Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (18 page)

Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, publisher and editor of the newsletter
Access to Energy
, and other scientists confirmed that climate change and temperature variations are related to sunspot activity and water vapor. “A sixfold increase in hydrocarbon
use since 1940 has had no noticeable effect on atmospheric temperature or on the trend of glacial length,” according to Dr. Robinson. The CO
₂
in the atmosphere has increased by 2 percent in the past fifty years but is unrelated to temperature changes. It has been shown that higher CO
₂
levels will cause plants to grow faster and larger with less water.

It took a lot of years of concerted effort to scare the people into believing that grave danger lies ahead unless we institute radical new laws worldwide limiting growth and taxing energy. Though the tide is turning, it will require many more years and hard evidence to come back to sanity with regards to CO
₂
emissions and the use of hydrocarbons for energy. Truth, though inconvenient at times, will win out in the end. Al Gore is already on the defensive. His Nobel Peace Prize is hardly evidence of his credibility. Don’t forget that Barack Obama got the Nobel Prize for peace while massively expanding the war in south-central Asia. War is peace; superstition is science. All with a straight face!

The green movement has brought about all kinds of changes in the way we live. Some of the changes are not necessarily bad, but the good changes and conservation could have come without all the programs that actually have a negative economic and environmental impact. Certainly, recycling for the most part consumes more energy than it saves.
²
Recycling aluminum makes economic sense, but that would happen even without the demand to recycle everything from paper to glass and plastic.

The same people who demand that we quit using hydrocarbon fuels usually hate the cleanest and cheapest source of energy—nuclear. That’s the reason we have not had a new nuclear plant built in thirty years. (Hopefully, this will change. A license has finally been granted for two new nuclear reactors in my district in Bay City, even though all hurdles have, as of yet, not been overcome.)

And to top it off, they also express great fear that we are now at “peak oil,” and for that reason too, we are told, we must conserve (and suffer a bit if necessary) for the benefit of future generations.

If the extremists had not gained the upper hand there would still be plenty of fretting about “peak oil,” and they would still be wringing their hands and demanding a federal government policy that will guarantee energy independence. Don’t use oil or coal, avoid nuclear, and stay energy independent at low cost. Taxes constantly rising, regulations increasing, inflation increasing, and obstacles placed in the way of developing new fuel, and the planners decide that national economic planning is not enough—to regulate energy, we are told, there must be a globalized solution.

Authoritarians are obsessed with planning and despise free market policies. They have no interest in an objective analysis of the peak oil theory that argues the world will soon be out of oil. Peak oil is a nonproblem for a couple of reasons. Trillions of dollars are being misallocated into seeking “green” replacements at very high costs and a detriment to our environment. Windmills and solar panels to replace hydrocarbon without using nuclear would destroy unbelievable acreage in the United States and around the world and would never come
close to providing the energy needed to sustain a decent standard of living for the people of the world.

Whether or not we have reached “peak oil” would be of little relevance if the market were allowed to solve the problem of providing the cheapest and cleanest energy needed. We may well be at that point where we will no longer see an increase in available oil for drilling. My guess is that fear tactics and pessimism have influenced this consensus. The fear is driven by those who don’t want hydrocarbons to ever be used. Some are too pessimistic, because over the past decades new discoveries have constantly surprised the economic planners.

Besides, technology is quite capable of obtaining clean liquefied coal—something the United States has in abundant supply—as well as providing a safe and clean and cheaper way of using oil from sand or shale. The truth is, I don’t know nor does any other human being know how much hydrocarbon energy is available worldwide. Not even Al Gore! And whether or not it can be used in an environmentally approved manner, my guess is that there’s a lot more oil and gas yet to be discovered.

This whole scandalous debate is misleading. The only thing that counts is whether the free market or government planners are in charge of providing energy to the people. “Energy independence” shouldn’t be the goal with the government in charge. That’s a sure way to create an unwanted foreign dependence and for shortages to develop.

A free market would allow alternate fuels to develop more efficiently than large central economic planners dictating a program. Nuclear energy is safe and clean and cheap. If we
were forced to rely on nuclear power we could easily adapt. Other countries already have.

A national energy policy, a Department of Energy, an energy czar, thousands of regulations and multiple taxes and subsidies are totally unnecessary. A national policy of freedom would ask for no more government planning for energy needs than a cell phone planning program is necessary to make sure all poor people can afford a government-approved cell phone distributed by a department of mass communications run by the government. The organic progress of markets is the source of economic development.

It’s a loss of both confidence and understanding of how markets work that causes so many people to accept the need for government to provide us with goods and services. There should be no difference between the distribution of cell phones, computers, TVs, medical care, or energy. It’s amazing that people don’t understand that the more the market is involved and the smaller the government, the lower the price, the better the distribution, and the higher the quality. The authoritarian approach too often wins the propaganda war, using fear as its weapon in gaining public acceptance of flawed economic thinking. If the economic arguments are too complex to understand, simply defending liberty as a moral right should suffice.

Anderson, Terry. 2001.
Free Market Environmentalism
. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Horner, Christopher. 2007.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming
. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.

T
he gun control movement has lost momentum in recent years. The Democratic Party has been conspicuously silent on the issue in recent elections because they know it’s a political loser. In the midst of declining public support for new gun laws, more and more states have adopted concealed-carry programs.
¹
The 9/11 terrorist attacks and rising fears about security only made matters worse for gun-control proponents, as millions of Americans were starkly reminded that we should not rely on government to protect us from criminals.

Gun-control advocates tell us that removing guns from
society makes us safer. But that is simply an impossibility. The fact is that firearm technology exists. It cannot be uninvented. As long as there is metalworking and welding capability, it matters not what gun laws are imposed upon law-abiding people. Those who wish to have guns, and disregard the law, will have guns. Paradoxically, gun control clears a path for violence and makes aggression more likely, whether the aggressor is a terrorist or a government.

I don’t really believe “gun-free” zones make any difference. If they did, why would the worst shootings consistently happen in gun-free zones such as schools? And while accidents do happen, aggressive, terroristic shootings like this are unheard of at gun and knife shows, the antithesis of a gun-free zone. It bears repeating that an armed society truly is a polite society. Even if you don’t like guns and don’t want to own them, you benefit from those who do. It is better that criminals imagine they face an armed rather than an unarmed population.

History shows us that another tragedy of gun laws is genocide. Hitler, for example, knew well that in order to enact his “final solution,” disarmament was a necessary precursor. While it is an extreme case that an unarmed populace was killed by their government, if a government is going to kill its own people, it will in fact have to disarm them first so they cannot fight back. Disarmament must happen at a time when overall trust in government is high, and under the guise of safety for the people, or perhaps the children. Knowing that any government, no matter how idealistically started, can become despotic, the Founders enabled the future freedom of Americans by enacting the Second Amendment.

In our own country, we should be ever vigilant against
any attempts to disarm the people, especially in an economic downturn. I worry that violent crime will rise sharply in the coming days, and as states and municipalities grow even more financially strained, the police will be less able or willing to respond to crime.

In many areas, local police could become more and more absorbed with revenue-generating activities, like minor traffic violations and the asset forfeiture opportunities of nonviolent drug offenses. Your safety has always, ultimately, been your own responsibility, but never more so than now. People have a natural right to defend themselves. Governments that take that away from their people are highly suspect.

Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms served as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can ultimately resist tyrannical government.

Halbrook, Stephen. “Were the Founding Fathers in Favor of Gun Ownership?”
Washington Times
, November 5, 2000.
http://www.independent.org
.

Lott, John. 2010.
More Guns, Less Crime
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

P
assing legislation concerning crimes against minorities is supposed to show compassion and prove that our society does not discriminate. In fact, these laws do the opposite. Confidence that such efforts will help protect minorities causes a gross misunderstanding of individual rights. If all individuals should be treated the same under the law, providing greater penalties to those who commit crimes against certain racial or sexual orientation groups nullifies this effort. It means that the law provides lesser penalties to those individuals committing crimes against people without that favored orientation.

A power given to government to place a greater penalty on someone, assuming they understand the motivation for the crime—always a subjective conclusion—is a consequence of the victims belonging to a certain group. If this can be done, the power is exactly the same power that once was used to
excuse
violence if it was against a black or gay person. The only solution is to insist that all rights are individual and unrelated to belonging to a particular group.

The fallacy of this type of legislation has led to the routine
understanding of groups having rights rather than all individuals having equal rights. Too often, we hear reference to gay rights, minority rights, and women’s rights, etc., which undermines the concept of individual liberty.