Global "warmists" have positioned themselves in a "can't-lose" posture. If global temperatures increase, that's all part of the theory; if temperatures decline that's part of the plan too.
One scientific theory has it that in a few million, perhaps a billion or so years, the sun will have cooled and expanded, and will enlarge so that it takes up the orbit of Mercury, Mars, and the earth. These planets will have overheated and been burnt to a crisp long before. So naturally we humans -- who are the cause of global warming -- should start enacting restrictions on what we use for energy and stop our environmental bad behavior.
"Warmists" are so confident of their science as to be undeterred by evidence to the contrary. Don't even try to dissuade them or they will zap you with a scene of melting Antarctic glaciers violently tumbling in to the sea, or a scene of Beijing on a bad-air day.
Really? Do we need to be mucking around planning for what will happen a billion years from now, even a million years, ten thousand years, or even a thousand years away? In fact it's probably futile to plan most things even 100 years in advance. Planning for one, 10, 20, even 50 years in the future is challenging enough.
Undaunted, the "warmist" marches on. There's too much at stake not to. There are fortunes to be made from being on the "right" side of environmental change and they are staggering. There are books to be written, industries to manipulate for profit, new taxes (fees, investments) to impose, Nobel Prizes and Academy Awards to be won and presidents to be elected.
The "fly in their ointment" is that such thinking will take down the American economy. This is done by insisting that we curtail or eliminate traditional energy sources before replacement energy forms are ready to take up the slack. We'll be kept dependent on foreign sources and therefore at the mercy of unfriendly countries. Job creation and manufacturing will be negatively impacted, and our economy will suffer, putting us deeper in debt to counties who are still willing to loan us money. And our taxes will continue to rise to help pay for services and entitlements that we can't afford.
Even though "warmists" can't lose the argument, they can help us lose our place as a world leader. It is important to remember that when you have been the world leader for so many years, every country wants a "piece" of you. We're not some third world country with little control over its future. On the contrary, we can determine our own destiny if we make the right decisions -- for America. Missteps will be costly.
With the wrong policies, the decline of the American economy will surely happen and we can't tax our way out of a recession or spend our way out of this mess. We can only produce and conserve our way to a vibrant economy. We must produce our energy supply, produce more of our own goods and services and -- in the short term -- we must stop competing with one hand tied behind our back. Political correctness in environmental policies hamstrings us while our major competitors in other countries play on with little concern for the environment.
We must turn the horses loose and use more of our own gas, oil, and coal while working feverishly to bring cleaner resources on line. We don't have the luxury of waiting until alternative fuels can replace conventional ones.
Neither the volatile world economic conditions nor the unrest in the Middle East will wait, and we can't afford to wait.
Reynolds lives in Pleasant View.
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