Historic

There was a market crash yesterday, but with the exception of the UK’s Financial Times , it went largely unreported:

Carbon prices plunged yesterday in the aftermath of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, dealing a blow to the credibility of the European Union's carbon-trading scheme.

For those who believe that humans are the prime drivers of climate change (a proposition that is becoming more and more tenuous as the core data and models used by AGW believers come under scientific scrutiny), this news is as disturbing as the collapse of the climate conference itself. But for the rest of us, it just might be an indicator that the entire foundation of the UN conference was so brittle that it was doomed to failure from the onset.

George Will comments on President Obama’s strange take on the Conference:

It would have been unprecedented had the president not described the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit as "unprecedented," that being the most overworked word in his hardworking vocabulary of self-celebration. Actually, the mountain beneath the summit -- a mountain of manufactured hysteria, predictable cupidity, antic demagoguery and dubious science -- labored mightily and gave birth to a mouselet, a 12-paragraph document committing the signatories to ... make a list.

Rather than a arrogant attempt to transfer wealth from developed nations to corrupt third world dictatorships, the conference might have adopted a more modest agenda. Each country could have defined a set of incremental and achievable commitments for lowering pollution, reducing the use of fossil fuels, and otherwise being environmentally conscious. No money need be transferred and no draconian measures need be applied.

But that couldn’t happen, because 'incremental' and 'achievable' are not in the vocabulary of climate change hysterics. When you're a true believer, the world is coming to an end … and soon. Only measures (that are neither incremental, achievable, or advisable) can be mandated when apocalypse is a just around the corner.

I suspect that President Obama has been privately chastened by the failure of Copenhagen, but then again, maybe not. If he is, in fact, a true believer, he may in 2010 ask Congress to proceed with another “historic” piece of legislation that like the health care bill that will surely pass over the next few weeks, will drive our nation still more deeply into debt while at the same time disrupting a weakened economy.

But heck, it’ll be "unprecedented" and historic, won't it?