If you haven’t had a chance to read Nolan Finley’s latest hatchet job on established science, please, take a moment and read his column in last week’s Detroit News.
Not that anyone should be shocked by Finley’s shilling for the status quo. A quick survey of his blog and columns reads like a right-winger’s hit-list: federal health care reform is “snake oil” and foreshadows a government takeover; state revenue increases are bad, and he claims Gov. Granholm has long “coveted” a sales tax increase; so, shock and awe, he doesn’t believe in climate change.
Here’s Finley’s beef:
The president promises next month’s international palaver on climate change will be marked by aggressive action to combat global warming and a firm commitment by the United States to shoulder its share of the responsibility.
Translation: Obama will pledge the United States to curbing its appetite for energy, and thus its economic growth, will make reducing emissions a higher priority than creating new jobs and will agree to transfer $1.6 trillion of our wealth to China, India and the other booming developing economies.
Ok. As my friend Dan says, “I see what you’re saying, but no.” Curbing our appetite for energy means bringing it to a level we can provide for, ourselves. Mr. Finley, imagine the only food you have to eat is the food you grow in your own garden. Problem: you’re not a gardener, and it takes a little time to learn. Solution: adjust your appetite.
Here’s my favorite part, though. Climate change deniers, their heads stuck firmly in the sand and bums up in the mercury-laced air their favored power sources, coal plants, produce, will often revert to two blatantly incorrect criticisms of clean energy policy: 1. it will cost jobs and, 2. climate change isn’t real anyway.
On jobs, Mr. Finley, enacting the federal Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act alone will create at least 1.9 million jobs nationally. Here in Michigan, where you and I both live, we’re already seeing jobs – and an entire new industry – being created by making a commitment to clean energy technology. We have wind turbine manufacturers; we have the upcoming production of the hybrid-electric Chevy Volt, and the advanced battery technology production plant in Brownstown, Twp. Here, Mr. Finley, not China.
Something else to consider: when our expendable income (that’s play money, sir) isn’t impacted by wildly volatile heating, electric and gasoline costs, we can spend more money right here in Michigan, giving a desperately-needed shot in the arm to our economy. All good things, Mr. Finley, despite your stubborn refusal to see the benefits in any kind of change.
Maybe you would have been one of the folks who thought that the advent of the Model T was bad because it meant the death of the horse-and-buggy industry, and therefore America’s wealth. That’s pure speculation, because I don’t know you, sire, but I think I know your kind.
Your kind are like the Swiftboaters, who torpedo good ideas and good people because both challenge your motto: “The Status Quo is Good Enough For Me, And You Too.” Your kind do things like hack into a research centers email servers, release said emails as “damning” evidence of the fraud of climate change when, in reality, climate change is proven science. Like gravity, the scientific force that makes your kind want to put their heads into the sand.
When you come up for air, Mr. Finley, take a look around: glaciers have been melting for 18 consecutive years, temperatures have been rising for 50. The American Physical Society, American Geophysical Union and U.S. Global Change Research Program, to name just a bare minimum, have all found that climate change is real, and needs to be addressed.
But hey, why look at the facts when you have all those grains of sand to stare at, right?