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Special Report
Copenhagen Smokeless Chu
At the upcoming summit, nations will promise to stop behaving like adolescents while pursuing “independent climate goals.”
Activists like Richard Branson pride themselves on perpetual adolescence, seeing no contradiction between the jet-setting hedonism they practice and the abstemious environmentalism they preach. Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comparison of the American people to adolescents should offend these celebrity activists a bit.
“The American people…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Chu as saying earlier this week, which added that environmental officials in the Obama administration have “launched a cross-country tour of 6,000 schools to teach students about climate change and energy efficiency.”
Chu quickly denied that he compared Americans to heedless teenagers, though he does hope the American public will submit to the Obama administration’s tutoring and see escalating energy costs as a great boon to the economy. According to his spokesman, Chu sees the “need to educate the broader public about how important clean energy industries are to our competitive position in the global economy.” Now that Van Jones isn’t around to talk about “green collar” jobs, Chu’s task in convincing Americans to rejoice at losing their blue-collar ones is all that much harder.
If the American people are skeptical that thousands of dollars added to their energy bills in coming years and lost jobs from pulverized industries will improve their competitive position in life, they are not alone. China and Japan, among other nations keen on retaining their competitive position in the global economy, have no intention of signing an international climate pact at the upcoming summit in Copenhagen. These countries would prefer to pursue “independent climate goals,” says the Washington Post.
And whether or not those will be kept is an open question, as Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, hedged: “Japan’s efforts alone cannot halt climate change, even if it sets an ambitious reduction target.”
So does this mean the “irreversible catastrophe” of which Obama spoke in his climate change talk at the UN will now happen? One would think so if global warming theory were true. But the peddlers of it never cancel their future plans after international climate pacts stall or dissolve.
Obama is confident that this “irreversible catastrophe” can be addressed in a “flexible and pragmatic” manner, which sounds about as plausible as his promise to expand health care coverage while cutting costs.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, in his speech to the UN reported by the Post, lamented one more year of empty talk.
“On cue, we stand here and tell you just how bad things are. We warn you that unless you act quickly and decisively, our homelands and others like it will disappear beneath the rising sea before the end of the century,” he said. “But then, once the rhetoric has settled and the delegates have drifted away, the sympathy fades, and the indignation cools, and the world carries on as before.”
Chu, for his part, doesn’t sound all that worried. The Copenhagen accord isn’t all that crucial after all. Focus, instead, on America’s clean-energy plans, he told reporters.
But isn’t “collective” action more important than ever in a world where America shouldn’t be dominating? The torrent of blah-blah-blah speeches from Obama this week making that claim didn’t stop him from acting like the Caesar of the world. He peppered his speeches with implied criticisms of the previous administration that alternated between casting it as a thug and a “bystander.”
Meanwhile, we’re learning that clean-energy initiatives carry risks of their own beyond sapping the economy, as suggested by this front-page headline in the Post on Wednesday: “The Deadly Silence of the Electric Car.” The American Federation of the Blind and others fear that noiseless electric cars will clip the unsuspecting — one more tricky new problem for Chu and company to solve as they engineer a “cultural shift” in America.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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suzannepark | 9.24.09 @ 6:19AM
There is always good demand for highly trained law enforcement officers. Get a degree from a good school in couple of months and get a job. Check http://bit.ly/D7WBV
Craig Goodrich| 9.24.09 @ 6:37AM
The hits just keep comin'. There has never, ever been a shred of actual evidence for CO2-caused global warming, and all (ALL!) the latest data, from temperatures (land and sea) to atmospheric profiles, run contrary to the silly theory's predictions.
Meantime, when the landscapes of Germany, Denmark, and Spain have been so disfigured by useless giant wind turbines that the respective governments have finally overcome their near-fatal political correctness and put moratoriums on any further installations, the UK, Canada, and the US are moving with all possible speed to devastate every available square foot of their countryside and wilderness.
Save the Planet! Lynch a wind developer every day!
Ryan| 9.24.09 @ 8:23AM
Correction: There's no such agency as the American Federation of the Blind. It's NATIONAL Federation of the Blind (NFB).
David Adams| 9.24.09 @ 8:31AM
"SUBMIT to Obama's tutoring"? What an incredibly bad choice of words; Americans have freedom of choice and we do not 'submit' to anyone!
rumpole| 9.24.09 @ 1:05PM
This is such a non-story, I can't believe how much hot air is being generated over it. All he was talking about was how much energy gets wasted every day, and which could be saved. Making appliances, lighting, cars, etc. more efficient is our cheapest source of new energy. I, for one, would like to see
American solar panels and
American wind turbines and
American electric cars built in
American factories outside of
American cities and towns by
American workers making an
American wage, using
American tools and their
American hands.
Be patriotic, support our troops for real, drive a hybrid. (or a plug-in hybrid in a couple of years, or an electric car a couple of years after that...)
Liberty or Death| 9.24.09 @ 8:10PM
Our cheapest source of "new" and "realistic" energy (and I'm not talking about that Star Trekkian crap you are talking about), would be to plunge a few more holes into the ground and drill for oil from our AMPLE supply here in the United States. Or how about safe/clean nuclear power?
You idiots and your hybrid cars are just plain suckers. Go ahead and spend that money though if it makes you feel better about yourself. I always imagine a cabal of Toyota CEOs rolling around on the fat, mountain of money made off of daisy-sniffers like you. Cha CHING-- everytime a greenie drives off the lot in a Prius, another Toyota Exec gets his wings;). Heck, if I owned a business, I'd be doing the same thing... cashing in on blind fools too!
BTW you should look under the hood of "the ugliest car on the road." The factories building your precious, "clean car," are worse for the environment than regular auto factories. Kinda like when Al Gore chastises the rest of us from his carbon-gulping mansion huh?
You're not being patriotic by driving one of those things. You're being dumb.
KyMouse| 9.25.09 @ 2:44PM
A few years ago, when we were told to buy those corkscrew lightbulbs, all we were told was that they would last a long time and save us money.
In the monthly newsletter that just arrived with my gas-and-electric bill, I see a paragraph that extolls the virtues of those bulbs yet again -- but for the first time, there is a mention that they have to be disposed of "properly," at at facilities we can locate by going to a certain Web site.
I've known about that little problem for some time, but I'll bet a lot of other people haven't. Would so many people have made the switch voluntarily if we had known that we had to treat the bulbs like HazMat?
By the way, I recently stocked up on good ol' incandescent bulbs, thanks to Big Lots.
JP| 9.24.09 @ 1:11PM
I wonder if some adventerous person could use google maps and see what Chu's residence looks like. I know someone did this with NY Times writer and Climate Change Alarmist Thomas Friedman. Friedman lives in a palatial McMansion decked out with multi-car garages and a swimming pool.
Also, if one goes over to Accuweather's Climate Blog, there is a chart showing that CO2 concentrations have been going down in recent months -obviously due to the deep recession. The Alarmists should be jumping for joy. They got what they wished for.
Pingback| 9.24.09 @ 3:50PM
I Hate Al Gore » Copenhagen Smokeless Chu links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Pingback| 9.24.09 @ 10:52PM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Copenhagen Smokeless Chu [spectator. links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Roy| 9.24.09 @ 10:58PM
rumpole: Or we could see Americans making what other Americans freely choose to buy, rather that what Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Steven Chu, and rumpole want to use government coercion to force them to buy.
American patriotism is about supporting freedom.
T.A.| 9.25.09 @ 5:50AM
Latest guff from alarmists conveniently forgets that, the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are growing.
Most of the' warming' in recent years is 'hotly' disputed, even a figment of imagination on behalf of the Hadley centre/CRU and GISS/NASA.
Why did this doubtful HYPOTHESIS ever become so widespread? Well that busted flush called the UN saw an opportunity to further aggrandise its profile (before - a joke and corrupt institution, now still a joke but even more so) and climb on the AGW bandwagon.
If Gore thinks and Hansen thinks and the UN and Bono, all think its man-made, surely, no it is imperative that it is time for a rethink!!
A cool reflective symposium of sharp and objective minds who do know (pure) science and can read thermometers (correctly) and weather data (accurately) and no computer modellers within a thousand miles.
All celeb' AGWers are such utter hypocrites and full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But then we all knew that, its not about the planet more about personal bank balances/kudos/feeling useful/raising one's profile.
Tom Arnold.
Wakefield, England.
Dave Lincoln| 9.25.09 @ 6:34PM
" Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, in his speech to the UN reported by the Post, lamented one more year of empty talk.
"On cue, we stand here and tell you just how bad things are. We warn you that unless you act quickly and decisively, our homelands and others like it will disappear beneath the rising sea before the end of the century," he said. ""
Hey, so y'all have got 90 years to pack. Suck it up, cupcake!
(sorry, I just couldn't get all broken up about the Maldives Islands going under water. Now, Atlantis, that was some shit, there. I heard the place was full of nymphomaniacal hotties - truly a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.)
BTW, I think you all should know my opinion of global warming/cooling/staying-about-the-damn-same) by now. It's a hoax now as big as Social Security or the diamond business - truly a tragedy of AlGorean proportions.
Chu on that Mr. Chu, and get TF out of my face.