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I have intended to write on this topic for some time but Mr. Pitt’s column today upped the priority.

We all know from our history that the notion of “guilt “runs throughout the fabric of our society with roots back to the initial colonists and before. As an aside, I do believe it may be declining with each new generation. That said it is still in my humble opinion widespread.

Think about it, why are we saddled with collective guilt about the environment, the economy, international relations, treatment of minorities and more?

Did you consciously do things to try to hurt the environment or have you, like many Americans been making efforts to reduce your “footprint” at ever increasing personal costs? Just what forest did you destroy? Do you really believe that we should all live as our grand parents did or should we use available resources to responsibly improve the human condition?

Have you actively supported actions by our government to hurt the weaker elements of the international community or have you contributed public and private resources to try to improve it? Do you believe we have economically subjucated the world as charged or have our collective efforts sought out and paid appropriately within the period for resources used? Do you believe we have repeatedly waged aggressive war or have we reluctantly responded to threats against ourselves and the weaker members of our community?

Have you been living way beyond your means, incurring debt you could not pay, or have you been using credit prudently in order to try to improve your family’s circumstances or meet unique obligations such as college? Did you have a clue that our financial elites were trafficking in high-risk securities with the blessing of our government elites? Just how did your personal debt, a dept you were servicing as required, drive the economic collapse in 2008?

Have you been actively working to suppress our minorities or have you been working slowly and incrementally to make our community more diverse? Do you buy in to Mr. Pitt’s assertion of our collective exploitations of gays? Are we somehow unique and evil in the way we treat others or does most of the rest of the word have a much less responsible record in dealing with human diversity?

I suspect most of you believe that you have been at least trying to improve things and believe you will continue to do so. You do not look upon yourself as an active participant in the exploitation of our planet or the people on it. So why are we barraged by media and political élites trying to portrait us as evil despoilers of almost everything? Could they be exploiting our historic propensity toward guilt and if so, why?

If one thinks back in history, political movements have used misrepresentation of ones neighbors to justify all sorts of undesirable goals to include mass murder and worse. Just think of Mr. Hitler. Could our political and social elites be using guilt for their own purposes? Are these groups selecting out elements of our society such as bankers, “tea baggers”, people who disagree with them, people of faith and others in order to accuse them of actions retrospectively determined by those élites to be evil. Are the standards being promulgated by the elites way too severe and ultimately self-serving? Are we really evil or is our collectively record superior to most countries, even if not as advanced as we might desire.

Is it not past time to apply a more appropriate standards to measure our past actions and acknowledge all of the good we have done while learning from those actions that in retrospect should have been avoided? Retrospectively blaming our whole society for things done mostly by our elites does not seem to be very productive in our efforts to improve that society in the future

I have recently written a number of posts on climate change. They do not in any way dispute its existence. They have been targeted at what I consider the consequence of doing too much too fast. Now, I do recognize that the consequences of my opinion may well be changes in the global environment that may be very undesirable for some. However, my study of history suggests that causing too much disruption to a society too quickly can lead to massive loss of life.

As a result of the blogs, I have been accused of a number of less then attractive shortcomings. One major argument is that I am an alarmist and am unique in my opinion. What follows is an Op-Ed from the Washington Post. Maybe I am not totally alone.

Anti-climate change, anti-human By Anne Applebaum Tuesday, December 15, 2009 There is no nihilism like the nihilism of a 9-year-old. "Why should I bother," one of them recently demanded of me, when he was presented with the usual arguments in favor of doing homework: "By the time I'm grown up, the polar ice caps will have melted and everyone will have drowned." Watching the news from Copenhagen last weekend, it wasn't hard to understand where he got that idea. Among the tens of thousands demonstrating outside the climate change summit, some were carrying giant clocks set at 10 minutes to midnight, indicating the imminent end of the world. Elsewhere, others staged a "resuscitation" of planet Earth, symbolically represented by a large collapsing balloon. Near the conference center, an installation of skeletons standing knee-deep in water made a similar point, as did numerous melting ice sculptures and a melodramatic "die-in" staged by protesters wearing white, ghost-like jumpsuits. Danish police arrested about a thousand people on Saturday for smashing windows and burning cars, and on Sunday arrested 200 more (they were carrying gas masks and seem to have been planning to shut down the city harbor). Nevertheless, in the long run it is those peaceful demonstrators, the ones who say the end is nigh, who have the capacity to do the most psychological damage. I'll pause here to point out that I enthusiastically support renewable energy, believe strongly in the imposition of a carbon tax and am furthermore convinced that a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels would have hugely positive geopolitical consequences, even leaving aside the environmental benefits. It's true that I'm not crazy about the Kyoto climate negotiation process, of which the Copenhagen summit is the latest stage. But I'm even more disturbed by the apocalyptic and the anti-human prejudices of the climate change movement, some of which do indeed filter down to children as young as 9. Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous words of a National Park Service ecologist, "We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that "humans have grown like a cancer; we're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe. Look, for example, at the Optimum Population Trust, a mainstream organization whose patrons include the naturalist David Attenborough, the scientist Jane Goodall and professors at Cambridge and Stanford -- and that campaigns against, well, human beings. Calling for "fewer emitters, lower emissions," the group offers members the chance to offset the pollution that they generate, merely by existing, through the purchase of family-planning devices in poor countries. Click on its PopOffsets calculator to see what I mean: It reckons that every $7 spent on family planning generates one ton fewer carbon emissions. Since the average American generates 20.6 tons of carbon annually, it will cost $144.20 -- $576.80 for a family of four -- to buy enough condoms to prevent the births of, say, 0.4 Kenyans. The assumption behind this calculation is profoundly negative: that human beings are nothing more than machines for the production of carbon dioxide. And if we take that assumption seriously, a whole lot of other things look different, too. Weapons of mass destruction should perhaps be reconsidered, along with the flu virus: By reducing the population, they might also reduce emissions. Perhaps they should be encouraged? Coupling all that with a firm conviction that the end of the world is nigh, you can see how homework is rendered pointless. As for hopes for the future and faith in humanity -- forget about it. But while we're at it, we might as well forget about reinventing our energy sources, too. For while it's true that humans are often greedy, stupid and destructive, it's also true that we got to where we are at least partly thanks to human creativity, ingenuity and talent. Electricity is a miracle, an invention that has brought light and life to millions. Modern communication and transportation systems are no less extraordinary, helping to create economic growth in places where poverty and misery were the norm for centuries. All of them depend on fossil fuels, but they don't have to: A profound change in the nature of human energy consumption is possible -- thanks to the entrepreneurship that created the Internet, the compassion that lies behind the advances in modern medicine and the scientific reasoning that sent men into space. As for nihilism and hatred of humankind, it teaches us nothing, except to give up. And we shouldn't be passing that on to our children either.

Something to think about!

I wrote a recent blog questioning why some of us in the United States seem to hold us responsible for a major component of global warming. I regrettable used the word singular and created a furor. My real intent was to raise the issue of why the world and many of our own citizens expects us to not only make major changes to our own economy at an unknown but likely very large cost both in money and in personal disruption but to send large sums to other countries. We had trouble, I think. agreeing that many people though that way. Below is a quote from the WWF regarding Copenhagen and how global warming should be addressed? They think that way. I can provide many other such quotes.

“Who should contribute and how much? Recognizing their historical responsibility for the climate crisis, Annex I countries (that’s us) should bear the lion’s share of climate finance support. Particular Annex I countries should contribute to global climate financing according to their historical responsibility for the climate crisis and taking into account capacity for contributions. Based on historical emissions, the United States is responsible for approximately 30% of accumulated greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. Based on the imperfect UNFCCC estimate above, a fair U.S. contribution would be approximately $40billion annually by 2030. Even taking into account the global financial downturn, with the largest economy in the world, the United States has the greatest capacity to take on a financial commitment."

Why? We did nothing to require redress on our parts to corect actions taken in the past. The CO2 we generated was perfectly legal and acceptable at the time. We certainly had no idea we were causing a climate crisis. Only in the past decade or so has anybody been seriously addressing the problem and dollar for dollar I bet we have been up there in the pack making accommodating changes. Just who is it now that wants to assign retrospective guilt and demand current and future redress. Many of the small countries demanding this largess in fact benefited from the C02 we generated. A significant number are run by oligarchies or despots-little of anything we give will get to the people. I bet off shore banks will reap a bundle. Some of the developing counties demanding our resources contributed significantly to CO2 generation by conducting major deforestation. Forests love CO2. Should they be retrospectively punished?

Perhaps the world and our local fellow travelers should take a more balanced approach and credit us for the contributions our C02 made to everyone else. I wonder if they would not end up owing us money to help us accommodate climate change. Maybe since making such retrospective assessments can never be done justly, we should just look forward. I certainly am willing to help others under appropriate conditions but I really reject being blackmailed retrospectively for a crime we did not commit.

I believe in dialogue. But I long ago learned that people will make demands (sometimes without any merit) and if you make no counter demands the compromise is that you make sacrifices. We need to guard against that as we try to be better world citizens. I am not really sure many of those criticizing us are as good a world citizen as we have in fact been historically despite the real and imagined transgressions of Mr. Bush.

I am accused of picking on the left. In retroflection that is probably true. The right is not making many waves. The left is. I am responding to their proposed changes. In our immediate future three significant initiatives emanating from the left will likely drive really significant change. What will our country look like in 2050 given those changes? Below I have generated a thought piece that I think represents the fears of the right at this time. I admit it is extreme but the lack of definition of where these changes are going certainly allows for such a flight of fancy. If we are to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050 while lifting up the smaller countries it will certainly stress our economy. Could it lead to what I present?

The need to rapidly implement remedial actions to drastically cut CO2 as required by the climate accords of 2010 through 2020 led to a number of fundamental changes

To address the generation of CO2 from personal domiciles, groups were formed to review the stock of housing and to assign individuals to a home appropriate for their family size. At group direction and without remuneration many older homes were raised and new multi-family, more ecologically appropriate homes were built. Newer larger homes were modified to be multi family. By 2025 only certain families were allowed to remain in single family homes – most lived in small government subsidized structures.

To address the generation of CO2 from transportation sources the American transportation system has been changed. Railroads were significantly expended. Over the road long haul trucks were eliminated. Public transportation was expanded significantly. Groups were established to review application for personal autos. Only government officials and certain individuals were allowed to own one. By 2020 the stock of automobiles in the United States had been reduced to slightly more than a million.

Groups were established to identify what food products could be used. For the most part food is generated locally. High CO2 generating products had been minimized. Only certain people as determined by the various governments are allowed to consume delicacies such as meat, sea food, crops out of local season and so on. The farm population has expanded significantly with most farm land in the hands of the government as a result of the Commercial Farming Act of 2015 that confiscated all but a small number of individually owned farms.

The second major theme involves changes to health care. The health care reforms of 2010 and 2011 extended health care to everyone. Costs naturally escalated. Efforts to reduce costs significantly impacted the availability of doctors. Government was forced to recruit doctors and assign them to appropriate locations. To address the continued escalation of costs and to reduce the human footprint health care was more rigorously controlled. Health panels were established to review individual needs for care in consideration of costs and individual contributions. Seniors were routinely denied costly services. Live births were restricted to one per family. Costly routine care required permission from the local health panel. However, certain individuals as determined by governments, were provided better care so as to insure that the civilization functioned properly.

The third major theme is economics. The costs to implement climate change remediation proved truly immense. The cost of health care continued to stress the system. The diversion of resources to government directed activity all but eliminated the ability of the country to compete in the international arena. The financial expectations of 2010 were inconsistent with available resources. The population was too large for the available domestic jobs. Large corporations had fled the United States and established their headquarter in countries that were non-responsive to the Climate Accords of 2010 through 2020. Small business were unable to turn a profit given the tax rate necessary to adjust to the Climate Accords of 2010 through 2020 and as a result the Jobs Creation Acts of 2015-2020 saw most business become government owned. In order to hold down costs and to distribute population, committees were established to assign individual based on testing to specific careers and locations. By 2020 over 95% of the American populace was living at the same level as that of the1920s.

Now just maybe saner heads will prevail and change will be more gradual with due consideration for the maintenance of jobs and appropriate recognition to individuals who contribute more to the society then others. If the necessary technologies were then to mature as needed we might just thrive. However, making international agreements betting on the timely development of certain high risk technologies and significant and rapid changes to human activity just may not be a good approach!

I recently wrote a blog about “Climate-Gate. I did not challenge the science but asked why so many people seemed to want to believe in a rapid and expensive commitment to remedial action to address it. I asked if it would not be desirable if it turned out that some of the new climate data might suggest a slower remedial pace. I was roundly attacked for denying climate change-something I did not do. Hardly anybody wanted to talk about the actual question. The respondents were focused on rapid and broad remedial response.

That brings me to Cap and Trade legislation that is an element of that response. How does that affect you? Cap and Trade will cost you money. Under the current notion, the impact is not evenly applied. In the expected approach, the government will sell the carbon credits that will allow Westar to continue to produce the power we need. Those costs will be passed on to the ratepayers-you! The income from the sales will be used to help the less affluent adjust to the cost increase. The wealthy will absorb the cost increase with hardly a ripple. The middle-those who work and have incomes between $50K and $200K, will bear the brunt.

Let us see. You work all your life to improve your income. You invest in education and training. You pay your dues to advance. The government picks you to bare the brunt of our effort to address climate change. There are many other initiatives to address climate change; could many of these also focus on you? Do you think that is appropriate? If you don’t, maybe you should tell somebody!

A few weeks ago a number of e-mail interchanges between key scientists supporting the climate change theory were made public. They can be interpreted to suggest a conspiracy to defraud or they can be accepted as normal interchange between colleagues. Appropriate review processes have been established and the meaning of those interchanges will be professionally established in good time.

What has been fascinating is the response from some of the proponents. Lets us remember that the theory suggests almost catastrophic impact on human existence as we understand it whether from the postulated responses required or from our neglect to address the challenge. You would think that the revelation that maybe the challenge is not as great as previously indicated would be greeted positively-even if the uncertainty suggests that we not yet celebrate. Instead there is a broad defense of the theory from a large number of non-scientific proponents

One has to wonder why. Who among us wants a climatic disaster? Should we not be hoping that the situation has been overstated? Could there be people who want a disaster. Could their motives be control of their fellow citizens using governmental responses to climate change as a mechanism to achieve it?

I for one hope that newer data may revealed that the situation is not as dire as previously indicated so that we can avoid dramatic changes to our standards of living or the potential for great loss of human life. Is there anyone with me?

I have come to a conclusion that climate change proponent think the rest of us are very very stupid. Yes, there is data that suggests that there is climate change. That is science. Then there are models that project all kinds of futures. Since these models deal with much uncertainty, assumptions must be made. At each such assumption the models builders select the worst possible outcomes. This may not be surprising when one realizes that money from the proponents is at stake. The resulting models produce variants on what amounts to a worst possible climate change scenario. The proponents seize on the worst case and demand never ending major sacrifice from all of us.

Nobody seems to know just how much we have to change to reverse the perceived problem. Some statement of an endpoint might just be useful. Demands for never ending carbon reductions without any end target associated with a useful outcome are unrealistic. The whole thing might be more compelling if the shrillness declined and a rational defendable incremental remedy with consequential reflection of improvements became available. Of course there is the chance that what is needed can not be achieved. There just might be factors beyond human contribution involved? Living in a world of endless sacrifice toward an unstated endpoint is needlessly demeaning toward the human race.

Maybe we simply can not get where the advocates seem to be demanding that we go. Maybe we just can not put this genie back in the box. Maybe we are going to have to accept change as we have accepted change since we got here. Are the proponents of the overwhelming crash response not believers in evolution? Looks to me like we may have to evolve a bit - but probably not as much as the advocates are threatening.

Most of the world seems to wants us to give up everything until we live like their poor. That is a real hard sell in a democratic society. It is a particular hard sell when the elites proclaiming it live so much better than those from whom they demand sacrifice. We are already making significant efforts to address the challenge. Our elites started us on that path long ago. Is it really an accident that the average American is financially marking time – for more than a decade? That is a non-trivial sacrifice. The elites have made no comparable sacrifice. If this is a real global emergency maybe the necessary sacrifice should start with the world’s leaders.

Where is the leadership – leaders lead the way not drive the flock. Everything I have seen the leaders do appears cosmetic. Our Congress proposes a carbon cap and trade solution. But then they exempt many of their own local elites. Where is all the urgency when it comes to actual pain? I might take this all more seriously if the elites reduced themselves to where they want the rest of us to go. Maybe they should renounce their fortunes as contribution to the rest of us to invest in responsible and accountable initiatives? There is just way too much “do as I say” and way too little of “follow me”! I know “all the animals are equal – only some of the animals are more equal”.

The answer to my question above is yes, the advocates are causing the problem by demeaning the rest of us. We are all to be drafted for a cause that demands great sacrifice that is not universally applied and that has no identified endpoint. Until that is corrected, I remain a committed draft dodger.

Recently there were some exchanges on “smart” growth. The idea of trying to reduce impact on our environment is unassailable. The approach to doing it is not! Retrospectively trying to “punish” people living in single family home is at best vindictive. Single-family homes were the American dream. The “smart” growth solution is to force people vertically into large apartment complexes. Shades of the Soviet Union with those massive centrally controlled housing units. Is this the best the “smart growth” community can envision?

How about “climate change”? Of course we need to address it! The solution, however, appears to be to raise the costs of almost every product produced in this country. Are our international competitors buying into this? Not on your life! We have 10% unemployment with a significant number of those on government “hand-outs” because the job they held is now gone – likely forever. So let us have more low paying service jobs so we can deny Americans the better paying “blue collar” jobs we used to have. Is there no better way to try to address climate change?

I could go on all day with initiatives by one group or another to make things “better”. All of them cost money. All of them will take that money from the American consumer. Yes, many of them are worthy to consider. Could it be possible that we might prioritize all these “initiatives" and address them over a longer period of time so we do not dramatically reduce our own standard of living at the same time as we drive much of our better paying jobs off-shore?

Why are we doing this? Are the people pushing these efforts too stupid to understand the consequences? Do too many of the people pushing these initiatives expect a direct benefit –are they simply greedy? Are these people into “control”? They seem to thrive on making their fellow citizens conform to their way of life. Are they in essence power hungry.

If we do not do something to stop this incessant demand for government intervention to change things at ever increasing cost to many if not most of us, will we find our children’s future what we would have it be? Are we headed for all the success demonstrated by the former Soviet Union with all the associated controls and inequities?

What do you think?

I noted in yesterday’s LJW a letter to the editor about our LMH. I, of course, am sympathetic to the thrust of the letter. I am going to use it to address a topic that it avoids. Who pays?

Day after day, there are articles documenting some form of human tragedy or misfortune. Day after day there is a direct or not so direct call for somebody to do something. In most cases the implied somebody is government. What is always lacking is some indication of an understanding that if government is to do something, somebody has to pay. That somebody is inevitable those of us with and income through our taxes.

In a society that already extracts close to $40K of a $100K income for taxes you would hope that those demanding more would have a suggestion as to where the resource is to be found. Should we go to 50%? Is there some group not paying a just contribution? Maybe the lower end of the income distribution should pay at least some tax?

Perhaps all future LJW articles should include some inkling of where the resources to right the documented wrong are to be obtained. What part of the existing budget should be decremented to find the resource? Whose taxes should be increased to pay for righting the wrong?

There comes a point where the society takes so much from the productive elements that the desire to be productive wanes. That happened in Britain before Mrs. Thatcher and we benefited from a large brain drain. That happened in our own District of Columbia some decades ago when many tax paying enterprises moved to another state to avoid what some considered confiscatory taxes. It is happening now in California.

There are parts of the world that well reward productive citizens and before long, if we are not more circumspect, we could be the society experiencing the drain. Maybe, you don’ think it can happen here. You would be wrong. Lawrence, because of high taxes, is in the opinion of some already experiencing a loss of jobs and a decrement in population-despite being a government enclave. When the productive people leave all the goodies we feel are so important will be lost because there will be no resources to pay for them.

Where is the tipping point? Is it in the larger interest of the society to keep pushing toward it? Should we start looking to priorities rather than new revenues? Alexis DeTouqville, the distinguished French commentator on our affairs, noted that a society where the majority of the people benefit from public largess may not long survive. Are our days numbered?

It has been an interesting couple of weeks. On the health care debate each side is busily accusing the other of being irrational drones or misguided idiots. In keeping with all this foolishness I thought I would take the debate to a new low.

We all know that climate change is a hot topic. The planet is “doomed”. We must make major sacrifices to save it. The problem is, unfortunately, we are alone as no one else on the planet seems interested. What better way would there be then to reduce population – the real driver in the climate change debate.

That is where the Medicare debate enters the equations. If we can just get rid of those non-productive “old people” we can make health care universal, begin to reverse the damage to the environment and make more money available to the top 1% earners.

Of course, in a related vein, if we can reduce the number of births we will accelerate the reduction in carbon emissions to better save the planet. Abortion on demand serves that purpose - saves a lot of money, too. Maybe we should limit families to one child?

Will it be long before we save on social service costs by demanding that children born to parents that can not support them be euthanized? There would be more money for each of us to keep.

How about we save the cost of incarceration and reduce crime along with saving the planet. All we need do is euthanize the repeat offenders.

This could be fun. I bet you all could come up with many more candidates to be euthanized. I bet we could eliminate many of our problems by getting rid of the people that we think cause them.

All we have to do is start with Medicare by denying high cost care to those with limited life expectancy.

I am glad I am old and will not live to see most of this play out.