Russ Steele
Political tampering with Social Security has always been a difficult political issue long before Tip O’Neill designated it the third rail of American politics. Barry Goldwater lost the presidency to Lyndon Johnson in 1964, due to the voter’s perception that Goldwater wanted to dismantle Social Security.
Now it appears that global warming alarmism may have become the new third rail in politics? Lawrence Solomon writing in the Financial Post suggest that the G20 leaders in Toronto are trying to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy.
Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism.
One year ago, the G8 talked tough about cutting global temperatures by two degrees. In Toronto, they neutered that tough talk, replacing it with a nebulous commitment to do their best on climate change — and not to try to outdo each other. The global-warming commitments of the G20 — which now carries more clout than the G8 — went from nebulous to non-existent: The G20’s draft promise going into the meetings of investing in green technologies faded into a mere commitment to “a green economy and to sustainable global growth.”
These leaders’ collective decisions in Toronto reflect their individual experiences at home, and a desire to avoid the fate that met their true-believing colleagues, all of whom have been hurt by the economic and political consequences of their global-warming advocacy.
In summary:
- Kevin Rudd, Australia’s gung-ho global-warming prime minister, lost his job the day before he was set to fly to the G20 meetings.
- The U.K.’s gung-ho global-warming leader during last year’s G8 and G20 meetings, Gordon Brown, likewise lost his job.
- France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, cancelled France’s carbon tax two days after a crushing defeat in regional elections in March 2010.
- Days before the G20 meetings, Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, gut his country’s renewables industry by unilaterally rescinding the government guarantees.
- The U.K may be making the biggest global-warming cuts of all, with an emergency budget that came down the week of the G20 meetings, ditching climate-change programs such as electric cars and low carbon building programs.
- In the US polls indicate that November’s elections will see sweeping change in the United States, with legislators who have signed on to the global-warming hypothesis being replaced by those who don’t buy it.
