Mr. Robert Novak provides some details on the Kyoto accords that I had not previously heard.[1] I have been against this treaty simply because I think it is utterly misguided. From what I gather, it does not seem that we can/em undo the damage of global warming that we have done so far, whatever amount of damage is our fault. The push then seems to be couching a desire to minimize future damage in terms of preventing inevitable catastrophe. This seems wrong-headed. If the catastrophe is coming, we should push forward as best we can to have the technology on hand to survive it./p

Mr. Novak asserts that this treaty is about more than environmentalism however. If he is right, it is also an explicit attempt to use environmentalism to cause Americans to accept a decrease in our standard of living. This causes a blip in my radar screen because it was one of the things that was predicted in the Federal Reserve book that I never finished. It had some kooky Lockness Monster type name. Anyway, one of the ideas of the part of the book that I did read was that various situations would be used not to raise the third world up to first world lifestyles, but to level the playing field by bring down/em the average. Were this to actually happen, it would not surprise me to see it coming with heavy European and Chinese pressures, as these are socialist and communist governments already. I am not saying that the book is right, just that this sort of tendency bears watching./p

[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20050613.shtml