Less Than Zero

“‘Facing a clock some say* has ticked down to zero, today 192 nations came together to take on a potential global catastrophe,’ a dire ABC reporter Bob Woodruff ominously intoned from Copenhagen on Monday’s World News with ‘Saving the Planet?’ on screen.”

Huh. I thought things started from zero once the left took over, not crashed into it instantly.

Recording all the hopenchangin’ at Copenhagen, the Atlantic’s Megan McArdle quips, “C’mon Everyone: It’s Time for Mass Editorials!”

Considering LiveAid’s success at ending hunger in Africa**, I’m awfully glad newspapers are finally applying this model to global warming.  There’s nothing like the sight of fifty-four newspapers performing a synchronized exercise in smug self-congratulation to induce life-altering change.

I am, of course, in favor of not slow-roasting the planet.  But these sort of exercises in mindless collectivism are excruciatingly silly.  Unsurprisingly, the op-ed it produced was puerile and unlikely to be read by anyone who does not already agree with its premise.  If fifty-four newspapers had wanted to make a serious statement about the environment that their readers were sure to pay attention to, they might have stopped printing and distributing their energy intensive product for a day.

Or at least given fellow Atlantean Marc Ambinder the day off today before he wrote (ellipses in original):

….cap and trade will be expensive in the short term…..even though it might save the world in the longterm.

There’s a choice we’re making; we’re saving our own lives….

Related: At PJTV, Alfonzo Rachel has a high-MTV flashback of his own: “Milli Vanilli, Blame It On The Pagans: The New Green Religion.”

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse quotes the New York Times “In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril” and asks:

Affirm? We’re doing affirmations now? “Skeptics”… affirmations… is this religion?

Yes.

*Incidentally, who is this mystical “some” person, and why won’t he ever go on the record?

** Hey, somebody should write an article on that!