MISSED CALLING: PULPITS AND PLAYGROUNDS

Scare mongering is one of the tried and faithful techniques of any agenda crowd.

It worked well in the recent Scottish N0-vote victory. And it's a favorite of the climate-change group.

If you like Poland--and we're not Polish--you're probably Polish or you're a non-believer in the climate-change madness.

Martin Wolf, one of  the Financial Times political blowhards, recently wrote another article about one of his favorite subjects, climate change, "Clean growth is a safe bet in the climate casino."

All but  the most obdurate skeptics must recognize that the probability of irreversible climate change is much greater than zero. (How much greater Wolf doesn't risk postulating!). But the cost of buying insurance against that risk also matters. Fortunately, these costs might be quite low and , in some respects, even negative: eliminating reliance on coal-generated electricity, for example, would produce health benefits. So would building more compact cities.

If Wolf did any more parsing or hedging of his words in that paragraph, he'd quit his day job and trade commodities on the floor of the Chicago commodities exchange. Wolf then cites another one of those interminable studies from "the high level Global Commission on the Economy and Climate."

First off, any title with the term "Commission" in it should send up one's skeptic antenna. For the most part "Commissions" are how we got here. But we will leave that for another time. Forget love for now, what the globe needs now is one less commission.

Wolf then rolls out the obligatory scaremonger charts citing mortality ratios from outdoor pollution and the costs in  percent of GDP 2010 for various countries. Next come a trademark staple, his Keynesian love for government support, as if the the world isn't already garroted nearly breathless from GS. 

Yet the crucial point is that a low-carbon future need not be one of perpetual misery. With the right support from government (Who gets to define right?), the market culd deliver both greater prosperity and a far lower risk of a destabilised climate. It is unnecessary to persist in making massive unhedged bet in the climate casino. (How's that for some,dramatic verbiage?). It is possible instead to combine growth with a less environmentally risky future. Continuing with business as usual is irrational. But the changes we must make should come now.Later will be too late.

Now back to Poland and its newly elected prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, God bless her.  In her first speech to parliament, according to the Financial Times, since last month she "promised she would not allow Poland's energy costs to rise."

She went on to say that during next month's European Council meeting her government would oppose provisions "which will increase  costs and prices of energy." Go for it, girl. Earlier this year the bureaucrats at the European Commission (There's that word again.) urged the EU's 28 members to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by the end of the next decade.

The big boys like the UK and Germany support the proposal but eastern European countries  claim the costs are prohibitive. According to some sources, Poland relies on coal for about 85 percent of its power needs though many of it facilities and mines are outdated.

Again, according to the Times, her speech  came one day after Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary Slovakia and Bulgaria released an announcement skeptical of the 2030 EU deadline.

The whole thing sounds like the making a good prize fight. And we say, to quote a former famous American referee who is no longer with us, "Let's get it on!"

Forget pulpits and playgrounds. Today, the bullies are everywhere.