When the green turns black

The climate change movement is not moving forward.  Despite the hype, this global warming alarmism spews even more hot air than ever before.  On second thought, there seems to be no more steam left in the vents.  That's it.  Finito.

Even as the movement protects its own (as in the no-fault judgment of the CRU by supposedly non-partisan panel), more and more people and groups have turned their backs on what used to be one of their top priority advocacies.  For what can you expect from a movement whose darling is now, shall we say, in hibernation.  Not that his underlings are not receiving marching orders still. He will be back, for sure. 

Reeling from the failure of Copenhagen 2009, the movement will try to put forth a unified and global policy.  What I see is failure again.  It does not get the point.

Here's Walter Russell Mead:

These days, nothing in the world is deader than the drive for a UN climate treaty ...

Something like this is going to have to happen on the climate front.  Relatively small steps, or larger steps often undertaken for reasons that have little directly to do with climate, will have to see us through.  Until more greens understand that, and until the green movement as a whole disabuses itself of the dangerous fantasy that the way to solve our environmental problems is to embrace Malthusian fantasies, utopian treaties and grandiose laws, the green movement will continue to be a drag on human progress — even as the computer models get better and the temperature goes up.

At best, the green movement might be compared to an alarm clock: jangling shrilly to wake up the world.  That is fair enough; they have turned our attention to a problem that needs to be carefully examined and dealt with.  But the first thing you do when you wake up is to turn the alarm clock off; otherwise that shrill beeping noise will distract you from the problems of the day.

The alarm clock will never understand this; making shrill and irrational noise is what alarm clocks do and is all they understand.  But sensible and thoughtful people who want humanity to live fuller, richer lives in a cleaner and more sustainable world need to get past the naive and crude policy ideas that currently dominate green thinking and start giving these questions the serious attention and careful thought they deserve.