obama doesn't set oil prices and tried to "explain the real reasons that oil prices are rising ("speculators, people who refuse to conserve oil and the refusal to look to alternative energy sources").

The essay is brief, but Professor Amberger's agenda comes through quite clearly. He is clearly in the Obama/Chu camp of persons who think that Americans need to get used to higher prices for fuel so that "good" (read: green) alternative energy sources are economical (he underscores the fact that natural gas or nuclear energy need not apply).

He makes an incredible argument that if we produced more oil in the US it would only mean "that less oil is produced elsewhere and the price is unaffected". Really? I would love to challenge the economic theory behind that statement, but suffice it to say, if we produced more oil in the US, we would, at least not be lining the pockets of our enemies by purchasing foreign oil. Amberger, like Obama and Chu, wants us to fall for green energy even though the cost is 4 to 5 times the cost of carbon fuels and despite the fact that no green energy source has proved feasible on any significant scale.

The thing that really bugs me about the essay is the hypocrisy. The President, the Energy Secretary and Professor Amberger all actually believe that rising prices for gasoline are a good thing. They just don't want to be blamed by the" unreasonable" and "ignorant" public who don't want or like the high prices. If they are all so damn sure they are right, they should make the case for alternative energy without resort to smoke and mirrors.

The problem is that they can't.

More Hot Air

The big Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended without any real agreement (thank goodness). The Club For Growth blog expressed satisfaction upon hearing President Obama declare the "agreement" the US reached with China, India, and Brazil as "meaningful". The CFG blogger noted that when politicians say that something is "meaningful" it means it really isn't.

But the real prize for telling it like it is goes to Mark Steyn for this article from the National Review Online. Steyn's takedown of the "climate hypocrites" is hilarious at the same time it is enraging.

Here is one excerpt:

"[The Prince of Wales] was also in Copenhagen last week, telling delegates that there were now only seven years left to save the planet. Prince Charles is so famously concerned about the environment that he’s known as the Green Prince. Just for the record, his annual carbon footprint is 2,601 tons. The carbon footprint of an average Briton (i.e., all those wasteful, consumerist, environmentally unsustainable deadbeats) is 11 tons. To get him to Copenhagen to deliver his speech, His Highness was flown in by one of the Royal Air Force’s fleet of VIP jets from the Royal Squadron. Total carbon emissions: 6.4 tons. In other words, the Green Prince used up seven months’ of an average Brit’s annual carbon footprint on one short flight to give one mediocre speech of alarmist boilerplate."

Steyn has many more examples. Read it all.