The Things That Matter

Nothing spoils a good hoax like a sudden deluge of reality (via Newsmax Insider):

Only one in four Americans believes global warming is the biggest environmental challenge facing the world, a new poll reveals.

The ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University survey found that public concern over the global warming issue has diminished over the past year.

Fewer than half of the poll’s respondents, 47%, think global warming is an important issue to them personally, down from 52% in April 2007.

While 80% believe Earth is warming, that figure is down four percentage points from last year.

Doubts over the science behind the global warming issue still linger in people's minds, according to the poll results reported by the National Journal. Just 30% of respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment "completely" or "a lot," 39% said they trust them "a moderate amount," and 30% said they do not trust them.

Also, nearly 60% of respondents said there is "a lot of disagreement" within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is.

According to ABC News' Gary Langer, the diminished concern over global warming coincides with decreased media attention to climate change, in favor of the election and economy. "A database search finds 50% fewer news stories on global warming in the month before this poll was conducted, compared with the month before last year's survey," Langer wrote.

In any case, about seven in ten respondents said they're attempting to reduce their energy consumption by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.

But 63% are in favor of drilling for oil in coastal waters where it is currently not allowed, and 55% support drilling in U.S. wilderness areas where it is not allowed.

It's easy to indulge in all that "go green" nonsense when it doesn't cost you anything, or when that cost is not visible.  The global warming hysteria has always been a lot like a disaster movie.  Like Independence Day, in which viewers got to watch New York City and Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and Houston laid waste, and landmarks like the Empire State Building, the White House, and the U.S. Capitol obliterated.  It was a lot of rip-roaring, rollicking fun precisely because it wasn't real.  Five years later when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were demolished for real, the entertainment value mysteriously plummeted.

The climate change crusade was similarly feel-good-esque in the thought that by using a big-ass recycling bin and driving a roller skate and eschewing back yard barbeques, you were doing your part to "save the planet".  You really weren't doing any such thing, because the mere existence of our modern civilization is not a "threat" to the planet, its ecology, or anything else, and even if it was, meaninglessly gauzy gesture-making would have no impact one way or the other.  But it built our self-esteem somehow, and as long as it didn't impact our everyday lives, it was a harmless ego-stroke.

This summer's camel's back-breaking gas price straw changed that equation.  Drastically.  The ecozealots' chickens finally came home to roost.  People are all very-very and to-to about being "green" and all, but not if it means we have to fork over fifty bucks every fill-up even if we're already driving roller skates.  And the quickest way to lose all that environmental goodwill is for greenstremists to get in our faces, thump two fingers in our chest, and tell us we've got to pay even more for gas unless we follow their instructions and be docilely herded into public transit or onto bicycles or behind the wheel of hamster-powered hybrids, freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer "for our own good".  Oh, yes, and be taxed to death to fund all these pie-in-the-sky "renewable alternatives" the damned charlatans have promised for a generation that have never panned out and never will.

Perhaps this helps explain the stunning revival of GOP courage, and even aggressiveness:

Republicans lambasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) energy plan Saturday advising her to “get out of the way” if she was not going to accept GOP solutions to the energy crisis.

In her Saturday radio address Pelosi announced that Democrats would consider opening up parts of the outer continental shelf for drilling as a part of a broad new energy plan that will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

The Democratic initiative will also seek to release oil from the seven hundred million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve, require oil companies to pay billions of dollars Democrats believe they owe to invest in clean energy resources, increase the use natural gas and create a federal Renewable Electricity Standard.

The panic of Pelosi's Politburo continues to balloon.  They can't hide from the doctrinaire absolutism of their greenstremist wing, they can't hide the disastrous economic consequences from an arroused public that is now wise to them, and they can't bluff or bully the minority party that recognizes a Godsend wedge issue when it sees one and smells blood.

How much has the political momentum shifted inside the Beltway?  Senator "I'd sooner drill in the Grand Canyon than in ANWR" is even coming around, and implicitly leaning on the Senate's "gang of ten" to follow his lead:

In late June, McCain told voters in Missouri and Minnesota that he was open to receiving new information about exploration on Alaska’s coastal plain, but noted: “I certainly haven’t changed my position.”

In an interview with the Weekly Standard aboard his campaign plane last week, McCain made clear he has not ruled out a change in his position – to one that endorses drilling in ANWR. “I continue to examine it,” he said. So does his staff. McCain’s campaign has been quietly studying the ANWR issue and discussing the potential consequences – good and bad – of a policy change.

But in our conversation on August 13, McCain added a new wrinkle. When I asked him if he had consulted [Alaska Governor Sarah] Palin about ANWR, he said that he had not yet done so. He added, “I probably should,” he said. “I will.”

So I called Palin to ask what McCain can expect to hear. The answer is that Palin, who has been mentioned as a possible McCain running mate but has not been vetted, will make a straightforward case for drilling in ANWR. She says McCain’s willingness to take another look at ANWR is “very encouraging.”

If the King of Comitous Compromise is signaling a willingness to take another look at ANWR drilling, especially given his new role as titular head of the GOP, that cannot help but have an impact on the GOP side of the Senate compromisers.  Pulling the Republican contingents on both sides of the Capitol away from frittering away the vast potential political gains of standing with the huge majorities of the public who now favor unfettered domestic energy exploration can only tighten the Dems' self-braided noose tighter around their pencil-necks.  Throw in war in the Caucasus, the return of the Cold War, and its oil-related implications on top of the national security aspects, and the Donks are thrown into full-scale disarray with no place to retreat to.

If they retain the most tenuous link with reality, the majority will "get out of the way," try and salvage control of Congress, and survive to "shut down the dynamo" another day.  But will what even Donk pollster John Zogby is calling Dems' "cockiness," much less their ill-concealed radicalism, allow such consideration of the bigger picture?

Yes, that is a rhetorical question.