Access To Birth Control Is A Fundamental Component Of Climate Survival

Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world’s women. The conservative war on birth control is a war on women’s rights, and thus on the rights of us all. Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

Good grief. Is there a class Lefties attend to learn to write like that, like Marxist Magniloquence 101? Anyhow, this goes back to one of the Warmist’s biggest issues: reducing the global population. And, interestingly, this ties into what Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted, namely, reducing the number of minorities, which is what happens when birth control is spread around to much of the developing world, particularly places like the African continent. You want racism? That’s racism! Planning based on the doctrine of eugenics.

The more world leaders focus on giving women and girls the tools of empowerment — access to family planning, education, and the political and economic system — the better future all of us will have.

A world where women and girls have more power is a healthier world.

That’s interesting, since Liberals get the vapors when Conservatives talk about liberating women from being 2nd class citizens as they are in much of the Islamic world. But, really, this is all about spreading abortion on demand around the world. Cheaply. Which is where the asterisk in the headline comes in: liberals think contraceptives, sterilization (Sanger loved the thought of sterilizing Blacks and defectives a hoot), and abortions should be free, and, by free, I mean “someone else pays.” Liberals never seem to want to pay for anything themselves. That’s why they loved Obama’s insurance mandate, as Someone Else would pay for their condoms and birth control pills, and screw what the constitution says about religious freedom.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(LA Times) A federal judge appeared dubious Monday about a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that seeks the release of orcas from SeaWorld on anti-slavery grounds.

PETA attorney Jeffrey Kerr told U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller that invoking the anti-slavery 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in hopes of freeing the orcas is “the next frontier of civil rights.”

But Miller told Kerr that he cannot find a legal precedent for allowing a lawsuit to be filed on behalf of the orcas under the 13th Amendment. The orcas, he noted, are animals, not people.

Judge Miller said he will consider the request by Sea World to dismiss this absurd and frivilous lawsuit, but gave no timeline for his decision. Over to the BBC

Five killer whales have been named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit which argues they deserve the same constitutional protection from slavery as humans.

Jeffrey Kerr, the lawyer representing the five whales, said: “For the first time in our nation’s history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human.

“By any definition these orcas have been enslaved here.”

No mention as to whether Judge Miller took frequent breaks to go back in his chambers and laugh his head off.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Why climate change will make you love big government

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission.

Look back on 2011 and you’ll notice a destructive trail of extreme weather slashing through the year. In Texas, it was the driest year ever recorded. An epic drought there killed half a billion trees,  touched off wildfires that burned 4 million acres, and destroyed or  damaged thousands of homes and buildings. The costs to agriculture,  particularly the cotton and cattle businesses, are estimated at $5.2 billion — and keep in mind that, in a winter breaking all sorts  of records for warmth, the Texas drought is not yet over.

That kind of whining about the weather, which is the fault of Barack Obama cruising the country in 17 car convoys, continues on for a bit longer. Because weather never happened before 1980 (until you cruise Real Science, and see the newspaper headlines from the past)

Such calamities, devastating for those affected, have important  implications for how we think about the role of government in our  future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state  for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder  of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our  survival.

In the past, people tended to rely on themselves. And there is nothing wrong with government helping out: it’s one of the reasons we have government. There is no need for a massive central government with a giant bureaucracy. Of course, that’s not the progressive narrative: to them, we need giant over-reaching and all powerful government for when the wind blows, it rains, and it snows….hey, remember when the NYC public sector unions slowed the snow cleanup in 2010?

Anyhow, the author goes on and on about how great big central government is, and why the private sector can’t do anything, ending with

In the face of an unraveling climate system, there is no way that  private enterprise alone will meet the threat. And though small “d”  democracy and “community” may be key parts of a strong, functional, and  fair society, volunteerism and “self-organization” alone will prove as  incapable as private enterprise in responding to the massive challenges  now beginning to unfold.

To adapt to climate change will mean coming together on a large scale  and mobilizing society’s full range of resources. In other words, big  storms require big government. Who else will save stranded climate  refugees, or protect and rebuild infrastructure, or coordinate rescue  efforts and plan out the flow and allocation of resources?

It will be government that does these tasks or they will not be done at all.

What would we do without Big Centralized Government taking charge? Just because they’ll need to take more and more money while imposing more and more regulations/restrictions on its citizens and businesses is Bo reason to poo poo the idea. Government is just here to help. Despite being incompetent and taking vastly too long to accomplish the most minor and mundane task is no reason to be concerned about Government. Just because the climate change movement is about fascism (for everyone else) is no reason to worry.

Said story: Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights. (snip)

The protests date to 1992 when the United Nations passed a sweeping, but nonbinding, 100-plus-page resolution called Agenda 21 that was designed to encourage nations to use fewer resources and conserve open land by steering development to already dense areas. They have gained momentum in the past two years because of the emergence of the Tea Party movement, harnessing its suspicion about government power and belief that man-made global warming is a hoax.

Some may in fact see it as a UN plot, but, then, the UN has been pushing junk science and all sorts of initiatives, most recently “biodiversity” and “sustainability”, as a means to put more control into the hands of government, as well as people’s hard earned money. As Tom Nelson points out

Is Revkin really sure that Tea Party activisits don’t just see their hard-earned cash being blown on idiotic left-wing bad-weather-preventing projects?

Let me tell you a little tale. Behind my home is a greenway that follows the Neuse River. The stretch in my area, which extends a few miles from the Highway 264 bridge north, is mostly dirt and gravel. Over the last few months they have been paving it. And cutting down trees. Wait, cutting down trees on a greenway? And by “months” they have literally been slapping down a mile or two of pavement perhaps 5 feet wide. I hear their machines every weekday for months. Not quite sure what they are doing, but, I’m pretty sure it’s expensive. Now, I have no problem with the greenway. In fact, I think it’ll be great to rollerblade on (there are no good places in my area to ‘blade). Of course, not many people used it before: most folks either walked the sidewalks or the golf car paths. I’d go for a walk down it beforehand (it’s been closed for about 5 months now) and see no one else. A $13 million bond was voted in back in 2007. Perhaps, in this economy, it isn’t the time to spend the money on a greenway that will barely be used. Total cost for all the greenways is $30 million. Rather expensive, eh? And wasteful. Should have put convicts out there building it.

Similarely, TEA Party activists are tired of the government wasting enormous amounts of money, usually overspending at high levels, on “green” projects that will rarely be used. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes nature projects for the sake of nature are good. But, be responsible with the money. And don’t cut trees down on greenways, for goodness sakes.

Barack Obama’s avalanche of needless regulations on coal-fueled power plants are going into effect and the net result will be the closing of hundreds of power plants all across the country just when our need for power is increasing. This will absolutely necessitate the cost of our power to skyrocket. But, this is exactly what he wants. He wants to rape us for our power. He said so from the beginning.

Well, now that he’s had the opportunity to put into place just some of the new rules and regulations he wants — and he’s only pushed through a tiny bit of what he really wants, indeed — we are already seeing the results of his attack on us.

Look to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where six coal-fueled power plants are being shut down by FirstEnergy because the retrofitting the power plants will have to undergo to satisfy Obama’s whims is just too expensive to justify.

Company spokesmen say there is no help for it.

“This decision is not in any way a reflection of the fine work done by the employees at the affected plants, but is related to the impact of new environmental rules,” said James H. Lash, president, FirstEnergy Generation and chief nuclear officer. “We recently completed a comprehensive review of our coal-fired generating plants and determined that additional investments to implement MATS and other environmental rules would make these older plants even less likely to be dispatched under market rules. As a result, it was necessary to retire the plants rather than continue operations.”

Obama is forcing these new regs on the whole industry. Many thousands of jobs will be lost — this particular shut down will cause the loss of over 500 jobs initially — and the loss of the generating capacity will force a larger load on other plants necessarily causing costs to go up for all of us.

This isn’t just affecting out-of-date plants owned by FirstEnergy, either.

Douglas Gotham, director of the State Utility Forecasting Group, for instance, says that rates hikes are on the way in Indiana, as well, and all because of Obama’s onerous new EPA regulations.

“Due to the federal regulatory focus on emissions from coal-fired generators, Indiana is expected to experience larger price increases than projected on a regional or national level.”

This is exactly what Obama wanted. Remember in 2007 when he sat down with the San Francisco Chronicle and told us all that he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry and that our rates would “necessarily skyrocket”?

Well, his plans are succeeding. Prices are indeed “skyrocketing.” Worse, jobs are being lost. As Sean Harkbarth of the US Chamber of Commerce notes,

Utility MACT is only part of the assault on coal power plants. Last September, I wrote about how EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution rule cost 500 jobs in Texas. The Chamber’s senior vice president of Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Affairs, Bill Kovacs told Congressmen last summer that the “cumulative impact of regulatory action can be overwhelming” and is causing power plants to be taken offline and putting people out of work.

Hackbarth points to testimony of EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus who admitted last April that jobs are not part of their determinations.

So, Obama’s plans really are well on the way to fruition. But it’s just beginning. He very much wants to do far more damage than he has thus far.

(H/T Thurber’s Thoughts)

(BBC News) Growing inequality, environmental decline and “teetering” economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes.

Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP.

The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

It was launched because fewer and fewer people where buying into the anthropogenic global warming guano.

It is being launched in Addis Ababa by its two co-chairs, Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her South African counterpart Jacob Zuma.

“With the possibility of the world slipping further into recession, policymakers are hungry for ideas that can help them to navigate these difficult times,” said Mr Zuma.

“Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world.”

See? It’s so simple, we’ll simply do away with GDP, redistribute wealth, and all sit around on farms reminiscent of the 5th century digging in the mud while our lords and masters sit in their castles deciding what is best for us.

Sustainable development is simply another version of the Left’s call for fascism, same as the climate change hoax is. I suppose we can also think about it in terms of Soviet style communism, where there was an all powerful central government full of the elites dictating everything, right down to whether you are allowed to have salt and trans-fats, how you can run your business, and how much bread will be available. People are docile when they are standing in food lines for hours. This is the kind of idiocy that creates worthless products like the Chevy Volt, which limits our ability to move around to a small area. These people are true “watermelons”: green on the outside, red on the inside

The report – Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing – includes 56 recommendations that would, if implemented in full, have profound implications for societies, governments, and businesses.

Governments would build the true environmental costs of products into the prices that people pay to purchase them, leading to an economic system that protects natural resources.

Goods would be labelled with information on their environmental impact, enabling consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

And even more based on “environmentalism”, natch, climate change controls. They’d do away with all subsidies for fossil fuels, because they are eeeeeevil, and, magically, real world prices would stay low, but, hey, even if they rise exponentially, it’s for our own good. They Know Better.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Wall Street Journal) In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The letter from the concerned scientists goes on to describe how CO2 is actually a good gas, and life evolved when concentrations were 10+ times higher. How young scientists are afraid to come forth and not walk the academic Warmist line. That this is not the way science works. Oh, and that if you want the real answer as to why so many push the meme of man-induced global warming climate change extreme weather global weirding it’s snowing because it’s hot, you need to follow the money.

They also point out that if one does subscribe to the notion of AGW, the best solution is not taxes and restrictions, but economic growth

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

And, let’s not forget, with strong economic growth comes advances, advances that could see quality replacements for much of the use of fossil fuels (coal and oil, which, let’s face it, aren’t particularly clean, and I’m not referring to CO2) at cheap prices. Instead of wasting money on means to “stop global warming”, none of which actually work, that same money could be used to solve medical issues, to increase the quality of life of people, and even deal with real environmental issues. But, we all know that the AGW movement is about putting more money and power into the hands of centralized government, enforcing a far left fascistic vision of the world.

And, oh, these scientists aren’t exactly pip squeeks. Check the listing at the WSJ.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Green Answers) Cambodia, an exotic land filled with bright colors, city lights and ancient temples is a popular vacation spot. A remarkable country with exquisite culture holds one of the darkest secrets alive today. Very much a real and disturbing reality; we come to unfold this problem and discuss the problems of the sex trade in this area. In fact, children as young as 5 are being sold as slaves in exchange for sex. A problem that has been around for a while is being made worse by the problems caused by climate change.

Sexual slavery/trade has been around for pretty much all of human history. It is a serious concern, I don’t think there is a need to explain why. Yet, rather than taking on the problem, Warmists subsume it into their cult’s beliefs, and you know you just rolled your eyes and head and said “give me a break” when you read the last line of that excerpt, which takes away for dire need to do something about this serious issue, something the liberal extremists just don’t get.

The sex trade in Cambodia has been around since 1999. The sex trade is happening due to thousands of victims in need of natural resources like food, water and trees. Human trafficking affects 2-3 thousand children and young teens each year. Families are deceived by con artists telling them that their daughters will work for hotels, restaurants, hair salons or complete clerical work in order for them to bring money for their families. Truth is, con artists actually take their daughters into sex industries and force them to have intercourse with older men.

The climate has always changed, and can always cause problems. Does anyone think life would be better during a cool period such as the Little Ice Age? Life on Earth has to take the good with the bad as climate changes according to the whims of the natural world, but, then, if Warmists fessed up and said a changing climate was primarily natural, as history and science shows, they wouldn’t be able to push their far left redistributionist and fascist agendas. They believe that if YOU (not themselves, though, they need their Suburbans to get the kids to soccer practice, drive to work, and pick up wine and cheese for their Organizing for America parties) can be made to drive a Chevy Volt and use CFLs, the Cambodian sex trade would simply disappear. So, they waste time and other people’s money instead of dealing with the actual issue, because the actual issue won’t give lefties the control over people and economies they want.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Fox News) As President Obama prepares to rev up his re-election drive with his third State of the Union address Tuesday night, he and his aides have already begun framing the fall contest as a “choice” election, not a simple up-or-down referendum on his own job performance in the Oval Office.

In so doing, the president borrows a page from an unlikely playbook: that of the man he has spent the last five years disparaging, George W. Bush.

It was President Bush, in his 2004 matchup against John Kerry, who perfected the “choice” strategy. Buffeted by mounting opposition to the Iraq war, the incumbent argued that the alternative to a second Bush term – that being the Democratic senator from Massachusetts – was so dangerous that voters should put aside any misgivings they might have about the president.

Well, it is very interesting that Obama would reach back and attempt to run in this manner, but, digging deep, President Bush actually had a record to run on, besides painting Kerry as dangerous. Bush dealt with a lingering economic downturn when he first came in to office, then a big downturn post-9/11, and turned both around. He lowered taxes for all (unfortunately, his tax plans removed a large amount of workers from paying federal taxes.) He saw historic lows in the unemployment rate. He reached across the aisle to get Ted Kennedy’s “No Child Left Behind” passed. He responded to 9/11 by taking out the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, freeing tens of millions from an oppressive Muslim fundamentalist regime. He took out Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime, freeing tens of millions of people. He provided enormous relief for AIDS patients domestically and around the world. Expanded Health Savings Accounts (which Obamacare now restricts). He pushed his “Healthy Forests Initiative”. No attacks on American soil post 9/11. Got Libya to renounce their terroristic ways and give up their WMD programs. And the list goes on and on. Not all of it good, but, a solid list of accomplishments.

What does Obama have to stand on? An unpopular ObamaCare bill which is raising costs, high unemployment, historic deficits, $5 trillion in new debt, low consumer confidence, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline (of which Canada is not waiting to see who wins in 2012 before turning to China to sell the oil), giving billions to Brazil so they can develop deepwater oil fields, of which Brazil is now going to sell to China, people giving up on the workforce, and wasting almost a trillion dollars on his Stimulus. His idiotic policies have unfortunately turned people away from investing in alternative energy sources due to his malfeasance, and the way he has pushed electric vehicles has made them a joke, setting them back by decades. His EPA is on the wrong track and failing to protect and engage on real environmental issues. He has failed to reign in the TSA under his watch. He has pissed off our allies around the world, and pandered to our enemies (and failed there, too).

And let’s not forget the historic and unprecedented number of golf days, vacation days, and campaign events.

But, let’s give him his due: he did authorize the mission that took out Osama Bin Laden, which I still maintain was a gutsy call. He has ramped up military actions against Islamists, and expanded them into other countries. He did ramp up deportations for awhile, and go after the companies that hire them. And, um, well, ah, …… well, he keeps burger shops near the White House in business!

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(WCTV) A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

Since then, this new fatwa has been cropping up all over the left-o-sphere. And here’s a fun unhinged one

The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I guess it’s not surprising that the “scientists” leading the charge against global warming are climate-denier TV weathermen. That link takes you to a long list of quotes from various television weather personalities — including a couple from Minneapolis — who all deny reality and use their position as frontmen pretending to be scientists to delude the public. Take a look and see if your local television station has a conspiracy nut doing the weather.

Of course, by the standards of the Cult Of Gore, we aren’t supposed to listen to PZ Myers because he doesn’t have a degree in climatology. Anyhow, so far, the Warmists have failed to prove using the scientific method that this warm period is any different from the previous warm periods throughout the current interglacial period. They’ve established a tentative link to CO2 without the benefit of scientific proof, instead, they use simple conjecture more similar to the Underwear Gnomes. And they refuse to abide by the doctrines of their cult and change their own behavior.

I think we can safely say that no Republican should be allowed anywhere near the reins of government. They’re anti-science through and through.

Silly me, I thought the Constitution forbade any sort of religious tests to be elected.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.