From Matt Ridley via Café Hayek:
In the mid-1970s it was briefly fashionable for journalists to write scare stories about the recent cooling of the globe, which was presented as undiluted bad news. Now it is fashionable for them to write scare stories about the recent warming of the globe, which is presented as undiluted bad news.
Like I’ve said before, I’ve been listening to both sets of dribble (“It’s gonna get cold!”, “It’s gonna get hot!” and swinging back to “cool?”) for 40 years. Everything is a crisis and only a few know how to “fix” whatever the latest crisis is being waddled around as IMMEDIATE!!! And in those 40 years, three things have been crystal clear:
- Only “these experts” can save us
- The crisis never gets “fixed” according to the experts but the experts still say it’s raging
- The crisis never really hits that “raging” level despite the dire predictions
And I’ve heard almost every nostrum to “save” us from that crisis and they all end up the same way – a small cadre of people will tell the rest of us how to live our lives and under what conditions. And if we don’t do what they say, and give them all the money they want, we’ll all die in 5 or 10 years. Doesn’t matter the crisis: climate, financial, natural dangers, chemicals, government, autos, sprawl, religion, guns, wars, drugs; the list is endless.
Gosh, you’d think it was a racket or something. Only thing I can really take away from it all is that it all comes down to one thing:
“They” always want to run my life and take my Freedom away
Usually not by persuasion but by passing more regulations and laws. Never, it seems, by convincing and persuasion. Just nascent Totalitarians, albeit with “good intentions”. Always seems to start that way, doesn’t it?
