10-01-2009, 03:35 PM
Eh? Special interests have a stake in it. Certainly General Electric has a number of green technologies that would bring in a lot of profit if we suddenly went green crazy. GE also owns NBC, so they have both the will and the means to promote global warming hysteria for personal profit if they choose.
The real question, IMO, has never been "climate change". We know that the earth has varied from near iceball to near jungle over its lifetime. The real question is whether or not recent trends are manmade and if it's manmade, can we do anything about it (and perhaps as a subset, can we do anything about it if China and India don't do anything about it).
My fear has always been that we impose regulations and spend a lot of money basically ruining our country and end up having global warming anyway, either because it wasn't manmade after all or because America's contribution to it wasn't significant. Or perhaps more accurately, by imposing regulations I worry that we don't actually reduce global CO2 levels so much as we simply drive businesses out of America, where they will continue to pollute, but somewhere else. We hurt ourselves locally but gain nothing globally.
The real question, IMO, has never been "climate change". We know that the earth has varied from near iceball to near jungle over its lifetime. The real question is whether or not recent trends are manmade and if it's manmade, can we do anything about it (and perhaps as a subset, can we do anything about it if China and India don't do anything about it).
My fear has always been that we impose regulations and spend a lot of money basically ruining our country and end up having global warming anyway, either because it wasn't manmade after all or because America's contribution to it wasn't significant. Or perhaps more accurately, by imposing regulations I worry that we don't actually reduce global CO2 levels so much as we simply drive businesses out of America, where they will continue to pollute, but somewhere else. We hurt ourselves locally but gain nothing globally.