as republican senator john thune demonstrated in his blog this morning (ironically entitled “transparency”), you don’t have to be a backwoods ditz floundering through a poorly-thought-out resignation speech in order to be inarticulate.
granted, the material he is responding to is, in itself, fairly incoherent — i had to read through the brief post several times this morning to figure out what he and dr. mcgartland were trying to get at.
the point seems to be that if we don’t allow someone with a Ph.D. in economy (whom thune repeatedly refers to as a “scientist”, as if the economy operated on principles reliable as the law of gravity) to overrule an environmental scientist in a matter concerning the environment, then science is not being served and it’s proof that obama has reneged on his campaign promise to restore science to government.
got that? i couldn’t find any examples of john thune scolding george bush about creationism being taught in schools, so apparently this devotion to science has come upon him rather suddenly. maybe on 1/20/09.
in fairness, this latest tempest in a teapot concerns the cap-and-trade bill recently passed by the house of representatives. the passing of this bill is a good thing in one way and a godawful thing in another.
it’s good in that climate change is finally being taken seriously enough for any kind of environmentally motivated legislation to pass muster.
it’s bad in that the method it uses is carbon trading.
carbon trading is nothing but a travesty. ALL emissions have to come down — allowing tom to maintain high levels of carbon emissions because dick & harry have lowered theirs is a zero-sum game, one that actually impedes rather than supports the overall lowering of carbon levels in our atmosphere.
so, although i don’t agree with thune’s partisan-politics-as-usual approach, i do agree that this is a bad bill. unlike senator thune, i oppose the bill because it does not go anywhere near far enough, not because it might be too much of an inconvenience for the coal and oil industries.
i just rechecked my carbon footprint and it came out to 3.75 — less than half the national average, and lower than it was last year (4.4), when i worked at a job that required fairly frequent air travel. i guesstimated one medium-length flight/year for today’s recalculation.
this month i’m selling my car. once it’s gone my footprint shrinks to 3.15. what’s your carbon footprint? please leave a comment if you take the carbon test. and no cheating!
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Good post. Regarding economist as “climate scientists”, you may find this post from Scientific American particularly interesting: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes
Jasons last blog post..god hates the world?
My footprint is 3.95. In my rural area I can’t eliminate my car, although I only drive approximately 3,000 miles/year. I’ll bet if I could afford a newer, more fuel efficient car this number would also drop. In addition, I won’t give up my family visits, which amount to two round-trip long flights per year.
I can’t believe you’re giving up the Scion! You’ve talked about it before, but I guess now that you don’t have to commute to the studio with equipment things will work out okay.
I didn’t take the ‘carbon emission’ test, because I don’t care. I simply do not, care. You’re kidding yourself if you think this ought to be your priority. 2 billion chinese and indians will be buying cars and dishwashers, ovens, washing machines, tvs, in the coming years…. and you think you are making a difference? No one cares if you live or die.
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