Faith and Science
Appeasing the Gods of Carbon Neutrality
by Clay Staggs
If everything goes as planned, the United Kingdom will, by Easter of next year, have one of the most thoroughgoing, restrictive, and invasive laws regarding the emission of carbon dioxide of any nation on the planet. Under the terms of the law, within the next ten years, all new homes would have to be “carbon neutral” - whatever that means - and existing homes would face a “home energy audit” by the government, one presumes. And those who fail such an inspection would, in the words of the British Environment Minister, face “painful” financial sanctions. Read all about this monstrosity here.
Is it just me, or is this whole global warming/environmentalist movement going from being absurd to frightening? I’ve heard this movement described as worshiping the creation instead of the creator, and I think that’s spot-on. In fact, it’s more like some old B-movie about a jungle tribe trying to pacify their angry gods with self-sacrifice. But instead of sacrificing a virgin, the modern take on this is to sacrifice the Suburban for a bike.
It just all seems so phony-baloney to me. I’m not advocating waste, and I know that we’re commanded to be good stewards of the earth. However, the heights to which this “crisis” has been elevated are amazing. Think about the last time that a Western democracy did something as invasive of individual privacy as inspecting every home for compliance with some law or as economically disruptive as the proposed caps on CO2 emissions will be. World War II is about as close as you can come. It wasn’t this bad fighting the commies, a much more real and lethal danger to Western civilization than car exhaust.
I don’t know what displays the greater arrogance - that man think that he holds the power to change the very temperature of the earth, or that he thinks that laws mandating the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs can change it back. Whichever it is, one thing that’s certain is that when the kind of far-reaching power that the UK Climate Bill proposes is granted to government, it will be abused.
Posted by Clay Staggs at March 14, 2007 09:24 AM
Well now, Clay…let’s be fair. The song WAS penned by John Denver. Whether or not he was under the influence at the time he wrote it I don’t know…but I just saw a retrospective on his life and music on APT this week, and those cowboy shirts with paisley trim, the pants belted up soooo high on his waist, the dutchboy haircut and the white as wool eyeballs behind those big wirerim specs didn’t really make one think of a stoner! I figure he could have been squeaky clean. He described the experience behind the song, as did his ex - Annie. Several couples went high up into the Rockies to watch a meteor shower that turned out to be very incredible and extensive…just like “raining fire from the sky!” I do know he was known for emotional highs and meloncholy lows (reflected in his music.) And after all, he also said “sunshine almost always makes me high.” I know if I got to see one of those phenomenal meteor showers that lasts all night I would feel pretty high without chemical aid myself. So it’s at least plausible that high could refer to emotion rather that a drug-induced state. My main problem with it becoming the state song of Colorado is just trying to imagine people singing it in the solemn, stately way we associate with state songs….you know,like “Alabama, Alabama, we will aye be true to thee….” I can’t see little school kids singing Rocky Mountain High with the requisite degree of sobriety. But hey, you know the song “Stars Fell on Alabama” was inspired by a similar, though less flambouyant meteor shower. Really. Maybe we should change our song, too!