Unfrozen Caveman Politicians
November 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I love Texas but let’s be honest: We elect some dumb politicians. Take for example one Al Jamison, Colorado County Judge. This guy’s against studying climate change because cavemen were against it.
“The Cro-Magnons 10,000 years ago didn’t sit around and say, ‘Let’s have a committee meeting on when the icebergs melt,’” said Jamison at a public meeting last week, according to Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chonicle. “Personally, I think we should take the same approach.”
You just can’t make this stuff up. Let’s credit Jamison, a Republican, as the first admitted follower of the “What-Would-Cavemen-Do? Principle,” a touching tribute to the wisdom of the earliest Homo sapiens.
Jamison was speaking on a proposal before the Houston-Galveston Area Council to form a committee of experts. These experts will study the effects of climate change on the Gulf Coast Region and what to do about it. Not a bad idea since scientists project that climate change will lead to rising seas, a hotter and dryer climate in Texas, and more intense weather. Much of Galveston Island, as I detailed recently, could be under water with only a couple meters of sea-level rise.
The fact of human-caused global warming is no longer in dispute. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea leve,” states the latest assessment from the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, the global authority on the issue. Most of the increase in temperatures is “very likely” from human causes, the panel wrote.
The assessment, which includes recommendations for dealing with climate change, is geared for decision-making bodies like the Houston-Galveston Area Council. But Jamison and his colleagues were more concerned with avoiding reality.
Falkenberg of the Chron:
Other members wanted to make sure the panel’s recommendations would be completely toothless, that there would be absolutely no responsibility on the part of local governments to mitigate the effects of global warming or address any other impacts we may have on our environment.
There’s more!:
Meanwhile, Brazoria County Commissioner Jack Harris was concerned about the public learning too much about the experts’ foresight on climate change, and — heaven forbid — getting access to any report prepared by the panelists.
“What if this committee decides to issue its own report to the public, being under our purview, so to speak, but at the same time we have no guarantee that we, this board, will be able to say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to what is released to the public?” Harris asked.
In the end, the council approved the creation of the committee but with the proviso that they can change the focus of the group should the political climate change.
And in other climate change news, the United States is now the only industrialized nation in the world to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol. What millennium are we living in, anyway?
November 28th, 2007 at 11:15 am
The important thing to note here is that the H-GAC is a “non-partisan” body, which means the GOP rules and the Democratic office-holders, notably the Mayor of Houston, grovel.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
It seems to me that the H-GAC is not being asked to go out and solve the problem, but rather consult the experts and determine the best ways to lessen the disasterous impact of climate change on the area under their control.
Of course, being a body of elected officials, they have no concept of preventive action. They can only react to problems after the fact and after the public has expressed its outrage. They can then overeact in some ridiculous, ineffective way. And while this deosn’t solve the problem itself, it does solve the elected official’s PR problems.
And isn’t that what’s really important.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
What’s even worse than climate change itself is the thought of all these useless people sitting around having vague and pointless discussions which will ultimately make no difference to the world one way or another. How many of the earth’s valuable resources are wasted supporting such activities???