Conservative Views: Waiving green requirements previously imposed because they would create jobs and grow the economy

Reality, One Step at a Time, by Chris Horner

Benny Peiser’s invaluable CCNet circulates an Financial Times article today assessing the chances of some mandatory climate package as being very low: “[g]iven the short-term contractionary effects of imposing an indirect tax on carbon, it will now almost certainly be shelved.”

Never mind the long-term problems associated with doing something that harmful to yourself that the vast majority of the world, including our rapidly modernizing competitors who would love to host fleeing businesses, refuse.The update includes a particular comment, of which we hear a lot, but which really does deserve some perspective. That is:

If a climate regime isn't established until 2012 or 2013, how do you bridge paying for the work that's under way in the meantime? What do you tell to a big weatherization industry when everything dries up in 2011? 'Thank you very much and have a nice day?' — Steve Nadel, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, 20 January 2009

Well, yes. Or you tell them to consider making a better (or different) mousetrap.

When you hear these plaintive wails—and you will hear much more of them in coming months—be aware that this is no different from the starving performance artist insisting that he cannot make it without taxpayer subsidies in the form of NEA grants.

That is, there’s no market for what I have chosen to do for a living, so you need to tax people to pay for it. It is simply couched in ever-so-slightly less embarrassing language.

Finally, and speaking of embarrassing, Benny also circulates a piece in something called Business Green quoting Gov. Schwarzenegger saying that, in order to create jobs and help the economy grow, he needs to waive all of those green requirements that he previously imposed because he claimed that they would create jobs and grow the economy. It is entertaining when these folks are reduced to such babble—if also sad, given the human consequences they engineer with all of their peacocking in the first place. We will continue to get the government we deserve until such rhetoric and irresponsibility are no longer rewarded