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July 24, 2006
The Amnesia ... it Burns
by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
A bit of emergency filling-in here ...:
Shorter Andrew Sullivan: The fact that Al Gore could not persuade the few petrostate Democrats to pass a BTU tax in 1993, or convince the Senate to ratify Kyoto in 1997, makes his call to action on global warming less credible.
We should obviously applaud Andrew Sullivan for his concerted efforts over the past two years to remain in the reality-based community. But the reality-based community also includes political reality, so until some Senate Republican(s)s step up to the plate on carbon taxes or fuel economy, and we can hammer out a compromise solution that includes ... I don't know, subsidies to clean coal? Massive wind-power projects across various Republican-held Congressional Districts? A "feebate" system for improving fuel economy? ... policy engagement on global warming is a real suckers' move.
July 24, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
Thanks for saying it so I didn't have to.
Posted by: shadowfax | Jul 25, 2006 12:08:36 AM
Thanks for reading Sullivan so we don't have to.
Posted by: Marv Toler | Jul 25, 2006 7:27:06 AM
He's not always reality based, but I guess when compared to what passes for reality for most conservatives these days he is as close as you will find.
Posted by: akaison | Jul 25, 2006 8:43:16 AM
Instead of subsidies, why not just raise the tax on gasoline and let the market figure out the solutions? Or better, tax pollution.
I guarantee you that ethanol and biodiesel, solar, wind and nuclear, etc will become much more attractive as gas rises, and then the federan government doesn't need to "choose" a solution that may be the wrong one.
Of course, that isn't going to happen... but one can dream.
Posted by: Tito | Jul 25, 2006 9:50:40 AM
We should obviously applaud Andrew Sullivan for his concerted efforts over the past two years to remain in the reality-based community.
I think the fact that it requires so much effort for him means that his positions will always be suspect, though-- he obviously wants to go back home to his GOP Daddy party and will continue to trash his current temporary residence until someone else cleans up his old place enough for it to be habitable.
Posted by: latts | Jul 25, 2006 9:55:28 AM
the problem , of course, is that his GOP daddy home was never the reality but a smoke screen designed to obtain power. conservatism isn't anything more than a bunch of hot smoke and plaititudes mascqerading as real life. but- then again- I say the same thing of liberalism
Posted by: akaison | Jul 25, 2006 11:36:27 AM
Dunno... my observation is that a lot of the people we like to call honest conservatives (meaning that they're not entirely unprincipled, I suppose) are in it for the emotional security, and that doesn't always translate into getting off on raw power. I do think that the external imposition of order so many conservatives seek is not as benign as they'd like to think, but isn't necessarily actively malicious either.
Posted by: latts | Jul 25, 2006 1:21:03 PM
Amnesia, eh? How about the time in 1998 when Al Gore said, "...We will not submit the Protocol for ratification without the meaningful participation of key developing countries in efforts to address climate change" ( source ) Al Gore was making the argument (which was formally ratified by the Senate by a vote of 95-0, including all the "pro-environment" Dems such as Boxer, Lieberman, Kennedy, etc., (Feinstein abstained), S.R. 98... ) that the U.S. doesn't need to do a bloody thing about Global Warming until desperately poor and technologically backwards countries such as China and India commit to equivalent reductions. The abovementioned desperately poor countries found that a sticking point during the Kyoto negotiations, and Al and the Democrats knew that very well. Al Gore, not George Bush, killed U.S. participation in the Kyoto Treaty back in 1998.
Now, I am quite prepared to believe that the stunning recent evidence has changed Al's mind on this subject -- that the U.S. needs to take a leadership role without waiting for concessions from others. But please, please don't try to whitewash Al's pathetic environmental record while in the White House.
Posted by: Thomas Daulton | Jul 26, 2006 1:44:15 PM
(Which, by the way, was not meant as an endorsement of anything Andrew Sullivan said, the pathetic hack. Long before Andy wrote that, I myself came to the conclusion that the lack of mention of CAFE standards in the film was a cop-out. Andy is a wanker who buys time for his corporate masters to ruin the Earth, but I believe we should hold our _own_ leaders, such as Al Gore, to a higher standard.)
Posted by: Thomas Daulton | Jul 26, 2006 1:46:00 PM
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