WASHINGTON -- In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the
media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming.
Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a
concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans,
83 percent of whom now call global warming a ``serious problem.''
Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with
professions of seriousness.
For example, Democrats could demand that the president send the Kyoto
Protocol to the Senate so they can embrace it. In 1997, the Senate voted
95-0 in opposition to any agreement which would, like the protocol, require
significant reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in America and some other
developed nations but would involve no ``specific scheduled commitments''
for 129 ``developing'' countries, including the second, fourth, 10th, 11th,
13th and 15th largest economies (China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico
and Indonesia). Forty-two of the senators serving in 1997 are gone. Let's
find out if the new senators disagree with the 1997 vote.
Do they also disagree with Bjorn Lomborg, author of ``The Skeptical
Environmentalist''? He says: Compliance with Kyoto would reduce global
warming by an amount too small to measure. But the cost of compliance just to the United States would be higher than the cost of
providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which
would prevent 2 million deaths (from diseases like infant diarrhea) a year
and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year.
Nature designed us as carnivores, but what does nature know about
nature? Meat has been designated a menace. Among the 51 exhortations in
Time magazine's ``global warming survival guide'' (April 9), No. 22 says a
BMW is less responsible than a Big Mac for ``climate change,'' that
conveniently imprecise name for our peril. This is because the world meat
industry produces 18 percent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions, more
than transportation produces. Nitrous oxide in manure (warming effect: 296
times greater than that of carbon) and methane from animal flatulence (23
times greater) mean that ``a 16 ounce T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate.''
Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister: A gallon of it
requires electricity guzzling refrigeration, and four gallons of milk
produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and
flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming
lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical
fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming
trains and trucks.
Newsweek says most food travels at least 1,200 miles to get to
Americans' plates, so buying local food will save fuel. Do not order
halibut in Omaha.
Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy
one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course,
fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and
smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered
second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud
of carbon -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into
the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.
Opinions differ as to whether acid rain from the Canadian mining and
smelting operation is killing vegetation that once absorbed carbon dioxide.
But a report from CNW Marketing Research (``Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost
of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal'') concludes that in ``dollars per
lifetime mile,'' a Prius (expected life: 109,000 miles) costs $3.25,
compared to $1.95 for a Hummer H3 (expected life: 207,000 miles).
The CNW report states that a hybrid makes economic and environmental
sense for a purchaser living in the Los Angeles basin, where fuel costs are
high and smog is worrisome. But environmental costs of the hybrid are
exported from the basin.
We are urged to ``think globally and act locally,'' as Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger has done with proposals to reduce California's carbon
dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2020. If California improbably achieves
this, at a cost not yet computed, it will have reduced global
greenhouse-gas emissions 0.3 percent. The question is:
Suppose the costs over a decade of trying to achieve a local goal are
significant. And suppose the positive impact on the globe's temperature is
insignificant -- and much less than, say, the negative impact of one year's
increase in the number of vehicles in one country (e.g., India). If so, are
people who recommend such things thinking globally but not clearly?
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