As the UNFCCC – that’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – frolics in Durban, South Africa for 11 days of cocktails, crab legs and planet saving, what better time for another excerpt from YOU’VE BEEN GORED.

The UN is in the world government business, make no mistake about it. And our current domestic regime is more than happy to embrace and comply with UN edicts – oh how they love to embrace and comply.

Planetary Citizens,  meet your new Uncle Sam. And prepare to embrace, comply and bleed, with:

ECO TAXES

Once the richest country on earth, America is hopelessly broke. So it prints trillions at will — each fresh buck devaluing the previous one. Now, the most gargantuan, wasteful, polluting, unsustainable machine ever created – the U.S. Government – must drill for fresh revenue. But where? Greeniacs have the answer. Tax our every breath, because we are all greenhouse gas producers/polluters and therefore responsible for global warming/climate change/Gaia’s suffering.

We must financially atone for our eco sin–living.

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For nearly two decades now, people have been arguing about climate change and getting nowhere. Right-wingers argue that global warming is a hoax based on unsubstantiated science, while left-wingers insist that not only is it real but unless we spend everything we have and more trying to stop it, the world will end tomorrow.

To which I say, “Stop—you’re both wrong!”

This, in a nutshell, is the message of the new documentary about me and my work that opens nationwide on Nov. 12. It’s called “Cool It” and, yes, the title is meant to be clever. The idea is that we do need to cool down the planet, but in order to do it sensibly we first need to cool it ourselves. That is, we need to dispense with both the anti-scientific denialism and the Al Gore-ish fear-mongering. Instead, what we should be doing is facing facts—and responding to them not with rhetoric but with smarter, more rational policies.

The first fact we need to acknowledge is the reality of global warming. Like it or not, the data is abundantly clear that man-made greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere for decades if not centuries, with the result that global temperatures are rising. Yes, the “Climate-gate” emails and the disclosure of funny business at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exposed some deeply disturbing academic chicanery and prejudice at some supposedly prestigious institutions. However, these revelations did nothing to undermine the fundamental scientific basis of global warming. What they did call into question were many of the more extreme predictions about global warming’s likely impact—such as the idea that all the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear (they’re not) or that half the Amazon rain forest would soon be destroyed (not likely).

Of course, these extreme predictions are at the heart of the mainstream environmental movement’s position on climate policy. And this brings us to another set of facts we need to face: that while global warming is real, it is not quite the imminent catastrophe so many climate activists would have us believe.

There may be some truth to the notion that in order to get people to focus on a problem, you need to scare the pants off them. But while worst-case scenarios may be a great way to get the public’s attention, they are a terrible basis for making public policy. If you believe that the southwest U.S. is about to become another dustbowl (as Paul Krugman has insisted) or that Greenland and Antarctica are on the verge of becoming huge piles of slush (as Al Gore would have us believe), of course you’re going to argue that we should do everything we can to eliminate carbon emissions as quickly as possible—even if that means amazingly costly and ineffective government policies. (more…)