Maybe It’s Secretly Ironic?

Environmentalists Literally Pee on Themselves

(And proselytize others to pee on themselves.)

(If it’s that important, wouldn’t you accomplish the same thing by just not flushing the toilet?)

No, I am not making this up.  Yes, I triple-checked to see whether this was a piece of satire or I was missing something.  Yes, I encourage you to triple-check for yourself rather than take my word for it.

This is from the BBC: “UEA students urged to urinate in shower”.

The Go with the Flow campaign is the brainchild of students Debs Torr and Chris Dobson, from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich.

Re Global Warming, Be Reasonable

Sixteen scientists in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal argue, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy”.  Selected excerpts (emphasis added):

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Why the Economy Isn’t Recovering

The Wall Street Journal summarizes Washington’s generous contributions to the problem:  The Keystone XL oil pipeline could create more than a hundred thousand jobs, and an environmental review says it poses no threat to the environment, but the administration has held it up for three years anyway.  Administrative agencies generated 81,405 pages’ worth of new regulations last year, “bringing the total cost to the U.S. economy of regulatory compliance to an estimated $1.7 trillion a year.”  And so on.  

Postscript on Creeping Environmentalist Totalitarianism

Speaking of “efficiency”, I knew that the EPA already had the power to tell us how much water could come out of our showerheads (which is bad enough), but I didn’t know that “The venerable Consumer Reports” had turned someone in; I’ve now independently verified that this appeared in the October 2009 issue of Consumer Reports (page 36):

. . . the $500 Hudson Reed Theme Thermostatic AS333 shower tower’s forceful spray seemed too good to be true — or legal. 

Lights Out

Did you know that Congress has already banned incandescent light bulbs in the future?  Neither do most Americans.  The law was passed in 2007; the phase-out begins with the 100-watt bulb in 2012.  (You can also read more about it at a Web site created for the movement to repeal the ban.)

Practically speaking, like most overweening big-government schemes, this will have unintended consequences.  In this case, we already know what some of them will be: 

1 — Scientists find that the main alternative, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), should be used sparingly and not left on for very long, because they are poisonous and may give you cancer: 

Popularity and Prosperity

I was talking with a friend the other day about gas prices.  We agreed that when gas prices (or unemployment, or the economy generally) improve, that will tend to help any incumbent president’s chances of re-election—and that, by the same token, when they worsen that will tend to hurt his chances—regardless of whether they’re his fault or not.  The question, then, was whether it can fairly be said that the recent high gas prices are partly President Obama’s fault or not.

So I was interested to hear that the answer may be an emphatic Yes: 

On Conservatism and Global Warming

I had a conversation a few days ago with a (liberal) friend of mine about conservatism and liberalism, liberty and tyranny, regulations, “entitlements”, and other things.  It was a good conversation, but she asked one question that got lost in the back-and-forth and I never answered:

What is the conservative answer to global warming?

It’s a good question.  I have some thoughts.  My answer can be divided into two parts. 

Totalitarianism Has Never Felt So Culturally Acceptable

At least in America

I don’t even know what to say about this commercial—that no one is better qualified to parody liberalism than liberals? that sometimes if you wait, they’ll top themselves?