OPINION/COMMENTARY

Property Rights

The January edition of "Imprimis" contains an important speech by former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano titled "Property Rights After the Kelo Decision." For those who haven't kept up, the Kelo decision is the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 decision that upheld the city of New London, Connecticut's condemnation of the property of one private party so that another private party could use it to build an office facility. Such a decision was a flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the Fifth Amendment, which reads in part, "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Public use, according to the Constitution's framers, means uses such as roads, bridges, and forts. While most Americans appreciate the concept of yours and mine, Judge Napolitano's speech gives it greater focus. Formerly a law professor, Napolitano says, "When teaching law students the significance of private property, we tell them that each owner of such property has something called a 'bundle of rights.' The first of these is the right to use the property. The second is the right to alienate the property. The third and greatest is the right to exclude people from the property." Can the government force one to sell his property? James Madison said yes, so long as it was for a public use and the owner was paid a fair market value. Thomas Jefferson was opposed to a person being forced to sell his property for a public use, arguing that the essence of private property is the right to exclude anyone, including government, from the property. But Madison's view prevailed, hence the Fifth Amendment provision. Napolitano concluded his speech pointing out something that few Americans appreciate. Natural rights do not come from government; they spring from our humanity. Or, as our founders put it, we are endowed by our "Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," the latter meaning property. We establish governments to secure these rights....


The other 'green' in global warming

The up-tick in global warming propaganda in recent days is to set the stage for the release of the Fourth Assessment Report from the International Panel on Climate Change. Surprise, surprise, the report will say the sky is falling – faster and faster. For people who have watched this process since the beginning, this report, at least the executive summary of the report, is mostly hogwash, wordsmithed by policy wonks and media specialists to scare the gas out of the economy. The First Assessment Report was developed by a fairly balanced group of scientists from around the world and released in 1990. The report was quite extensive and dealt primarily with capturing and storing carbon dioxide. The Second Assessment Report was adopted by a fairly balanced group of participating scientists in December 1995. Then, the lead author of the report, B. D. Santor, acting with the consent of the co-chairman of the Working Group, John Houghton, and with the consent of the executive secretary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Michael Cutajar, changed the report significantly, without the approval of the scientists. Dr. Freidrich Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. Nearly all the changes worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard global warming claims." A hundred distinguished scientists, meeting in Leipzig, Germany, released a joint statement July 10, 1996, which said: "There is still no scientific consensus on the subject of climate change. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever." From that point forward, any scientist who dared to offer research results that did not affirm the conclusions of the IPCC has been denied invitations to participate in the IPCC studies, denied funding and/or denigrated publicly by politically motivated scientists and/or the media. Any scientist who dares express skepticism is at once denounced as a pawn for the oil and coal industry....


The Greatest Environmental Threat Ever

The environmental movement needs to be urgently informed concerning a new threat to the planet. This assault on nature does not come from without but from within the very people who are attempting to "save" the Earth. The grave danger is something more horrendous and subtle than global warming. The new contamination of Gaea could not only destroy hundreds of ecosystems but could possibly end all life permanently. This revolting scheme is carefully planned by a dark entity urging to destroy everything dear to tree lovers. The creature is far worse than human beings, more threatening than a meteor slamming into the Earth, and greedier than a strip-mining industrialist. If you haven’t guessed by now....it’s...the Giant Panda! The environmental movement for years has been deceived by this leech on the globe. The animal appears so cute and cuddly that we have fallen prey to its coercive manipulation. Behind those adorable jet black eyes, a monster dwells. Environmentalists constantly attempt to preserve "natural" ecology. Of course, this implies that human beings aren’t part of nature. Everything else is a part of nature to them. A coyote can kill its prey. A woodchuck can cut down a tree. But suddenly when a human does either, a great ecological "crime" occurs. The act is a supposed malicious unnatural abomination that must be stopped. The human species has once again trampled upon natural ecology. The Giant Panda only exists because of human involvement. It could not survive in a natural selection process...Now that you know the treacherous and deceptive essence of the beast, I can continue about the doomsday rolling ever closer. The most vile gluttonous creatures on Earth known as Americans consume at most about 6 pounds of food a day, about 2,200 pounds of food a year. The larger giant pandas waste up to 40 pounds of bamboo per day in a 10- to 16-hour shift of endless habitat destruction totaling almost 15,000 pounds of bamboo per year!....


If the Cap Fits

The Climate Action Partnership, a group of 10 major companies that made headlines this week with its call for a national limit on carbon dioxide emissions, would surely feign shock at such an accusation. After all, their plea was carefully timed to coincide with President Bush's State of the Union capitulation on global warming, and it had the desired PR effect. The media dutifully declared that "even" business now recognized the climate threat. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who begins marathon hearings on warming next week, lauded the corporate angels for thinking of the "common good." There was a time when the financial press understood that companies exist to make money. And it happens that the cap-and-trade climate program these 10 jolly green giants are now calling for is a regulatory device designed to financially reward companies that reduce CO2 emissions, and punish those that don't. Four of the affiliates--Duke, PG&E, FPL and PNM Resources--are utilities that have made big bets on wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power. So a Kyoto program would reward them for simply enacting their business plan, and simultaneously sock it to their competitors. Duke also owns Cinergy, which relies heavily on dirty, CO2-emitting coal plants. But Cinergy will soon have to replace those plants with cleaner equipment. Under a Kyoto, it'll get paid for its trouble. DuPont has been plunging into biofuels, the use of which would soar under a cap. Somebody has to cobble together all these complex trading deals, so say hello to Lehman Brothers. Caterpillar has invested heavily in new engines that generate "clean energy." British Petroleum is mostly doing public penance for its dirty oil habit, but also gets a plug for its own biofuels venture. Finally, there's General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt these days spends as much time in Washington as Connecticut. GE makes all the solar equipment and wind turbines (at $2 million a pop) that utilities would have to buy under a climate regime. GE's revenue from environmental products long ago passed the $10 billion mark, and it doesn't take much "ecomagination" to see why Mr. Immelt is leading the pack of climate profiteers....


Wal-Mart Plan to Force Suppliers to Implement Green Agenda is Bad Business

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) today criticized Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott for his speech in London last night before Prince Charles and 400 business leaders, in which he said a key component of the company’s campaign to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, allegedly responsible for global warming, will be to push its business suppliers into reducing their emissions. Wal-Mart (WMT) had previously announced that it will pressure its 60,000 suppliers to adhere to environmental mandates. “It is the responsibility of every corporation to be more sustainable,” said Scott. Scott insists that Wal-Mart is not trying to coerce its suppliers but rather is “a cooperative effort of encouragement and support.” “This is simply not true,” says John Carlisle, Director of Policy at NLPC. “Scott and other Wal-Mart executives have said that companies that don’t meet the environmental mandates run a serious risk of losing their contracts.” Wal-Mart has devised a scorecard to grade the environmental progress of suppliers which Scott says the company will use to “pick the ones moving in the right direction.” Likewise, Tim Yatsko, Wal-Mart Senior Vice President for Transportation, is on record as saying, “We have made it clear that all things being equal, we’ll give business to operators who show they’re fully engaged” in fuel efficiency efforts....