What do the United Nations, Maryland and Howard County have in common?
They all have their own climate change initiatives.
One of the smallest states in the union, Maryland, and then one of its counties are throwing money down the global warming sewer in the name of political correctness ? and excess spending.
Maryland, run by the Big Spender himself, Gov. Martin O?Malley, and Howard, under County Executive Ken Ulman, have decided green is good no matter how much of your green they have to spend. This duo is determined to stop mankind from destroying the globe ? one taxpayer at a time.
O?Malley?s tried to remake the state in his own green image. (We Irish folks ? not wee Irish folks ? get to insert our own joke here. Everybody else check theGuinness clock to see when it?s St. Patrick?s Day.) He ran into a problem with the other kind of green ? the folding kind.
Even spendthrift legislators didn?t give O?Malley all of the eco-stuff he wanted as a result. Amazingly, they didn?t pass him a global warming bill that in its earlier form, to use Al Gore speak, could have ended life in Maryland as we all know it. But that won?t stop Gov. Green.
The less-horrible version of the bill would have cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, and targeted 90 percent reduction by 2050 as a goal. It?s a goal only Gore could love. Certainly not manufacturing plants in Maryland. Or workers either. That combination killed the bill ? for now.
Al Gore. The very words create a droning noise that could bore audiences more than a Brian Billick offense. Ever since Gore?s film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released, every left-wing politician in America has tried to hitch his or her career to Gore?s hybrid wagon.
Despite endless media hype, Gore has been a total failure. America never ratified the Kyoto treaty. President Bill Clinton never even had the courage to send it to the Senate for approval. More than a decade later, Americans still aren?t that worried about climate change. Except in Maryland.
Gore is so mad he?s turning, well, greener. He?s started a $300-million propaganda campaign to bully us into his vision of the future. But he doesn?t need that here. Maryland?s eco-worriers are unusually successful thanks to O?Malley. So much so that nobodies like Ulman want to out-green Mother Nature herself.
Ulman recently started an Office of Environmental Sustainability and plans to hire a consultant to create a climate action plan. The job pays $100,000 a year to be a professional scold. One of the consultant?s first steps should be to eliminate the office itself and his job ? saving untold paperwork and pleasing taxpayers, instead of the headline-grabbing county executive. I?d give him the $100,000 just to do it.
Despite the power of the nation?s green machine, the Earth keeps being inconvenient and not getting any warmer. And the hundreds of scientists that disagree with Gore (nearly 500 according to a Senate tally) keep pointing out that this issue is still subject to debate.
Like everything else ? except in Maryland.
Dan Gainor can be seen each week on Thursday afternoons on the new Fox Business Network. He is the T. Boone Pickens fellow at the Media Research Center?s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator.
He can be reached at [email protected]
