Saturday, May 31, 2008
AL GORE, FRIEND OF ITALIAN OPERA
Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli says he believes operatic treatment of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" will help people see the world's environmental predicament from a fresh point of view.
The fact that it was packed with lies & the plot makes no sense should not be a hinderance.
From the ridiculous to the pretty damn good Freeman Dyson has a review in the New York Review of Books which contains:
"Whether someone is serious about tackling the global-warming problem can be readily gauged by listening to what he or she says about the carbon price. Suppose you hear a public figure who speaks eloquently of the perils of global warming and proposes that the nation should move urgently to slow climate change. Suppose that person proposes regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, or requiring high-efficiency lightbulbs, or subsidizing ethanol, or providing research support for solar power—but nowhere does the proposal raise the price of carbon. You should conclude that the proposal is not really serious and does not recognize the central economic message about how to slow climate change. To a first approximation, raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming. The rest is at best rhetoric and may actually be harmful in inducing economic inefficiencies."
If this chapter were widely read, the public understanding of global warming and possible responses to it would be greatly improved.
This obviously includes almost every politician you have ever heard pontificating on the subject, including Gore. I would not say that many of them are not being serious. I think they know perfectly well that the catastrophic warming story is a lie but that they are seriously using it to get us to wear our regulatory & tax chains with equanimity.
The fact that it was packed with lies & the plot makes no sense should not be a hinderance.
From the ridiculous to the pretty damn good Freeman Dyson has a review in the New York Review of Books which contains:
"Whether someone is serious about tackling the global-warming problem can be readily gauged by listening to what he or she says about the carbon price. Suppose you hear a public figure who speaks eloquently of the perils of global warming and proposes that the nation should move urgently to slow climate change. Suppose that person proposes regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, or requiring high-efficiency lightbulbs, or subsidizing ethanol, or providing research support for solar power—but nowhere does the proposal raise the price of carbon. You should conclude that the proposal is not really serious and does not recognize the central economic message about how to slow climate change. To a first approximation, raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming. The rest is at best rhetoric and may actually be harmful in inducing economic inefficiencies."
If this chapter were widely read, the public understanding of global warming and possible responses to it would be greatly improved.
This obviously includes almost every politician you have ever heard pontificating on the subject, including Gore. I would not say that many of them are not being serious. I think they know perfectly well that the catastrophic warming story is a lie but that they are seriously using it to get us to wear our regulatory & tax chains with equanimity.
