The American Spectator

Special Report

In Washington state, it's called the "Climate Advisory Team."

Florida calls theirs the "Governor's Action Team on Energy and Climate Change" -- not a Quinn Martin production and not spearheaded by George Peppard.

But Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle did not get the rhetoric memo, clumsily calling his appointed group the "Task Force on Global Warming." No wiggle room there for a state -- known for its nasty lake effect -- that has experienced its harshest winter in memory. A "climate change" moniker might not have been so easily laughed away.

What I'm referring to are a few of the dozens of panels that have been created in the states, mostly by governors, to address what (in most cases) used to be called "global warming." As some have noted (most skeptically) the preferred phrase is now "climate change," which nicely encompasses the unpleasant recent cooling as well.

Despite current trends (as MIT's Richard Lindzen notes, an imperceptible change in global mean surface temperature over the last 10 years), state executives across the country have created these commissions ostensibly to "do their part" to help the planet avert an overheating catastrophe.

But there's been one curious thread through nearly each state's panel. Despite being identified as "climate" commissions, not one bit of meteorology or related sciences is discussed. Instead members bandy about the nasty, odorless, colorless, particle-free emission that you and I exhale unceasingly to (according to them) drive temperatures upward: carbon dioxide.

So why call them "climate" commissions? The answer is that, Yas-sir-ee, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has given states all the cover they think they need to constrain fossil fuel combustion: Read its report, ascribe to it inerrancy, hail its prophecy, and condemn all heretics, just like the IPCC's co-Nobel winner has.

The state projects are carried out by the catastrophist Center for Climate Strategies, which has enticed nearly half the nation's executive administrations into hiring them, after giving these governors the impression that they would objectively manage their states' "climate" commissions. In reality, accuracy would demand that these "action" squads instead be called "CO2-reduction" commissions, "Greenhouse gas-busters" or "Anti-exhalation engineers." But instead these true believers extrapolate their assumptions to assert they are fully addressing the earth's thermostat as well.

Confirmation of this is found in the demands CCS makes before they accept the job to run these state commissions. Lest any member drift beyond the parameters of this fixed process and IPCC dogma, the ground rules establish that:

* "Participants will not debate the science of climate change...but will instead provide leadership and a vision for how (the state) will rise to the challenges and opportunities of addressing climate change."

* "Participants are expected to support the process and its concept fully..."

* "Participants must attend meetings and stay current with information provided to the group and the decisions of the group. Alternates are strongly discouraged and must be cleared with the facilitator and Chair..."

* "The estimated CCS budget for completion of startup and completion of the process...covers planning, facilitation, and development and quantification of approximately 50 policy recommendations with a final report."

The above rules were drawn from the plans for the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group, but they are the same for every state. The strict guidelines prevent any radical departure from what CCS, and their global warming alarmist benefactors like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, determine should be state policy. After all, these wealthy liberal patrons have paid up front for these "50 policy recommendations" -- they'd better get what they were promised.

And they do. Every state amazingly produces the same strategies: increased taxation upon coal-fired energy generation; higher electric bill surcharges; increased tailpipe emissions standards to encompass CO2; subsidized mass transit; "green" standards in school curricula; and more.

Can you feel the pain? CCS and the climate commissions can't. Seems they promise only positives, as the new taxes and regulations that they always recommend are amazingly said to save state economies money and create jobs. Indeed, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter promises to create an entirely "new energy economy" for his state -- quite a feat for government bureaucrats.

Perhaps we should thank these folks for saving us from our freedoms. Undoubtedly they know what is best for the rest of us, as demonstrated by their insistence on stifled debate, limited consideration of actions, exclusion of information, and rosy-outlook economics.

topics:
Taxes, Economics, Environment, Global Warming, Energy