Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hot Air in Copenhagen?

Irwin M. Stelzer of the Hudson Institute has an opinion piece in the Weekly Standard1 analyzing the activities leading up to Copenhagen 2009.  You know; the U.N. sponsored fraud aimed at transferring wealth from the Developed Nations—mostly the U.S.—to the Rest of the World.

Stelzer was doing pretty good until he inserted the following clinker near the end of the article:

Too bad the Copenhagen delegates won’t consider an alternative to centralized U.N. control: private sector investment, backed by carbon taxes or an effective trading scheme that puts a price on carbon and thereby levels the playing field between carbon-free technologies and carbon-intensive ones.

What Stelzer seems to have a blind spot for is:  If  using carbon-free technology was inherently advantageous, it would attract private sector investment  on its own.  Free market dynamics would ensure it.  Instead, Stelzer falls back on the Socialist idea of using government intervention to force an outcome.

What a bummer.

1Hot Air in Copenhagen, Stelzer, Irwin M., The Weekly Standard, November 23, 2009, pp. 14-16.

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