Environmental apocalypse is coming—or is it?
October 12, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward
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Former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for their advocacy on global warming.
But will global warming really lead to an environmental disaster or are predictions of dire consequences overblown and potential benefits overlooked? Are programs like the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions the best use of our resources or are environmental problems like malaria more pressing?
“It remains crucially important to keep the problem and its cost in perspective,” Heritage foreign policy expert Helle Dale maintains. One man in particular continues to make this argument, she continues: “In spite of widespread vilification and official investigations into his scientific credibility, Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg has not given up his role as a voice in the wilderness on climate change.”
In his new book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg serves as “the voice of reason in a debate where emotions and political agendas have captured the popular imagination.”
Heritage experts Ben Lieberman and Bill Beach, meanwhile, have released a roundup of climate-change bills now before Congress. They ask two main questions of each bill: “What would each climate-change bill accomplish toward reducing any adverse impacts of global warming? Would the benefits justify the costs?”
Download a chart summarizing each of the seven main bills in PDF format.
RSVP today to see Clarence Thomas—NY Times bestselling author
Next month, The Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and the National Center for Policy Analysis are sponsoring a series of events with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas where he will speak on his New York Times bestselling memoir, My Grandfather’s Son. Reserve your spot today:
- New York—Oct. 16
- Atlanta—Oct. 18
- Omaha—Oct. 19
- Chicago—Oct. 21
- Dallas—Oct. 23 (Sold Out)
- Southern California—Dec. 17 (registration opens in November)
All the events will be broadcast live on MyHeritage.org. Order the book, which hit the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list, today on Amazon.com.
Your volunteer fire department may be shut down
“You probably haven’t heard Congress is about to shut down many of America’s volunteer fire departments,” Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk writes. “Yet a little-known bill advancing through Congress would do just that.”
Under union-backed legislation misleadingly called the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, Sherk explains, state and local governments would have to “collectively bargain with their police officers and firefighters [and] negotiate virtually every term and condition of employment.”
And the International Association of Fire Fighters, the union for career firefighters, opposes allowing its members to give their time at volunteer departments. Sherk says that the union may push under the mandatory bargaining for “no volunteering” provisions, and he warns that “without career firefighters willing to give their time, many volunteer fire departments would have to close.”
Seeking a strategy for securing America
The White House’s new homeland security strategy is a well crafted document, but misses the mark when it comes to providing a comprehensive strategy for securing America, a panel of experts said Thursday at the Heritage Foundation.
“The new homeland security report is like chicken soup,” said Clark Erwin of the Aspen Institute. “It doesn’t do any harm, but doesn’t do a whole lot of good.”
Instead of outlining a “forward leaning” homeland security strategy, the report is more of a legacy document, looking back at what has been done in the past, added Frank Cilluffo of the Homeland Security Policy Institute. He said the strategy should anticipate potential threats and suggest the means to act on them.
This echoes an analysis from Heritage’s James Carafano, who argues that the new strategy document “obfuscates rather than clarifies the government’s homeland security mission.”
Carafano concludes: “Much of the new strategy is merely a catalogue explaining and justifying ongoing government programs, rather than real strategic guidance pointing the way forward.”
—Colin Gowan
Other Heritage work of note
- Asia expert Lisa Curtis testified yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee and urged Congress not to “repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing our ties to Islamabad to founder.” Maintaining strong ties to Pakistan is important to a number of American foreign policy goals, including the ongoing battles in Afghanistan, she told the Congressmen.
- Now that President Bush has vetoed the big-government health care bill for children, Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler writes in a nationally-distributed column, it’s time “to skip the recriminations and get busy crafting a compromise that actually works.”
In other news
- As a result of surging tax revenues, the federal government’s deficit dropped to $163 billion in fiscal year 2007, the lowest level in five years. But if the government hadn’t so dramatically increased spending on social programs and the like over the past seven years, the government could well be running a surplus. Worse, the long-term spending crisis remains unresolved.
- A federal judge has sided with the ACLU to block enforcement of a federal program to identify illegal immigrants and their employers.
- Turkey has recalled its ambassador for consultations after the House of Representatives passed a resolution Wednesday recognizing Ottoman Turkey’s 1915 killing of Armenians as a genocide. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Prime Minister is seeking his parliament’s approval to cross the Iraqi border to combat Kurdish rebels.
- Because so many go without health insurance, 42 states have announced plans to expand health care programs targeted at poor individuals. Perhaps states would be better off finding ways to increase access to insurance—by creating real markets, for instance, as Heritage experts have suggested directly to policymakers in dozens of states.
- All branches of the military met or exceeded recruitment goals in the year ending September 30, the Pentagon reports. The Army plans to continue its expansion in the coming years.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.
- On Monday, Oct. 15 at noon, Pacific Research Institute scholars Lance Izumi and Vicki Murray discuss their new book, Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice.
- On Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 10:00 a.m., Heritage’s Lisa Curtis and Jim Phillips participate in a discussion about the campaign in Afghanistan with a panel of experts.
- On Thursday, Oct. 18 at noon, author Abraham H. Foxman delivers a rebuttal to the idea of “The Israel Lobby” and the myth of a global Jewish conspiracy.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Colin Gowan contributed to this report.
