At the risk, yet again, at incurring the wrath of the true believers, it is time to continue the debate regarding the cause of climate trends, and indeed, the direction of the trends themselves.  But conducting a debate on this most sensitive issue invites more than civil debate.  The issue of climate change has been succesfully framed as a moral issue, and debate is no longer politically correct.  To persist in debating this issue, despite mounting evidence - both scientific and economic - that debate is vital, is to risk being marginalized and demonized. 

Our favorite climate website is operated by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., www.climatesci.org, a climatologist at the University of Colorado.  We highly recommend anyone who wants to see just how little we still know about climate to visit this website regularly.  Pielke asserts climate change is real, but mostly regional in nature, and anthropogenic influences such as aerosol emissions and changes in land use, if anything, are more significant than CO2 emissions.

Pielke’s main conclusions, might be summarized as follows:

1 - Climate change study should focus more on regional and local scales.

2 - Global surface temperature trend assessments are flawed.

3 - Global warming is not the equivalent to climate change.

4 - Ocean heat content change is the most significant factor in global climate change.

5 - The role of CO2 in climate change is overstated.

6 - Global climate models have not made accurate predictions to-date.

7 - Controlling CO2 is an inadequate policy to influence regional climate trends.

This is a crude distillation of Pielke’s conclusions and one should read his website and read the more detailed summaries he has compiled to make a fair assessment of his position.  But if you study his conclusions, and follow his updates, it is clear this is the work of someone who is both highly qualified and nuanced in his outlook.  But qualified and nuanced isn’t enough for the true believers.

For his refusal to simply adhere to global warming alarmism, Pielke has now earned the ire of desmogblog, a website that states “we’re here to clear the pollution that clouds the science on climate change.”  In their post criticizing Pielke, entitled Roger Pielke Sr. Attacks Messenger, Injures Self, author Richard Littlemore takes issue with a recent post on Climate Science where Pielke criticizes reporting on hurricanes.  In this post, entitled ”Hurricanes and Global Warming - A Disconnect,” Pielke cites a recent example to illustrate his point that mainstream media tends to reinforce the perception that hurricane intensity is on the rise because of rising global temperatures.

It is interesting to read the exchanges between DeSmogBlog & Pielke.  We’re well familiar with these guys because they decided to launch an assault on EcoWorld a few months ago entitled “EcoWorld - A Website Officially Unconcerned with Accuracy.”  In this masterful hit piece, Littlemore highlights a disclaimer we include on EcoWorld - a disclaimer that is standard issue for any website that includes in their content financial analysis, and makes this disclaimer the centerpiece of their attack.  Without going into the details of their attack, nor our response, it is obvious Littlemore and his colleagues at DeSmogBlog are skilled professionals.  As Littlemore states in his recent exchanges with Pielke:

“The DeSmogBlog has only a passing interest in science and (as previously demonstrated, sometimes painfully) no avowed scientific expertise. Our interest AND our expertise is in public relations - particularly in the manipulation of the public climate change argument by people who have abandoned science in favour of advocacy…”

We are not interested in attacking DeSmogBlog.  But we are interested in defending people like Dr. Pielke Sr., who themselves, in our view, are challenging bias with at least as much integrity as Mr. Littlemore.  It is time for people to look for hidden agendas on both sides of this debate over climate change; the scope, the causes, and the proposed policies we support as a result.  And it is time to stop demonizing people who are willing to question the conventional wisdom; time to stop saying “the debate is over.”

There are environmental challenges of undeniable urgency - dead zones along our coastlines, tropical deforestation, depleted aquifers, collapsing fisheries; the list goes on.  And this focus on reducing CO2 emissions, which may well have nothing to do with anything, will almost certainly take the spotlight away from these other environmental issues.  And to attempt to marginalize the work of Roger Pielke Sr., who is uncovering valuable information about various causes of regional climate change, is counterproductive, to put it mildly.

Does that get your attention?  It should, because when that happens, the Silicon Valley will become the sister city of Detroit, with the only difference being Detroit gave way to union power fifty years earlier, and is still paying the price.  Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, and as long as it stays that way it has a chance to maintain its high-tech dominance.

Unions in 21st Century America are not nearly the same creature they were fifty years ago.  Back then unions legitimately fought for rights and benefits that have now largely become institutionalized - safe workplaces, reasonable work hours, competitive pay.  Back then American heavy industry enjoyed nearly a monopoly position, and as a result businesses such as the Detroit automakers could afford to grant generous concessions to unions - including pension benefits whose financial sustainability relied on the assumption Detroit’s factories would always be hiring more people than they were retiring.  When the world caught up with America, and the big three automakers no longer could experience annual growth in revenue and employees, the cost of these pensions became burdens that crippled them. 

The only true monopoly left in America today, however, is in the government.  In the public sector there is no global competition, and there is no problem growing revenues, since all you have to do is increase taxes and fees to increase revenue.  As a result, unions who had ruinously wrung every dime out of America’s automakers, nearly killing them in the process, and who saw no percentage in trying to organize, say, Walmart employees, have taken over the public sector.  And the pension debt now carried by public entities is the biggest liability, by far, most of them will ever face.  Any politician who questions this reality is crushed by public sector unions, who collect mostly mandatory dues from millions of public employees and deploy this money to exercise nearly absolute control over elections at the state and local level.

At the same time as union power has shifted to the public sector from private industry - because, sadly, it is easier for unions to control the public sector - the financial epicenter of union power has become those pension funds who manage all the wealth they have confiscated from taxpayers (who have to retire on social security in their 60’s), to provide to unionized public sector workers who retire in their 50’s.  These public employee pensions have become so generous, in most cases a private worker would have to have saved over a million dollars in their personal retirement fund for the annual interest during retirement to match the pension of even the lowest echelon of workers in the public sector.  Since unionized public employees make far more in base pay than globalized private sector workers, amassing that million or more is problematic for most taxpayers, to put it mildly.

It is in this context that CALPRS, the retirement fund that manages pensions for California’s workers, and AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, have launched a public relations assault on Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle.  Unlike ordinary workers in the public sector, Ellison didn’t simply show up four days per week for 25-30 years so he could retire a millionaire.  Ellison’s billions were earned because he rose to the top in the business ecosystem of the Silicon Valley, a place where merit still counts for something.  A place where if an employee is productive they are rewarded, and if they are incompetent, they’re fired.  A place wholly dissimilar to the unionized public workplace where the only way you can get fired is by being politically incorrect, and job security is furthered if you never solve problems.

CALPRS, along with other pension funds fueled by our taxes, have taken huge stakes in companies like Ellison’s Oracle, and, as reported yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, have suggested it is time for Oracle’s board to adopt a “say on pay” plan, wherein Ellison, a hero who has helped keep America competitive and created jobs for over 84,000 people, will have to periodically justify his compensation package.

This is not a moral crusade, or even a genuine initiative; it is a public relations stunt, part of an ongoing attempt to keep voters focused on the ultra-high pay of a handful of extremely successful private sector executives, instead of on the obscenely inflated pay and benefits of literally tens of millions of unionized public employees. This sort of propaganda is infantile, playing to emotions of resentment and envy, and relying on the utter financial ignorance of most journalists as well as the general population.  The venal reality is public sector workers make 2-4x what private sector workers make, their retirement benefits are totally unsustainable, and instead of merging funds like CALPRS with Social Security, which would benefit the U.S. economy and protect the interests of ALL workers, they point the finger at people like Larry Ellison to cloud the issue.

Ultimately, public employee unions and their pension fund managers such as CALPRS, will hopefully be smart enough to leave Oracle alone.  After all, by investing in the globalized private sector, public employee pensions have a better chance - still remote - of remaining solvent.  But voters and investors should understand that public employee pension fund influence on the boards of major corporations represents union influence - and once they control the boards they will control the company.  Instead of organizing from the bottom up, Silicon Valley risks becoming unionized from the top down.

For more read posts in our Public Sector Reform section. Also recommended is the website Pension Tsunami.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging clean, renewable, domestically produced energy.  But California’s proposition 7 “would, if approved, require California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025″ (ref. Ballotpedia).  Currently California’s public utilities are mandated to generate 25% of their electricity by 2025, and this is an ambitious goal.  Just getting to 25% renewable electricity by 2025 would require more than doubling renewable power generation in California.  Getting to 50% by that time would require renewable power generation in California to nearly quintuple.

To understand why accomplishing such an ambitious goal is not necessarily practical, you don’t have to be an economist or a renewable power expert.  You simply need to take a look at the current cost for renewable power technology.  While you’re at it, write off hydropower, which constitutes most of the renewable energy in California.  The chances any significant new hydropower generation ever gets built in California are slim and none - despite whatever sentiments you may hold for or against hydro.  This leaves geothermal, solar and wind.

While geothermal holds exceptional long term potential, ala enhanced geothermal drilling, today there isn’t a single operating example of a power station employing enhanced geothermal technology.  And most of California’s conventional geothermal power resources have already been developed.  So now you are down to wind and solar energy.  And since Californians by 2025 are going to be consuming about 1,000 gigawatt-hours per day, if proposition 7 is enacted, 500 gWh per day will have to come from wind and solar power.

Solar power, installed - not including transmission or storage infrastructure - costs about $7.0 million per megawatt of output; this equates to $7.0 billion per gigawatt.  If this sounds expensive, it is, but to get a truly accurate price you have to also take into account yield.  Even in sunny California, solar energy (in terms of full-sun-equivalent hours), can only be harvested on average for 4.5 hours per day, which means to get 500 gWh of solar generated electricity each day in California, you would need to install 111 gigawatts of solar arrays (500/4.5), which would cost $777 billion dollars.

Wind power, installed - is a better deal currently than solar - insofar as you can probably get costs down to around $2.5 million per megawatt of output, or $2.5 billion per gigawatt.  But the yield figures are also not promising.  In California there is widespread disagreement on the yield for wind power - credible estimates range from 10% (2.4 hours per day) to 25% (6.0 hours per day).  Given the magnitude of what is being proposed, it would be prudent to project wind yields in California somewhere in the middle of this range, say 17.5%, or 4.2 hours per day.  This means to get 500 gWh of wind generated electricity in California you would need to install 119 gigawatts of solar arrays (55/4.2), which would cost $297 billion dollars.

It is tempting, and not entirely implausible, to expect prices for solar power to drop significantly over the next several years.  But given the cost of balance of plant and installation labor, it is unlikely solar electricity is going to get measurably cheaper than wind power no matter how inexpensive the actual collector materials become.  Moreover, the costs for new transmission lines and grid upgrades, the costs for massive energy storage units (since the sun and wind are only producing power during small portions of the day), and the costs for land aquisition, permitting and fighting environmentalist lawsuits will be substantial.  For these reasons, estimating the total cost for California to deliver 50% renewable electricity at $300 billion is probably the very best case, if not fantastically optimistic.  This is $20 billion per year for the next 15 years.  Readers are encouraged to critique these projections.

California has already mandated utilities to accomplish a 25% RPS (renewable portfolio standard) by 2025.  It would make sense to see how this already ambitious process unfolds, giving solar and wind technology - along with future technologies such as enhanced geothermal - time to mature, before leaping to a 50% RPS mandate.

Today the Olympic Games began in burgeoning, triumphant China.  And today the Russians rumbled again, questioning the notion that their settlers of 200 years or more, unmoved and in contiguous lands, constitute a diaspora.  What significance will this day hold for posterity?  China displaying the ascendancy that has been her destiny, or Russia, wounded and dismembered in the wake of their cold war defeat, swollen with carbon revenue and resurgent as well, reminding us of their resiliency and resolve?
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Pelecanus occidentalis

From a strategic standpoint, Russia’s concern with Ossetia is more to do with the plight of ethnic Russians everywhere in the former Soviet Republics, than with Georgia specifically.  Millions of ethnic Russians still live in these suddenly sundered lands, and their predicament is analogous to the predicament of suddenly exiled Germans in the Sudetenland and elsewhere prior to WWII.  By no means are Russia’s concerns invalid, and how they are dealt with is also of concern - in ways not immediately appreciated.  Russia’s abandonment of direct governance of their peripheries of empire, their historical sphere of influence, has lead to destruction of wildlife on a scale orders of magnitude greater than they were under the USSR.  From Siberian tigers to Caspian sturgeon, the absence of Russian control has many faces, not all of them illustrious.

That someone would choose the opening day of the XXIX Olympics to escalate their fight shouldn’t surprise us too much.  Somebody was going to try to steal the show as Beijing began their Olympic opening spectacle.  With hundreds of thousands of closely monitored street cameras and plainclothes officers patrolling in equal number, challenges to China’s management of the Olympic games will be far away - because just as it was in 1936, the swarms of drones aren’t in the skies just yet, and the greatest global capitals remain tranquil.

Should China be the focal point of this day, as war erupts in the Caucasus, midway between the Balkans, the Middle East, and the tumultuous and seething ferment that is Central Asia?  All of this is far, far away from Beijing; only distant murmurs can be heard from Xinjiang and Tibet, or beyond the borders, but Beijing celebrates, as they should.  Should China’s human rights record be assailed here today?  Why go down that path?  Why not simply observe that the admiration many of us rightfully feel for China’s “can-do” attitude, their ability to take decisive collective action as a society, is also reminiscent of the admiration many in the west felt for Germany in the early 1930’s.  And as one still might say, am anfang alles gut war.  How do we channel all that energy and keep it good - can China process their paroxysms of nationalism better than many of their predecessors on the global stage?

Is it only a cheap shot to mention the son of Albert Speer designed the grand boulevard that connects the old city to the Olympic complex in Beijing?  Why, when some of us like wide boulevards?  Was Albert Speer Sr. so bad, or just deluded, or trapped in a system that changed into something he’d never imagined?  In any case, today’s boulevard emanating from the mind of a Speer is not only realized this time, unlike Hauptstadt Germania, but is green and cutting edge, instead of nostalgic and grandiose.  Both are exceedingly evocative of national pride.

As technology enables a plethora of emerging or resurgent nations to aspire to leadership in a multi-polar world, what faces of totalitarianism will the peoples of the world endure?  The Soviet example, where the regime saved the Siberian Tiger from extinction, and the sturgeon from genocidal slaughter?  Today’s Chinese example, where within months mountains are moved into the sea to create a flat plain big enough for an Airbus A380 to land, and new dams on the Yangtzee contain a flow sufficient to generate nearly 18.0 gigawatts?  Or the Western scheme, to regulate and ration production and consumption of carbon as if it were pollution instead of life for flora?  Would the best of all three be too much to hope for?

China, unlike Russia back in 1989, is unlikely to ever bow before the economic might of the west.  But the power that fuels China’s prosperity is capitalist entrepreneurship, and there is no greater force for pluralism and democracy and economic growth than capitalist entrepreneurship.  Prosperity breeds literacy and individual agency, which in turn fosters self-actualization, which impels individuals to demand more individual freedom along with more economic freedom.  In these days of technological productivity putting prosperity within anyone’s grasp, it is only when a society discourages enterprise that prosperity eludes a critical mass of individuals; only when enterprise is overcome by corruption and control does pluralism give way to tyranny.

What road will Russia choose, reasserting themselves, possessing massive reserves of carbon, deep and world-class technology, and millions of sudden exiles who they still care for?  Will the Russians join Nato?  Will they attempt to reconstruct elements of the bloc they once commanded?  Or will they find functional integration, well under way, sufficient imperative to form stronger alliances with Iran and China?

Then again, can the aspirations of China and Russia, and other rising nations, be embraced within a world where the price of war exceeds the price of peace, and therefore some overwhelming combination of forces always agree not to fight, everywhere?  Where America’s leadership, combined with European commitment, convinces China and Russia to coexist with the west and the rest?  To do this, the aspirations of nationalities must be balanced and policed; Russians in Georgia, Tibetans in China, or gross Deutschland in any 21st century incarnation, however innocent or otherwise, however contiguous or dispersed, in this high-density, pedestrian friendly, teeming and frighteningly finite global village.

Despite today’s mixed messages, it is neither ignoble nor absurd to hope a peaceful scenario is the fate of the world, that conflagrations are contained, that empires benignly collude instead of catastrophically collide.  Hopefully the Olympic games, the exaltation they embody, the industry they inspire, the triumph of teams and individuals in peaceful competition, is what defines our future, as we merge fitfully but ineluctably into one global people.

A few days ago we got an email from a proponent of Algae farming to produce biodiesel.  He referenced a study from 1998 sponsored by NREL entitled “Biodiesel from Algae.”  Referencing the study, the writer stated, “Spanning almost two decades of research, this article covers the prospect of large scale production of biodiesel using relatively simple techniques. Although already a decade out of date, the information contained within is extremely timely…”  He then quoted from the study directly:

Didymosphenia geminata, microscopic algae once scarce, but now in many streams and rivers of North America (Photo: US EPA)

“The ASP regularly revisited the question of available resources for producing biodiesel from microalgae. This is not a trivial effort. Such resource assessments require a combined evaluation of appropriate climate, land and resource availability. These analyses indicate that significant potential land, water and CO2 resources exist to support this technology. Algal biodiesel could easily supply several “quads” of biodiesel—substantially more than existing oilseed crops could provide. Microalgae systems use far less water than traditional oilseed crops. Land is hardly a limitation. Two hundred thousand hectares (less than 0.1% of climatically suitable land areas in the U.S.) could produce one quad of fuel. Thus, though the technology faces many R&D hurdles before it can be practicable, it is clear that resource limitations are not an argument against the technology.”

Is it this simple?  The question of algae as a source of commercially viable transportation fuel certainly becomes more compelling ten years later, with a barrel of oil costing well over $100 and another ten years of dramatic advancements in genetic engineering.  Here are just some of the companies developing techniques to extract fuel from Algae:  Aquaflow Bionomics, Aurora Biofuels, Bionavitas, Blue Marble Energy, Greenfuel Technologies, Inventure Chemical, Live Fuels, Petro Sun, Sapphire Energy, Seambiotic, Solazyme, Solena, and Solix Biofuels.

Another way to assess the promise of Algae as a biodiesel feedstock is to compare it to cellulose as an ethanol feedstock, as we did recently in our report “Algae vs. Cellulose.”  But the landscape shifts all the time as these technologies race to market.  Last week I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Charles Wyman about the feasibility of algae.  As someone who has done pioneering work towards commercializing cellulosic ethanol extraction, and the founder of Mascoma, Wyman certainly isn’t disinterested.  But the market for transportation fuels is big enough for cellulose and algae; they compete with petroleum, not with each other.  Wyman pointed out that extraction of fuel from algae depended on flat land, abundant water, sun and injections of CO2.  Absent any of these factors, and the capital cost for algae systems went way up.  Basically his point was there aren’t a lot of places where you have flat land and abundant water, which means not only the refinery would represent a major investment, as with cellulosic feedstock, but also the growing area.  Sorghum and Miscanthus, by contrast, will find vast areas of viable land where they can grow, with minimal capital investment.

NREL’s study, ten years old, still timely, indeed presents the potential of algae to join other emerging alternative fuels as candidates to replace or augment petroleum.  The fact that dozens of start-ups have sprung up to realize this potential indicates there is a genuine opportunity.  But if a capital investment to create the algae ponds or enclosed growth reactors must be incurred along with the capital investment to build the refinery itself, algae as a fuel may find itself at a disadvantage vs. cellulosic ethanol.

Only an extreme libertarian would claim there is no role for government.  In the face of population growth, aging infrastructure, and myriad new, cleaner and more sustainable ways to deliver energy, water and transportation resources, there is much to be done by the public sector.  Green public works will create wealth and resource abundance.  Green public works must include massive new infrastructures and determining what these will be is a qualitatively focused and very subjective exercise - despite the advances of science.  In California, the self-proclaimed greenest state in the USA, what are these green infrastructure investments we should make?

BUILD DESALINATION PLANTS - Upgrade California’s existing coastal power facilities to also include desalination capability.  This would allow desalination plants to be more easily built since their construction would merely involve extending existing facilities.  Currently about 6.0 cubic kilometers of water from northern rivers are transferred into the Los Angeles Basin each year.  It would only cost $30 billion to build desalination plants to completely replace 6.0 cubic kilometers of water - $634 per acre foot - and because water would no longer have to be pumped over the Tehachapi mountains, zero net energy would be consumed.  If the brine is piped several miles offshore before release, the powerful California current will ensure it is dispersed adequately.  Investing in massive desalination plants will free up water for farmers and Northern Californian ecosystems, and provide a decisive and cost-effective hedge against drought.  Ref. California Water System, Desalination Cost, Affordable Desalination, Sverdrups vs. Brine.

INCREASE ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION - California needs to average about 50 gigawatts of output 24 hours per day if California’s commuters are going to turn electric.  Currently California generates about 50 gigawatts during peak, and about half that at night.  Extended range electric cars store at least 10 kWh onboard, all-electric cars store up to 50 kWh onboard.  Whenever they are parked, these cars will all be micro-utilities for their owners.  Load balancing with electric vehicles will constitute the most significant portion of load balancing necessary to make feasible large scale development of intermittant renewable power sources such as wind and solar.  Along with utility scale wind and solar power plants, California should consider enhanced geothermal power, next generation nuclear power, and additional natural gas power plants.  Investing in new power stations will facilitate the electrification of California’s vehicle fleet, and virtually eliminate California’s dependence on imported oil.  Ref. Gigawatt-Hours per EV Commuters, Optisolar’s Thin Film, Utility Electric Storage, Bright Source’s Power Tower.

IMPROVE ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION - Direct current lines, that have ultra-modern relays but overall cost much less, can be installed in underground conduits.  High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power lines should cross California and extend onto a super-grid spanning all of North America, to allow highly efficient electricity transmission in great volumes over large distances.  Upgrading to a bigger, more efficient power grid using HVDC also creates more capacity to harvest large surges of electricity generation.  Wind hits the turbines on the west coast, and the cost of coal fired energy in Pennsylvania drops.  Ref.  The Electric Age, TREK’s HVDC Transmission, Mediterranean Solar.

BUILD MORE ROADS AND FREEWAYS - Along with increasing the supply of energy and water, California’s public works need to include better transportation conduits - and in this context the war on the car is incredibly short-sighted.  The car, the most liberating personal transportation system ever conceived, is within a tantalizingly few years of becoming completely green.  Cars will be totally recyclable, ultra-safe, non-toxic, smart, use clean and sustainable fuel, and have no ecological “footprint” whatsoever.  Instead of making war on the car, we must simply make room for it.  Wider boulevards, wider freeways, more parking structures.  Instead of adding trolley tracks, create more lanes for vehicular traffic.  The idea that mass transit - except perhaps in the case of high-speed rail - can’t be fulfilled on roads is ridiculous.  Many practical schemes already exist, such as busses and taxis, or are emerging, such as share-cars and autopilot, that will allow abundant, unclogged roads to deliver mass transit more comprehensive than ever before.  The tragedy is that by developing light rail and maintaining roads, neither is done well.  Roads are far more versatile than light rail, and we need to rebuild and expand all of them.

The mentality in Sacramento, to continue using California as an example, is to prioritize conservation.  The conventional wisdom is that we are on the brink of experiencing catastrophic scarcity in all areas, food, energy, water and land.  Clearly it is important to legislate reasonable upgrades to energy and water efficiency standards for buildings, as well as encourage more efficient vehicles.  But the notion that we are running out of energy, water and land, particularly in California, is ridiculous.  What we are running out of is a balanced discussion of these issues.  It is easy for policymakers, hiding behind the proclamations of extremist environmentalists, to pretend there are only hard choices - it allows prices to stay high, which enriches the public sector without requiring they make any new investments.

It is ultimately up to California’s voters - do they want to live in a state where energy, water and land are rationed, so higher consumer prices for these necessities translate into massive hidden taxes, or will they finally demand the public sector start doing its job, investing in infrastructure instead of benefits taxpayers don’t get, and extreme environmentalists get out of the way?  Green public works, to supply more transportation, water and power, would create more good jobs, and having these amenities would enable leapfrog levels of economic growth.

As a free nation, a democratic nation, and a global superpower, America’s fate, today more than ever, is to midwife and manage the emergence of the first world generation. Not an easy task, as technology and globalization make every surviving cultural tradition anywhere suddenly replaced or confronted by every other on this shrinking planet, and our polity grapples with it all.  It would be surprising indeed if America were not also considered a troubled nation, inflicting and incurring heartbreaking trauma every day in this imperfect world.  But America’s fate is also a stroke of exceptional luck and opportunity.

The message for Americans to send the modernizing, globalizing peoples of the world, through thick and thin, is how bad things were, and how good things have gotten, and how we are on the brink of the best things ever.  Despite lip service, sometimes effective agents of political change in America focus only on the worst possible end of things - endless war, imminent environmental apocalypse.  But the enduring agents of exponential change in the world are technology and democracy, and these are forces of incredible good, that have brought unprecedented prosperity and opportunity to humanity. In only fighting demons, America risks losing what makes her most great.  If dwelling on averting catastrophe replaces optimism and independent enterprise, America’s promise is at risk; her uniqueness, her gift to humanity.  Optimism and independent enterprise has driven America, draws people to America, defines America.  And like the flow of the river, optimism and enterprise cannot be kept down.  Complaining is no way to get up every morning.  Optimism, can-do, is America’s message to the world.
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Paddling towards pluralism.

Global environmentalism, despite a veneer of exhuberance and a facade of hope, today is mostly about doom and gloom.  Extreme environmentalists, more powerful today than ever, at root are complainers, they are indignant, they are doomsayers, and they are dominant today for reasons that ought to be challenged.  Perhaps the world is going to come to an end if we don’t all do exactly what they say.  And perhaps it will not.  In many cases environmentalism, and the policies to enforce it, already constitute the most regressive hidden tax in history, and global warming alarm will catapult these hidden taxes into the stratosphere of economic stagnation.  With carbon trading and carbon taxes and carbon offsets set to eclipse rational environmental policy, our economy and our way of life are what is in peril, not our planetary icecaps, and only financial traders, professional accountants, attorneys, credentialed consultants, academic experts, corporate cartels and the public sector will benefit.  The temple of ecological green will fill with the changers of the financial green, and common sense will be coopted and coerced by the color of money, no matter how the game is called, or how the rules are set.  With global warming alarmist policy, we will rob from the poor and give to the rich as never before.

There is a lot of junk science out there on both sides of the environmental debate, as always with all debates, but extreme environmentalist junk science seems to be carrying the day, so that is where we most appropriately ought to shine our scrutiny.  Daunting, to put it mildly, is the stupifying volume of all these authoritative and ostensibly terrifying studies.  Example - yet another recent (and highly publicized) report reviewed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) called for additional and significant new regulations and levies.  Citing “expert” studies, the report projected approximately 300 additional deaths in California due to additional pollution over the next few decades, unless massive corrective actions are not immediately undertaken.  Despite its portentious tone, such a study is not an imperative, rationally compelling us to move towards a socialist police state, because it rests on utterly unimpressive projections - 300 deaths within a population of nearly 40 million is a statistically trivial outcome.  There are infinite and totally unforseeable random outcomes, from infinite conceivable causes, that could reduce a population of tens of millions by a few hundred lives over a few decades. 

The idea that anyone or any study can project economic or demographic results so far into the future with details so specific and fine is simply ridiculous. Equally absurd is that such fluff might suffice to justify transformative economic policies. If the California Air Resources Board takes something like this seriously, perhaps the entire agency should be eliminated and replaced with people who care about air pollution, not climate speculation and draconian policies that follow from such exercises of counting angels on the point of a needle.  Yet whether it is 15 score additional dead over decades, or catastrophic collapse of every global ecosystem in the world within the same brief span, extreme environmentalists carry the public scene today, preaching like the saviours in Salem, burning witches and pressing life out of the truth with relentless stones of rhetoric both formidable in craft and terrifying in content.

We need environmentalists, of course we do, but we need environmentalists who care about the difference between a million and a billion, or a thousand and a million, and who make judgements accordingly.  For informed citizens anywhere to leave both local and global environmental policy to a coterie of fanatics and their powerful opportunistic bedfellows - who hide behind opaque clouds of science as they unleash relentless media torrents, the sleet of indignation and the hailstones of fear - is tragic folly.  Anyone who has formed an opinion on any environmental issue needs to think for themselves what passes the smell test, what provides an acceptable cost/benefit, absolutely reject reflexive, unexamined demonization of anyone who disagrees, and demand access to better data, unfiltered and unbiased.

America is a lucky, lucky nation and perhaps cursed as well with troubles so huge, but complaining and doomsaying will not make the world better as fast as optimism and unfettered enterprise. Setting people free to compete, nurturing meritocracy, sustainably improving entitlements everywhere, encouraging building and development - and letting green resume its place within the dazzling full spectrum of reality - will help optimize economic growth and tolerance for pluralism; will help create the next step in the ascent of man.