Laura Ingraham
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Along with death and taxes, the U.N.'s America-bashing is one of the few
things in life you can count on.
The only variables in this global version of the Whack-A-Mole game are the time, place, and manner of the whacks. This week the venue moves to Johannesburg, South Africa, the site of the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development. The forum aims to focus on the deteriorating state of the environment in poor countries. News accounts remind us that 100 presidents and prime ministers from around the world will attend ---but not George W. Bush! (gasp!)
The New York Times' "news account"of the 10-day event includes the gem: "The United States, the world's biggest polluter, has also refused to commit to time frames for reducing greenhouse gas emissions" (Double gasp!). Of course conveniently omitted from most reports about global warming, etc., is that while the US may produce 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, we also have the world's largest economy. And what about the untold number of jobs created abroad through our ballooning trade deficit? Or the fact that we feed the world, unless thugs like Mugabe don't allow it? Then there's the small matter of our having defeated communism and kept other tyrants in check.
As Bjorn Lomborg lays out so eloquently in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, the environment is not going to hell in a hand basket. Fewer people are dying of starvation today, energy and other natural resources are actually becoming more, not less, plentiful. Only about 0.7 percent of species are predicted to vanish within 50 years. And most forms of pollution have been widely exaggerated by enviros, who won't be truly content until we all go solar and eat vegan.
While it is tempting to brush off these UN-sponsored forums as left-wing claptrap, we should resist doing so. America's dedicated liberals know they're never going to convince Americans to dump their SUVs. And they know they can't get elected on far-left agendas that will end up costing taxpayers dearly. So they look to conferences like this to publicize their pro-regulation cause, and shame the US into coughing up more foreign aid for developing countries.
Middle America understands what too many
who frequent these UN conferences don't ---how to make an honest living.
We've seen what no-strings-attached welfare system did to the poor in the
US and most of us don't much feel like seeing that repeated on a global
scale.
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JWR contributor Laura Ingraham is the host of a radio show syndicated nationally by
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