“Armed with Gore’s utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president’s 20-room home and pool house devoured … more than 20 times the national average….”
“‘I appreciate the solar panels,’ [Drew Johnson of TCPR] said, ‘but he also has natural gas lanterns in his yard, a heated pool, and an electric gate. While I appreciate that he’s switching out some light bulbs, he is not living the lifestyle that he advocates.'”
– Jake Tapper, “Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’? A $30,000 Utility Bill.” ABC News, February 2007.
Neo-Malthusians who profess the need for government to save the world from peaceful consumers and producers face some hard realities in their lemming-like war against fossil fuels.…
… Dr. [J. Elliott] Campbell and his colleagues have discovered that in the last century, plants have been growing at a rate far faster than at any other time in the last 54,000 years. Writing in the journal Nature, they report that plants are converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. The increase is because of the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere, which fertilizes the plants, Dr. Campbell said.
– Carl Simmer, A Global Greening, New York Times, April 5, 2017.
There are benefits, not only costs, to the human influence on climate. Photosynthesis from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is part of this.
Expect the benefits of CO2 to show up in a recalculation of the “social costs” of the enhanced greenhouse effects, which will dramatically lower the Obama-era estimates that looked at (exaggerated) costs, not benefits.…
…“I am writing to urge you to attend the upcoming United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [‘Earth Summit’] scheduled for early June in Brazil and to support the concept of establishing a reasonable, non-binding, stabilization level of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.”
– Ken Lay [CEO, Enron Corp.] to George H. W. Bush, Letter of April 3, 1992.
“The United States fully intends to be the world’s preeminent leader in protecting the global environment. Environmental protection makes growth sustainable…. [This] recognition … by leaders from around the world is the central accomplishment of this important [United Nations] Rio Conference.”
– George H. W. Bush, “News Conference in Rio de Janeiro, June 13, 1992.
“[Enron was] the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.”