From the diaries by Erick

The subject of the environment is a difficult one for conservatives. The Left has owned the discussion for years, always pitching the issue in the direst terms, decade after decade. When we have tried to point out reasonable objections to this extremist rhetoric, such as that there is less than a scientific consensus about climate change, we have been called “deniers” or worse.

This is doubly unfair because there are few things more conservative than conservation. There can be no doubt that being good stewards of our natural resources is necessary for human sustainability and survival. Unfortunately, in the public’s mind the Left has a monopoly on setting wise environmental policy. What we understand, as the Left seems unwilling to acknowledge, is that environmental and economic policies are often very closely associated. There are always tradeoffs for any change in policy.

Right now congressional Democrats, led by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, are trying to use that conventional wisdom to pass a bill that could be destructive on both fronts. As even some on the left have pointed out, the bill may not actually establish binding caps on emissions, and may in fact actually contribute to worldwide pollution. This kind of up-is-down outcome is no surprise to those of us who understand how government is often less efficient at coming up with solutions than it is generating unintended consequences.

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As anyone who followed the Kyoto Protocols back in the 1990s can tell you, even if you believe that government action to stem carbon emissions would be desirable, Kyoto wasn’t a genuine effort to get a worldwide agreement on limiting emissions: it exempted seven of the world’s eight most populous nations (the U.S. being the lone exception) from its provisions, including rapidly growing economies like China (now the world’s number one carbon emitter) and India. And neither of those countries, with more than a billion inhabitants each, has any intention of being subject to the kinds of restrictions that President Obama’s carbon emissions “cap-and-trade” plan would impose on U.S. industries, much less during a global recession. Including industries that employ lots of the blue-collar union workers the Democrats purport to represent.

Those industries’ and unions’ solution, naturally, is even more government taxes and regulations: use trade barriers to try to inflict the same harm on foreign manufacturers as on American ones. Hey, why not start a trade war? Just remember, one thing, though: Senator Smoot and Congressman Hawley both lost their bids for re-election in 1932.

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During the campaign, Barack Obama maintained that he would focus on intervening between Pakistan and India over their disputed Kashmir region. Obama repeatedly claimed that settling the Kashmir question was a “critical task” for the next administration and floated a lot of conjecture about how his administration would step in to solve the situation. But, despite all the claims that Obama made about how important Kashmir was to his developing India/Pakistan policy, the Obama administration has just trimmed any focus on Kashmir from envoy Richard C. Holbrooke’s responsibilities.

India is ecstatic over this move and has claimed a diplomatic victory over the Obama administration on the matter. No word yet from the Pakistanis over this loss of focus on a pet issue that they felt Obama had promised to help them with.

This is a turn around by Obama and a failure to live up to his campaign rhetoric. By trimming Kashmir from Holbrooke’s duties, Obama is casting aside one of the few specific foreign policy aims he claimed was so important during the campaign.

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