Bjorn Lomborg is a professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.  He is also a former member of Greenpeace.  In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press, 2001) he presents reams of data on all things related to the environment.  The work is an amazing complication of facts from which conclusions can be drawn.  One of those conclusions is that science does not have as many answers as scientists would like us to believe.  There is much uncertainty about just what is happening to the environment.  Another conclusion to be drawn from the work is that the hysteria of the fanatic environmentalists is unwarranted from a scientific perspective.  While human beings clearly are leaving a footprint on the earth, we are not destroying it. 

Here is an example.  One of the key areas of worry by the fanatic environmentalists is global warming.  While our actions have probably contributed to some increase in the level of carbon dioxide, “the more realistic models show that global warming is not an ever worsening problem.  In fact, under any reasonable scenario of technological change and without policy intervention, carbon emissions will not reach the levels (predicted) and that they will decline … as we move toward ever cheaper renewable energy sources.” 

I note this example today because the United States is once again being condemned by the “global community” for not signing the Kyoto Protocol.  That agreement requires participating industrialized nations to make major cuts in so-called greenhouse emissions.  It also requires richer nations to contribute to an assistance fund to be paid to non-industrialized countries to help them cope with the effects of climate change.  The protocol does not require anything of the “industrialized” nations, regardless of how their actions impact the global environment. 

First of all, the Kyoto Protocol holds the United States and other industrialized nations accountable for global climate change when there is no consistent scientific evidence to support that accusation.  Secondly, the protocol holds up the United States as the worst offender.  Thirdly, the protocol requires that the United States makes most of the changes and that it pay other countries to find ways to cope with climate change even when much of the research suggests that much of that change is a normally occurring modification of the climate. 

This is not an agreement friendly to the United States.  Even President Clinton backed out of the agreement.  

Here is the real question: Given that the research supporting the beliefs underlying the Kyoto Protocol is weak (at best), why the push for the agreement and, more specifically, why the push to gain the signature of the United States? 

Here is a clue.  The impact of the Kyoto Protocol on the United States would be lowered economic growth in the order of 1-2 percent of our GDP”.  No other nation would take such a hit.  While the U.S. would be facing a marked economic decline, it would be assisting other nations in “coping with climate change”.  Sounds like redistribution of wealth to me.  In other words, it sounds like socialistic policy geared toward weakening America. 

Those who hate our country will do anything possible to destroy us.  They have tried war, anti-war protests, spying, and infiltrating the media, Hollywood, and our universities.  Most recently they have tried terrorism.  In the meantime, they have tried to destroy our economy through “agreements” like Kyoto.  I hope we will stand tough against this ongoing form of terrorism.