The fact that local municipalities and many large cities across the United States are forcing Kyoto-type standards upon their residents is of course wildly cheered by the blinkered big-city columnists in the Washington Post:
New York is among a faction of U.S. cities from Boston to Portland, Ore., that are racing ahead of the federal government in setting carbon emission targets and developing concrete strategies to deal with climate change. Their solutions are already beginning to alter the fabric of life for millions of urban dwellers.
It is a direct consequence, municipal officials and analysts say, of the growing perception inside city halls that the Bush administration has largely ignored an issue that has reached a tipping point in American culture.
A nationwide poll released in April showed a third of Americans now call global warming the world's single largest environmental problem -- double the number a year ago, according a Washington Post-ABC News-Stanford University survey.
Wow! A third! Considering there are like 100 news stories a day pushing the theme that global warming is threatening to kill us all by next Tuesday, that number seems a bit timid to me - and I'd love to see the skew of the questions of the Post's unnamed, unlinked-to poll.
Anyway - note some of the language above - "altering the fabric of life", due to the "perception inside city halls". Who populates these halls, and by what right do they alter the fabric of people's lives? Oh, yeah, liberal Democrats....See here, where New Jersey's most influential climate committee is manned by exactly zero scientists....
Does this give you a clue where things are going under the benign leadership of the liberal dictatorship?
"Look, people will make a little sacrifice if they have to."
Oh, and they are being forced to:
522 mayors representing 65 million Americans who have pledged to meet the Kyoto Protocol's standard of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Those who have not twisted history to the point where George W. Bush is to blame every time a sparrow falls will recall that the Kyoto Accords failed 98-0 in the Senate, under Bill Clinton's stewardship, because of the unaminous agreement that they were financially disasterous. And they are, but it won't be the liberal elite that will be paying:
In Austin, city residents are becoming more eco-friendly whether they like it or not. The city has adopted a policy incrementally increasing requirements for energy efficiency in private homes. By 2015, all new single family homes must use 60 percent less energy than today's standards. Homeowners are being encouraged to use solar panels to make their homes completely energy self-sufficient.
The price of this to Austin's middle class? You would need a bunch of these to get even close to that 60% (look at how many it takes to cover Al Gore's "Green-house"); methinks Austin will be less a green city and more of a ghost town by 2016.
More of this liberal insanity borne by the middle class:
In Boulder, Colo., the city council last November passed what environmentalists are calling the nation's first "carbon tax." Homeowners there are facing average increases of $16 and businesses $48 annually on electricity bills to cover a "climate action plan."
The tiny city of Keene, N.H., meanwhile, has imposed a non-idling policy for cars when parents drop off and pick up their children from school.
Gets kinda cold in New Hampshire during the winter; you want kids to open their car doors after school to find "popsicle parents"?
Under "global warming" martial law, people will freeze to death. Logic, Democratic-style.
Now if conservative mayors were outlawing abortion in their districts because they felt the federal government was too lax on the subject - or they were socking citizens with a "life tax" to help promote a more pro-life agenda - I wonder if the media would be as obviously supportive as they are in the article you linked to.
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