Royal Royal Philips Electronics was a major sponsor of the Live Earth Concert. Phillips is also promoting a ban on incandescent light bulbs under color of improving energy efficiency.
We were recently delighted to find full-spectrum CFLs at a nearby store, and they promised to pay for themselves several times over. We bought a couple, with plans to buy more if they worked out.
Unfortunately, they didn't. Their "full-spectrum" light is not as good as the light we get from ordinary incandescent bulbs. We cannot use these CFLs for reading or computer work, although they are adequate for incidental lighting (and we will continue to buy them for that purpose). This underscores our original suspicion: if Philips and other manufacturers were up to the job of making a CFL whose light is as good as that of an incandescent bulb, Philips would not need to agitate for Congress to ban competing products. CFLs would displace incandescent bulbs the way incandescent bulbs displaced the gas lamp.
This is but the tip of the iceberg (even the ones that are melting due to global warming). If the Cap Fits by Kimberly Strassel adds this of the Climate Action Partnership (CAP):
...it happens that the cap-and-trade climate program these 10 jolly green giants are now calling for is a regulatory device designed to financially reward companies that reduce CO2 emissions, and punish those that don't.
...GE makes all the solar equipment and wind turbines (at $2 million a pop) that utilities would have to buy under a climate regime. ...it doesn't take much "ecomagination" to see why [GE CEO] Immelt is leading the pack of climate profiteers.
Strassel's opinion piece is worth reading, because it reinforces the perception that the "green" in which CAP's members are primarily interested is the color of the American dollar.
The agenda of making people or businesses buy certain products, whether by blocking the purchase of medications from (legitimate) Canadian pharmacies or by mandating the purchase of eye-unfriendly CFLs, seems better suited to the worst elements of the Republican Party than anything Democrats stand for. The same goes for regressive taxes on working people through "carbon taxes" on gasoline and other fossil fuels.
Many Kyoto Treaty advocates support ideas like slapping "carbon taxes" on home heating oil, natural gas, and especially gasoline, to discourage the production of carbon dioxide. While Kyotists like Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger can easily afford the increased costs, there are plenty of blue-collar working people (mostly Democrats) who are struggling to put food on their tables, pay for out of control health care costs, and hopefully help their children with college.
This is not Europe or Japan, where public transportation is cheaper and more convenient than automobile travel. We cannot, for example, get to our own business activities by any means but automobile, although we prefer the train for going into a city like New York or Chicago. In the case of most working people, one or both spouses must drive to and from work, so these "carbon taxes" would take money right out of their pockets. Heating the house in winter is not optional, either.
Even worse is the effect that carbon taxes would have on the U.S. economy, and especially on working people's jobs. Henry Ford, a Democrat who introduced high wages for working people along with the 40-hour work week, wrote the following in Today and Tomorrow.
The location of a new plant is largely determined by the cost of its power and the price at which it may make and ship goods to a given territory...
Our civilization— such as it is— rests on cheap and convenient power. ... The source of material civilization is developed power.
Note that Ford says nothing about low wages, and he would probably have fired any executive who proposed moving American jobs to China. Ford and his associates developed what is now known as the Toyota production system (yes, the Japanese adopted it from the Ford company, which later forgot much of its own system), and it was specifically designed to make the per-unit labor cost so low that the company could pay high wages while making a profit.
While intelligent job design and management can reduce per-unit labor costs, however, they cannot reduce the basic amount of energy that is necessary to make the product. Engineers already design jobs to be as energy-efficient as possible, but certain tasks (especially in the chemical industry) require a certain minimum. Any tax that increases energy costs will therefore encourage manufacturers to move their smokestacks, all their carbon dioxide, and the jobs underneath the smokestacks to places like China.
Destroying the jobs of American workers for political correctness is nothing that any Democrats we know stand for, although the worst elements of the other party seem to have no problems with exporting American jobs to China. (In return, China sends us poisonous toothpaste and pet food, defective tires, dangerous toys for our children, and exploding barbeqeue grills.)
Kyotoists will argue, of course, that the planet is getting warmer, and we "have to do something." They would do well to remember the legend of King Canute's futile order that the tide not come in. While some global warming may be due to greenhouse gases, solar radiation over which we have no control whatsoever probably bears the chief responsibility. Astronomers have determined that Mars is getting warmer as well.
We must also remember that the world has gone through numerous warming and cooling cycles with no assistance whatsoever from humans. Glaciers once came far enough south to gouge the Finger Lakes into Upstate New York, while medieval Greenland was warm enough to attract Viking settlers. We have plenty of real problems, like access to quality health care and guaranteeing Social Security benefits to people who paid for them, so we have to ask just how much our society is willing to spend on a "problem" over which it has little or no control.
We further note that many of the countries that are among the Kyoto Treaty's most vocal advocates have no obligations, or plans, to curtail their own greenhouse gas emissions, or their destruction of rain forests that absorb carbon dioxide. When South American countries stop burning down rain forests to clear land for agriculture, we will take their advocacy of Kyoto seriously, but not until then.
Furthermore, none of the proposed greenhouse gas regulations affect real estate developers that mow down forests wholesale (as a nearby one did several years ago) to clear land for housing and shopping malls. If the Kyotoists are really serious about the "problem," why are they not demanding that developers do something like plant a tree for every one they destroy? Why do developers get a pass?
We have read estimates that proposed greenhouse gas regulations will cost $400 billion to trillions of dollars. We think it would be more cost effective to live with the global warming (e.g. by moving agriculture from regions that become deserts to those that were previously too cold for the purpose, just as the Vikings could once grow crops in Greenland) and to spend the money on health care, Social Security, and so on.
In fact, if we felt that we REALLY have to do something about global warming, we should emulate Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee and blot out the sun--for real. We suspect that it would cost far less than $400 billion, or even $40 billion, to put giant mirrors (or their equivalent) into permanent orbits to block enough sunlight to compensate for the sun's increased activity. Noting that a reflective metal like gold can be deposited in layers one or two atoms thick, and that ultrathin materials are available, this could be made into a scientific reality.
In any event, history is replete with scam artists and snake oil salesmen who exploit real or imaginary problems to separate credulous people from their money. During the Middle Ages, there were people who would sell you forgiveness for your sins--and Chemical & Engineering News' Bette Hileman, who is normally pro-Kyoto, has compared carbon credit trading to the sale of indulgences. Other medieval scammers sold "magical charms" to protect people from the Black Plague, Evil Eye, witches, and even bullets from the "diabolical" new firearms.
Little has changed since then. While we must be cognizant of genuine environmental problems like mercury emissions, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, and other materials that are harmful to human life, we must also beware of "climate action profiteers" who are simply modern incarnations of medieval indulgence sellers and 19th century snake oil salesmen.