Friday, March 2, 2007

The Walls Down at the Precinct Are Bleeding

This winter, I've been watching the increase in tornadic activity with some interest. Over the last five years, the number of major, damaging storms in the month of February has gone up slowly...but this year, it's up by nearly a factor of 10. Of course, reflexive naysayers will reject the idea that Global Warming has anything at all to do with this. It's just an unusually strong El Nino. The data is inconclusive. It's all just media-driven hysteria, or perhaps a manifestation of God's displeasure at Al Gore's Oscar win.

But now we're moving towards a point when those who want to "debate" on this issue won't just have to debunk the vast preponderance of scientific data...which matters less to most Americans than the current location of Anna Nicole's slowly rotting corpse. It's becoming a self-evident thing...obvious to any dispassionate observer.

That's why the big boys on the doubt side of the argument are backing out. ExxonMobil in particular is no longer providing support to the naysayers. The potential damage to all sectors of the economy is too great, and even those who are guided by a simple profit metric are realizing that a warming planet is NOT good for business.

What I find ironic the presumption that starting to try to do something about this is somehow an excuse to bring in "big government." If you really wanted to turn America into a neo-Socialist state, you'd just let this thing play out. Free markets thrive in times of abundance and stability, but when crops are failing, storms are devastating the Midwest and coastal regions, and we find ourselves in a time of crisis, people will flee to the protection of a powerful centralized government. Think the Dustbowl. Think the Depression. Crisis begets government intrusion.

I mean, c'mon. Y'all have to know that was Ralph Nader's plan all along.