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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 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 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 receive casualty reports from the DOD. Of late there have been many. IEDs in Afghanistan are taking their toll. I seemed to have missed the reporting in the media of these events. Back during the Bush days, each new casualty led to an increase in the large casualty clock. “Today two soldiers were killed in XXXX bringing the total to 1,245.”

Anybody out there have an opinion on why all is silent today?

A few days ago, I learned from the BBC a new term, Carbon Criminal. It speaks to excessive use of resources. Well, in my 66 years I have been a significant resource consumer. I benefit from coal. I have owned a number of SUVs. I commuted to work all by myself. I use air-conditioning. I heated my home to 72 degrees. I drove cross-country many times. I have many flying miles under my belt. Overall, my carbon footprint has been significant. It would appear that I am a carbon criminal. I should be ashamed

Well, I am not! Frankly, what I did was legal and was done by countless others at the time. Actually, I am angry at the very notion that I did anything wrong. To retrospectively criminalize a way of life is ridiculous. Not only does it fail to achieve anything useful; it creates a very hostile atmosphere that precludes any dialogue and destroys basic civility.

There seems to be an increasing tendency in recent times to retrospectively criminalize actions that some people find offensive. Let us prosecute Bush for a war that Congress authorized. Let us undo contract law because we do not like the outcome. Hey, why not tax those we disagree with – oops we are doing that. How about criminal actions against those who are now judged to have been carbon criminals? Where does all this stop? Am I to be in fear of the World Court?

Many believe that a major factor in our success as a nation can be attributed to our respect for the law. Are we now to abandon that commitment in the passions of the moment? For those of you so quick to judge people retrospectively remember that approach cuts both ways. Someone may judge you by his or her personal beliefs and not by any duly enacted laws. Just think, we then can have our own version of ethnic cleansing right here in the United States. Is this what we want?