SOS Forests

AGW, the SEC, and the Decline and Fall of Civilization

As predicted [here], on January 27th the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an “interpretive guidance” on climate change. The new rule requires corporations to disclose “business or legal developments relating to the issue of “climate change” [here]. The SEC explained:

… [A] company must consider whether potential legislation — whether that legislation concerns climate change or new licensing requirements — is likely to occur. If so, then under our traditional framework the company must then evaluate the impact it would have on the company’s liquidity, capital resources, or results of operations, and disclose to shareholders when that potential impact will be material. Similarly, a company must disclose the significant risks that it faces, whether those risks are due to increased competition or severe weather. These principles of materiality form the bedrock of our disclosure framework.

This new knife cuts in a variety of ways. One implication is that companies must disclose to shareholders how Cap-and-Trade legislation might impact their bottom lines. Dr. Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, applauds this aspect [here].

Corporate CEOs who have been actively lobbying for cap-and-trade climate legislation may soon find themselves in an embarrassing position thanks to a new Securities and Exchange Commission regulation, says Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project.

The SEC voted January 27 to provide public companies with interpretive guidance that encourages corporations to disclose the possible business and legal impact of climate change to shareholders. Full disclosure will require companies to assess and describe how cap-and-trade legislation can harm company earnings.

“Fully disclosing the business risk of cap-and-trade will embarrass many CEOs who are lobbying for emissions regulations. Shareholders will discover that these CEOs are pursuing legislation that will negatively impact their company,” said Borelli. …

Representatives Joe Barton and Greg Walden of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce derive somewhat different conclusions [here]. They suspect that the new SEC rule will open the door to civil suits against companies that do not consider “climate change” as a matter of standard business practice.

As a matter of fact, such lawsuits are already under way. From the LA Times today [here]

Today, the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group, filed lawsuits against the California Department of Forestry in seven California counties to halt logging plans for 5,000 acres across the Sierra Nevada and Cascade regions. The group contends that the agency approved the projects without properly analyzing carbon emissions and climate consequences under the California Environmental Quality Act.

The lawsuit is aimed at private tree farming practices on private land. The Feds already have extensive regulations concerning “climate change” on government land.

All this comes at the same time that assertions of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change (AGW) promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been shown to be fraudulent [here].

The actions of humanity are not changing the climate. Nothing that human beings do is altering the climates on Planet Earth. That contention is fraudulent. There has been no significant global warming over the last century — at least not enough to be measurable beyond statistical noise. Atmospheric carbon dioxide does not appear to be a significant driver of global temperatures, much less “climate change”.

The burden of proof of purported CO2-driven climate change is on the alarmist community, and they have failed to make the case despite perpetrating extensive corruption and fraud in the effort.

That fact is difficult for many people to accept, including most of Congress and the President. It is a received wisdom that human beings are wrecking the Earth, causing mass extinctions, altering the very climate, and destroying all life. For fifty years the drumbeat of “people are bad” for the environment has been pounded into every school child.

Actually, the anti-human philosophy of original environmental sin dates back to the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. For 5,000 years or more, people have been taught that we are evil just for being born, that humanity is a scourge, and that we are wrecking God’s creation.

This avalanche of guilt has been used to control people, to enslave people, and to murder people by the millions. History is replete with bloody punishment of innocent human beings for no other crime except being alive.

The anti-human philosophies have taken many forms and cannot be attributed solely to the Old Testament ethic. Anti-humanism blossomed into the massive hemoclysm (blood letting) of the 20th Century [here] when over 100 million innocent people were murdered in two world wars and various tyrannical slaughters, most of which had nothing to do with the Bible.

Indeed, the New Testament of the Bible presented, 2,000 years ago, a philosophy of humanism that includes love, forgiveness, redemption, and absolution of original sin.

Be that as it may, the perpetuation of anti-humanist philosophies and barbarous mass murder has continued unabated. In our postmodern era, the anti-humanist proponents have adopted a twisted kind of environmentalism as their principal excuse or philosophic foundation for humanity hatred. The murder of innocents has also continued unabated.

In truth, human beings have been the caretakers of this planet, for good or ill, for the last 50,000 years or so. We have been the keystone predators, the keystone torch bearers, and the keystone vegetation managers wherever we have resided. There have been instances of good stewardship and poor stewardship, but there has been no significant abrogation or rejection of our responsibility and capacity to tend the world.

Even so, and despite our prowess, we have not altered the climate. We have, however, inflicted tragedy and suffering upon one another.

The anti-human philosophy has as its goal the elimination of prosperity, of civilization, and indeed of the entire human species. Various justifications have been dreamed up and actions of consummate evil have been perpetrated in the name of that philosophy.

There is no end in sight. That religion (in essence) is dominant and will probably remain dominant. The latest action by the SEC is a tiny, microscopic even, furtherance of anti-humanism, and is almost insignificant given the larger picture. More lawsuits, attacks, civil disobedience, punitive exactions, enslavements, and bloody wars are guaranteed — the SEC is powerless to stop such and powerless to add much to the fury, either

I do not know how our species can save ourselves from self-hatred and self-destruction. We pursue the idea of benevolent stewardship here at W.I.S.E., but it is a fool’s quest, hopeless and forlorn. Humanity cannot learn the lessons of history; history proves that.

The solution might be in the New Testament, but 2,000 years of failure by humanity to absorb and apply the teachings is not confidence-building.

Some say that apocalyptic disasters are the answer; that if we hurt ourselves enough, the survivors will finally catch a clue. But history is replete with self-inflicted apocalyptic disasters, and the lessons have not been learned.

Hope springs eternal; that is one aspect of human philosophy that will not die. So we struggle on. Science, at least the exercise of rational inquiry and logic, offers a faint hope. Science as we know it today is little more than voodoo superstition, however, and is as mired in apocalyptic myth and original guilt as it was in the Dark Ages.

One thing is for certain — the hysterical belief in the inherent evil of humanity is getting us nowhere. A little more faith in goodness wouldn’t hurt. Instead of ascribing to apocalyptic myths about the end of creation, we might embrace creation, and ourselves, and try to be rational and goodhearted.

One step in that direction would be to refuse to be chained down by the baseless, irrational,and anti-humanist anthropogenic global warming (or climate change, or climate disruption) scare. It ain’t real. We don’t need to be enslaved by that myth any longer. Just say no.