Category Archives: EPA
Global Community versus Global Warming
The civilized world rebuked ISIS by agreeing to turn down the global thermostat.
Al Gore was giddy. He proclaimed, “the global community is speaking with one voice”.
Last time the “global community” tried to speak with one voice was the Kyota Protocol. Poor countries said screw it, we want to get rich too. So this time around the rich countries agreed to buy off the poor ones for $100 billion a year. Or, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “governments of the West are going to dun their taxpayers to transfer money to clean and green governments run by the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe”.
But not to worry. John Kerry says the deal is non-binding. It’s not a treaty because a treaty would never get past the US Senate. In other words it’s empty symbolism. Not that that’s a bad thing, according to Robert Tracinski:
As a global warming skeptic, who thinks it’s absurd that the entire world is supposed to get together to prevent relentlessly rising temperatures (that aren’t happening) and who considers the idea of an international political target for global temperatures at the end of the century to be a monument to the hubris of central planning, I’m not bothered that the Paris Agreement is empty symbolism.
EPA Spill
EPA chief Gina McCarthy says the Animas River is cleaning itself. The EPA spilled 3 million gallons of toxic waste into the river when one of its contractors pulled the plug to the abandoned Gold King mine. The agency took 24 to alert officials of the spill.
Silly Shirt Season
World leaders showed up at the APEC summit in China last week wearing silly shirts. It’s an annual tradition to distract us from the silly stuff they do.
China is filled with with smog. You can taste the PM 2.5 – little particles that go into your lungs to kill you. So what was the signing event of the week? A deal to reduce the carbon dioxide you exhale to cough those little buggers out. And the Chinese don’t even have to do it until 2030. If they’re still alive.
Silly Season
The agreement is for America to set the example by cutting co2 emissions right away. The really silly part is that it’s a deal about nothing. Carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have been falling due to increased use of natural gas and a decreased role for industrial production. We’re expected to reach the goals of the agreement by doing nothing. China will reach peak population growth by 2030 and it’s co2 emissions are expected to fall naturally by then too.
The other big news of the week was the revelation that our governing elites lack a positive attitude toward us voters. They think we’re stupid. Ok, so maybe they’re right. It’s certainly not a problem shared by China – a situation much admired by Tom Friedman of the NYT.
Disney World Government
Departed Secret Service director Julia Pierson wanted the Secret Service to become more like Disney World – more welcoming. Omar Gonzales felt welcome enough to dash through the unlocked front door of the White House with a knife. Former Director Pierson has a legacy. In fact the new culture seems to be taking hold throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Peggy Noonan calls the attitude “the new bureaucratic brazenness”. Actually not so much welcoming as we don’t give a damn what you think.
Everything sounds like propaganda. That will happen when government becomes too huge, too present and all-encompassing. Everything almost every level of government says now has the terrible, insincere, lying sound of The Official Line, which no one on the inside, or outside, believes. The other day, during the big Centers for Disease Control news conference on the Dallas Ebola case, a man from one of the health agencies insisted in burly (and somehow self-satisfied) tones that the nation’s health is his group’s No. 1 priority. And I thought, just like a normal person, “No, your No. 1 priority is to forestall a sense of panic. To do that you’ll say what you need to say. Your second priority, connected to the first, is to assert the excellence and competence of the agency with which you are associated. Your third priority is to keep the public safe.”
Doyle McManus just wants to know what happened to good old American know-how.
I like my Grumpy character – Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. Since Obama threw him under the bus I drew him with tire tracks on his back. Too bad he’s facing you.
Toxic Toledo
Western Lake Erie suffers toxic algae blooms this time of year. Last Saturday the stuff got into Toledo’s drinking water.
Holy Toledo
Here’s a Daily Beast essay by Toledo Tough, P.J. O’Rourke, embracing toxic water.
