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| Cancun, Mexico. Site of this year's "global warming" conference. |
This year’s global warming in Cancun (notice the UN bureaucrats always meet in upscale areas like Bali, Davos, Cancun, and Coppenhagen rather than in places like Calcutta or Port Au Prince where they desperately need the money) has been so rife with silliness it has become a parody of itself.
There are many, many things I could write about it, but, instead, I recommend reading Elizabeth Scalia’s posting,
Eschewing teleconferences that could reduce their carbon footprints to almost nothing (assuming they all own computers and work in offices appropriately outfitted with vision-wrecking fluorescent overheads), the usual bureaucratic suspects have gathered in Cancun, Mexico, for another round of United Nations’ “talks on climate change”—that malleable and useful crisis upon which every weather variant and geological shift may be blamed without proof, for as long as the scam can dependably line the right pockets, and infringe upon our daily living without discomfiting the elite.
These determined negativists, having parked their private jets at the shady end of the tarmac, are currently meeting, eating, greeting, and presenting to a standing choir that needs no persuasion, their increasingly unpersuasive scientific “studies” forecasting the inevitable death of planet Earth.
Once again, as we have heard for what seems like decades, the attendees are filled with “a sense of foreboding.” We are warned that this gathering is the world’s annual “last chance” to stop climates from changing and little ice ages or big tropical ages from occurring as they have naturally, before. The headlines promise chaos unless dramatic, liberty-and-opportunity-narrowing steps are taken to compel wayward humanity into Gaia-salvific obedience. Writes the Daily Telegraph in the U.K.:
Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions. . . . This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models…
Her entire column is here.
Remember just two years ago when U2’s Bono was “confessing his sins” to “Father Al Gore”?
Bono compared a conversation with Gore to an act of religious contrition.
“It’s like being with an Irish priest. You start to confess your sins,” he said. “Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter, I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, gulfstream-flying rock star.
“I’m going to kick the habit. I’m trying father Al, but oil has been very good for me — those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel.”
Bono and Gore were in Davos to push their respective campaigns for poverty alleviation and reducing carbon emissions.
Scalia goes on to note,
Let them [those calling for you and I to start rationing] start with U2, the Irish rock band that—even as our put-upon saints in Cancun are weeping over Gaia—has landed its current extravaganza, “The 360 Tour,” in Australia. Billed as the biggest tour ever mounted, and at a daily cost of $850,000, the show requires six 747 jets, 55 trucks, and an assembly crew of 130. “You compare a tour by the number of trucks they use,” production manager Jake Berry said. “The Rolling Stones ran 46 trucks. We are running 55. This is the biggest.”
We are assured by U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness, that even though the daily cost of running the 360 Tour is astronomical, “It’s important we play regularly. There is a discipline involved.” But just in case anyone worries that Gaia must suffer for the discipline of U2’s art, they may breathe easily: “Even though we’re spending a lot of money, we’re making a lot of money.”
That’s a relief.
As we read the dire news out of Cancun, that food and material goods may need to be rationed among the little people, for the good of the earth, we may take comfort in knowing that, before we retire to our cold-water flats, we will still be permitted to expend large amounts of our hard-earned cash for the privilege of being entertained and lectured by extremely wealthy musicians who inveigh against greed and endorse big-government solutions to social and environmental problems, even as they move their assets to tax-reduced locations, and fly their multiple 747’s and drive their scores of trucks to their next profitable, ephemeral gig.
It is a funny sort of global crisis that requires sacrificial amends and rationing—with the accompanying restrictions on earnings and opportunities—from some people, while others are permitted to continue living their lives and making their profits pretty much as they always have.
As Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds says, "I'll believe it [global warming] is a crisis when the people telling me it is a crisis start acting like it is a crisis."
UPDATE: 7pm. You can view the fun!
UPDATE: 7pm. You can view the fun!
