Nanny Gore: Artists Can Fight Warming Too

When Algore opens his mouth, it is almost assured that something sycophantic will come out. Lo and behold he hasn't dissappointed this time as he has delivered an SOS at the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival in the New York City district of the same name. In this case, however, SOS stands for "Save Our Selves."

“Art, music, film, dance, poetry — all the arts — have long been our greatest
tools to explore the regions of imagination that defy our efforts to think
rationally about subjects that our emotions tell us are too painful to
contemplate,” he said.

Rationally, you say? I'm hard-pressed to find anything in the art world that has done anything rationally. All five artistic categories thrive on irrational, out-of-the-box thinking that appeals to a cross-section of society.

There is an explanation for Gore's latest call-to-arms; he wants to utilize an industry whose financial lifeblood comes almost entirely from the public sector. The entire emphasis on fighting global warming has been placed on the government by Mr. Gore in a predictably pedantic series of demands. Gore urges the world's governments to cut back on carbon emissions by 90% before 2050 and wage green warfare on businesses if they fail to comply with his hodgepodge of regulations and economic hogties.

The most important thing Algore has failed to realize is something that was put graphically in a Wall Street Journal editorial several months ago. The graph most definitely speaks for itself; in concurrent five year spans from 1990 to 2004, the United States has gone from a 6-10% growth rate to a paltry 2.1% in the latest span. Meanwhile, the first fifteen members of the European Union, or EU-15, have proceeded to take a 2.2% cutback in emissions before all of the hype to a 4.5% growth rate AFTER they all signed onto the Kyoto Protocol in 2002.

The difference between the two nations, apart from the glaring fact that the US never signed Kyoto, is that the European Community has undertaken a series of industry-crippling regulations while the United States has remained steadfast in its support of free markets. Free competition has forced many large corporations to cut emissions independent from government coersion. From General Electric to United Technologies, some of the biggest companies by market capitalization have been cutting emissions at double-digit clips for several years now.

A word to the unwise, Mr. Gore. America's people have always been skeptical of government. We broke away from a tyrannical king 231 years ago, broke away from ourselves 146 year ago, and spent almost a half-century fighting hyper-government in the form of Communism during the Cold War. If you so desperately want to fight global warming, perhaps you should step aside and let the free market continue its course toward your desired end. It would amaze you how efficient markets can be ...