The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

Today's Global Warming Policy Forum update unwittingly offers a wonderful suggestion for President Obama as our leader apparently searches for countries to point to as his models for a centrally planned "green economy". That is, "think about what's happening in countries like England, and New Zealand.."

For those of you who haven't been following at home -- or didn't yet get Power Grab -- Obama serially, embarrassingly instructed us to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain, and Germany" to see his models for centrally planning a "green economy" (swapping in Denmark for Spain when that latter was gloriously debunked). After experts from those countries did us all the favor of examining the alleged successes in detail, exposing them as disasters, by his recent Oval Office address Obama just threw up both left hands and stopped giving examples where that sort of statism has worked. Because it hasn't.

In steps GWPF's clippings including these two:

Petrol and power prices have risen sharply in New Zealand after the government introduced a controversial emissions trading scheme. The government has pressed ahead with plans to slash the nation's carbon output, despite widespread opposition and New Zealand's larger neighbour Australia shelving its own scheme. --Paul Chapman, The Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2010  

A hidden tax on utility bills is set to double over the next decade, new research has found. The tax is designed to go towards combating the effects of climate change. Director at energyhelpline.com Mark Todd called the duty "regressive" and warned that it would present the most challenges for the poorest in the UK. "It's like VAT rise it gets levied on every household. The poorest will actually get hit the hardest. Energy is an essential. You can't really do without light or warmth," he explained. --Integral News, 30 June 2010

Having recently just seen Italy also exposed as a debacle and Australia's Labor government teeter and then fall in Australia thanks to the turmoil of simply proposing the schemes, one theory is that our president knows full well that he has simply run out of countries to point to.

Which only means that soon enough we'll be back to that "gotta be the world leader" bit, the eely way to say the plot failed everywhere else while possibly still getting the weaker-minded a-nodding.