Date:         Fri, 6 Jun 2008 19:15:47 -0700
Reply-To:     Roger Whittaker <rogerwhitt1@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Roger Whittaker <rogerwhitt1@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      an interesting article on climate change ... dare i suppose even
              some truth in it .. indeed
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 [image: Financial Post]

Friday, June 06, 2008

Presented by
<http://ad.ca.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/36d8/3/0/%2a/e%3B195135844%3B0-0%3B0%3B25528958%3B21-88/31%3B25384858/25402715/1%3B%3B%7Eaopt%3D2/2/4b/0%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.nationalpost.com/np_network/index.html>
An arm and a leg

*Peter Foster,  Financial Post  *Published: Friday, June 06, 2008

Let's say that a bunch of tribal chiefs, having realized that they are in
danger of being exposed as useless parasites, consult with their witch
doctors and announce that the Gods are angry. These vengeful Gods are
demanding that every tribesman (except chiefs and witch doctors)must have
either an arm or a leg amputated.

Being eager to be seen as good chiefs, they agree to consult with the
tribesmen. Not about the anger of the Gods, of course. That's settled.
Instead, debate is to be allowed on the relative merits and defects of being
one-armed vs. one-legged. Should individuals be allowed to choose which limb
to lose? How much of a limb should be sufficient for divine appeasement?
Below the knee? Above the elbow? Some bright spin/witch doctor might even
suggest that this mass amputation would represent a marvellous opportunity
to stimulate economic growth via the development of a prosthetic limb
industry. Once the benefits of this new industry were taken into account,
the Gods' anger might prove a net benefit, a golden opportunity.

But then suppose some emperor's-new-clothes kind of individual comes along
and says, "Hang on, what proof do we have the Gods are angry? And where are
these Gods anyway?" You might be sure that if they couldn't rip his heart
out straight away, the powers that be would engage in much agitated jumping
and hooting. "Infidel," they would scream. There would be dark whispers that
this person must be in league with, or in the pay of, the Devil, X'on. How
dare he doubt the shamans, among whom there is consensus.

Just substitute "catastrophic climate change" for "angry gods," carbon taxes
vs. cap-and-trade for amputating arms vs. amputating legs, and "Denier" for
"Infidel," and you pretty much have the substance of the present climate
change policy debate.

We are being asked to countenance destructive but pointless alternatives in
the name of quasi-mystical beliefs pushed by authorities seeking primarily
to bolster their own flagging power and status.

The radical environmentalists/shamans who are pushing this policy debacle
positively welcome such announcements as this week's closure of GM's Oshawa
truck plant. David Suzuki, as part of the Post's series on carbon taxes,
suggested that the GM closure was the price of failing to adopt suitable
climate change policies. But people are abandoning truck purchases because
of expensive gas, which has nothing to do with climate change. Meanwhile,
politicians -- indicating the Alice in Wonderland nature of the debate --
are suggesting that they might use carbon taxes to reduce fuel prices. Let
me cut your arm off and immediately sew it back on. There you are: good as
new.

The overarching nonsense is the twin claim that the science of climate
change is settled, and that it represents the greatest crisis

facing the planet. As last week's Copenhagen Consensus, the wonkish exercise
convened by leading skeptic Bjorn Lomborg, noted, draconian action on
man-made climate change, even if it is a reality, comes well down the list
of sensible priorities for achieving a "better world" (dangerous notion
though that may be).

Even more nonsensical is the assertion that economic self-mutilation might
be good for us. Yet another canard is that a carbon tax is preferable
because it's "more stable." As my colleague Terence Corcoran has suggested
in this space, a carbon tax provides no certainty for the simple reason that
nobody knows, or can know, what the "right" level of taxation should be. In
fact, there are only wrong levels of carbon taxes, since they are taxes on
industrial activity, and thus inevitable destroyers of growth, jobs and
trade. Most important, they cannot be set at any level that would actually
achieve a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions without decimating
economies.

We are meant, however, to be distracted from this fact by claims that such
taxes could be "revenue neutral," that is, governments would reduce taxes
elsewhere by a similar amount. This is analogous to chopping off a leg and
offering the victim a prosthetic arm. Limb neutral! In fact, anybody who
imagines that the tax would not stick to governments' hands, or be hosed
away subsidizing dead-end, drunk-under-the-lamppost technologies, is no
student either of human nature, politics or history. Or else he or she is a
power-deluded politician.

Again, when it comes to certainty, a carbon tax at any level, or any fixed
level of escalation, creates anything but certainty since it carries us into
a world of escalating anti-economic warfare. Amputating our own economic
limbs means that we must be certain that others amputate their limbs, too.
Otherwise we must punish them with "excess limb tariffs" to level the
playing field. This could soon deteriorate into all-out trade war, and/or
sink beneath the deadweight of bureaucratic edict. Then we would be facing a
potential "carbon depression," which wouldn't leave investment looking so
certain at all.

Cap-and-trade is equally ridiculous, a parody of a market that would merely
ensure an enormous expansion in corrupt and/or incompetent bureaucracy. It
would also cause similar economic devastation if caps were set at levels
that were to achieve the allegedly required drastic greenhouse gas
reductions.

Mr. Suzuki suggested that a massive "Green Wave" is headed our way. His
analogy is perhaps more revealing than he intends. We are indeed facing a
tsunami of needless policy destruction. Fortunately, people are finally
beginning to appreciate what this charade will cost them: an arm and a leg.

---

FP

Exclusive online

CORPORATE OVERGOVERNANCE

Terence Corcoran and Power Financial CEO Jeff Orr on the role of corporate
directors. Read more at:

financialpost.com/fpcomment

Copyright (c) 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks
Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.


--
roger w
There are two kinds of jobs in the world:
Picking up garbage and telling people things.
Successful people do both, with the same good attitude. (riw)
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