Dictatorship - The Anti-Industrial Coup

Here is all the evidence you need to know that we live under a dictatorship. The reality of that is getting clearer and clearer. This analysis is produced by Robert Tracinski of the TIA Daily, a daily analysis of current events from an objectivist perspective. SCB

The Anti-Industrial Coup

Intellectual climate change seems to be transforming Australia first. For example, a prominent new article in The Australian summarizes recent scientific findings that refute the basic assumptions behind the global warming hysteria.

"What this means is that the IPCC model for climate sensitivity is not supported by experimental observation on ancient ice ages and recent satellite data.

"So are we justified in concluding that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is not the only or major driver of current climate change? And if so, how should we re-shape our ETS legislation?

"I don't know the answer to these questions, but as Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed: 'It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.'"

In America, the biggest sign so far of the political impact of Climategate is a new op-ed in the Washington Post by Sarah Palin using Climategate as a springboard to dismiss global warming and call for the US to stay home from the Copenhagen conference.

Palin is not significant because she carries any scientific authority. She is significant because her public statements on this are a bellwether for the political right.

Until a few months ago, the typical position on global warming within the right could be described as "moderately skeptical." There was doubt that we could know about global warming with certainty or that we could do anything about, but the view that global warming is flat-out wrong—much less that it is a fraud—was still considered somewhat extreme. And that's how someone like John McCain, a global-warming believer, could still get the Republican nomination.

Attitudes were already beginning to harden a bit, but Climategate was a major turning point. The left has ignored the scandal as best it can, and I am not sure how much independent voters have been permitted to hear about it in the press. But it is now the mainstream position within the right that global warming is a fraud, a hoax, a dishonest power grab.

This is important because it means that one major political party—which just might regain a majority in Congress next year—is willing to fight against cap and trade.

And we'll need such a congressional majority. Before he left for Copenhagen, President Obama pledged to enact reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Congressional leaders immediately reminded him that he couldn't act without the approval of Congress. The Obama administration's response was to declare: yes, we can.

They have announced their intention to stage an anti-industrial coup, using the authority of the EPA to impose a "command-and-control" global warming dictatorship on the American economy. They are then using this as a threat against Congress: pass cap-and-trade legislation, or we'll impose something even worse by executive decree.

The only answer to this is strong action by Congress to reassert its power by explicitly denying the EPA any legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide. But to do that will require a Republican majority with the confidence to reject global warming as a fraud and a threat to liberty. And that is precisely what we may get in 2010.


"Administration Warns of 'Command-and-Control' Regulation Over Emissions," FoxNews.com, December 9

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn't move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a "command-and-control" role over the process in a way that could hurt business.
The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity….

[W]hile administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won't be pretty.

"If you don't pass this legislation, then...the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area," the official said. "And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."…

The economic official explained that congressional action could be better for the economy, since it would provide "compensation" for higher energy prices, especially for small businesses dealing with those higher energy costs. Otherwise, the official warned that the kind of "uncertainty" generated by unilateral EPA action would be a huge "deterrent to investment," in an economy already desperate for jobs….

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, said Tuesday he is going to attend the Copenhagen conference to inform world leaders that despite any promises made by President Obama, no new laws will be passed in the United States until the "scientific fascism" ends.

"I call it 'scientific fascism,'" Sensenbrenner said during a press conference with fellow climate change skeptics. Sensenbrenner said, "The UN should throw a red flag" on scientists who support global warming to the exclusion of dissent.