Category: Global Warming

Most environmentalists, some scientists, President Clinton and Vice President Gore have blamed global warming and all manner of natural catastrophes – hurricanes, floods and even El Niño – on rising levels of greenhouse gases, due primarily to fossil fuel use. On this theory, since most of the increased emissions come from energy use, we must use less energy to reduce the likelihood of environmental apocalypse. However, many scientists are skeptical of the theory that humans are causing global warming.

For the past 10 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) has gotten a bad rap. Despite the fact that 95 percent of the CO2 emitted each year is produced by nature, environmentalists started referring to CO2 as a pollutant in 1988 after some scientists claimed that the 30 percent rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last 150 years was attributable to humans and was causing global warming.

Over the past year the media have reported that one possible effect of global warming will be the expansion of tropical, communicable diseases borne by rodents or parasites into the United States. Fortunately, even if a warmer climate is in the offing, there is no reason for alarm, since the prime factor controlling communicable diseases is not global temperature, but relative wealth and the ecological and medical interventions people use to control diseases and their hosts.

United States negotiators seem intent on signing a treaty this December in Kyoto, Japan, that would drastically curtail energy use in an effort to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases. These gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, trap solar radiation in the atmosphere and warm the earth, making it habitable. If the Clinton administration signs the treaty and the Senate approves it, American consumers will suffer.

Rather than legislating in haste and ignorance and repenting at leisure, our government should maintain rational policies, based on science and adaptable to future discoveries.

The treaty would actually harm American industries and workers, significantly increase the cost of living and contribute little to reducing global warming – if, in fact, it is occurring.