Friday, August 12, 2005

Reality Check for greenies

...or at least the Anti-American greenies who seem to dominate the movement.

Scott Burgess has a link-laden post up at the Adam Smith Institute Blog which pretty thoroughly demolishes the arguments from the left about the United States being "the world's greatest polluters". In fact, in terms of greenhouse gasses, we're near the top (but not the worst), but for other air and water pollution, we're far cleaner than most of the rest of the world. He also points out that we spend an enormous amount (both in absolute terms, and as a percentage of GDP) on pollution controls; only two nations (Netherlands and Austria) spend as much per capita, and in absolute terms, only Germany and Japan are even close.

The only quibble I have with his analysis is that he uses GDP units as a measurement for greenhouse gas emission. The more extreme and vocal greenies are trying to stop production altogether, so GDP is not going to work to shut them up. They'd rather send us back to a pre-industrial era in which everyone is too busy in the fields (or the looms) toiling to survive, rather than "rape mother earth" with industrialization. Any GDP is a bad thing to those luddites.

posted at 12:27 PM | permalink | Comments (0)

Useful Link

Via Silflay Hraka comes this handy link to opt out of the deluge of offers for credit cards and insurance. Too bad they can't cover offers to refinance one's home (my favorite when I was a homeowner), but at least it's a start.

posted at 08:59 AM | permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, August 11, 2005

On Cindy Sheehan

Bill Quick links to a New York Sun article on Cindy Sheehan, who is using her son's death as a political prop to bash President Bush over the war. (Casey Sheehan was a soldier killed in Iraq.) He then notes that her activities (which her family vehemently disavows, and which her son would likely not countenance) serve only to profane her son's memory. By blatently politicizing the issue, she becomes a valid target of criticism.

Like Michael Berg (father of the murdered Nick Berg) and the families involved in the left-wing Peaceful Tomorrows group, she is using the deaths of a family member as a shield against their protests. Any criticism of them is immediately cast as unfair and malicious, which is intended to allow them to make their claims with impunity. Sorry, but I'm not playing any more. Sheehan, Berg, and the Peaceful Tomorrows people have engaged in the political grandstanding for which they criticized Bush, only in a far more shameful and mean-spirited fashion. Bush Derangement Syndrome is not a blanket excuse, either. They have relentlessly attacked Bush, his cabinet, and his supporters since September 11th, and it's time to return the rhetorical balance by denouncing them in kind.

UPDATE: Read this, by Varifrank. It is far more eloquent and far more moving than anything I could possibly have written on this subject, and it is also far more devastating to Cindy Sheehan's position, without ever descending into ridicule or cruelty. It looks at some of the facts behind Casey Sheehan's motivations, and how they don't align with his mother's current story.

posted at 01:50 PM | permalink | Comments (0)