Carbon is the basis for all plant and animal life on earth.
To reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 % we probably must also reduce life forms by 50 %, would the environmentalists like to lead the way?

Except that pollution has a direct, measurable impact on the other people. What you do in the bedroom does not, nor does getting an abortion (assuming a fetus is not a person).

Even under libertarianism, there is a good case for government regulating pollution. Pollution directly reduces my quality of life against my will, so I must be compensated by the polluter for their infringement on my health, and the polluter must be punished. It seems completely obvious to me that the government should be regulating pollution.

Whether CO2 should be considered a pollutant is another matter. The effects are indirect, but have the potential to be significant. I would favor a small carbon emission tax, assuming there is a way to measure it without excessive government snooping into individual's lives.

I agree that pollution must be controlled, but compounds and elements necessary to maintain life should not be classed pollutants.

pollution has a direct, measurable impact on the other people

That may (or may not be) true, but I'm talking about an individual's CO2 emissions, not pollution in the collective sense. There is no way that anyone can prove that my individual emissions of CO2 have a direct, measurable impact on other people that is deleterious to their health. Therefore, the government has no moral right to restrict my driving, mowing the lawn, or breathing.

Of course, communitarian arguments can be used against almost anything. One argument against abortion is that had these people been born, society would have benefited (via productivity and tax revenues) and of course homosexuality also decreases the population.

Who gets to define harm? Or impact?

Thanks!

"Who gets to define harm? Or impact?"

Why "the powers that be", of course.

"nor does getting an abortion"

Except that you are not the distinctly unique human being which is being aborted.

As a woman I had to face the scientific fact that it is not my body being aborted therefore abortion is not my choice rather the choice should be left up to the human being who is being abortion.

And, as a woman I cannot comprehend why Feminists are so determined in their relentless fashion to extinguish a distinctly unique human being.

Why is Feminism so weak that it must destroy innocence in order to feel legitimate?

Why is the Feminist so fearful and paranoid of life? What is inside the Feminist mind which compels her to destroy life?

Andrew C...have doctors suck out your brain to collapse your skill then get back to me about how it affects your life.

As to the Mommy-Nanny Statist...I would rather the meddlers got back to meddling in the bedroom because at least their obnoxious meddling would be contained to one room rather than meddling in the entire house, the schools, the workplace, the car and all other places they tend to meddle.

What's freedom? "Freedom from" or "freedom to"?

I think "freedom to" is winning in America right now.

That’s okay Eric, I concluded the progressive support for the civil rights movement was really just a move to get more control over private business... they'd had two previous attempts to regulate hiring practices (re: get it under more state control) that failed. Racial equally was just the a convenient argument that stuck / got the nose in the tent finally... previously... the right to privacy the lefties so often quote was considered to cover your business too... So… to answer your question… maybe. A lot of the whole ‘civil liberties’ meme might be just misdirection to get people to not notice the overall increase in state power over their lives…

Duh! The left figured this out in the 60s: people - especially young people - will give away all their freedoms to feel good 'down there.' Personally I don't care what people do in their bedroom, but let's be honest here, the sexual revolution is about keeping people in perpetual adolescence.

Hugh, you are describing a typical tragedy of the commons. Rational individual action results in a shitty outcome. My mom told me how her eyes used to burn everyday because of the thick cloud of Los Angeles.

The problem with the environmental crusaders is that we have reached the point of diminishing returns on smog reduction. As for CO2 output, have any of these crusaders put a price tag on the environmental damage of one ton of CO2? Have they even determined if AGW is bad for the planet? It might be a good thing!

Environmentalists and MADD seem to have something in common, eh?
Our air, water and land is cleaner than it was 30 or 40 years ago. And .08 is a bulls#@t BAC legal limit.
It's time we threw both these groups under a diesel-powered bus, while drinking a beer.

Except that you are not the distinctly unique human being which is being aborted.

As a woman I had to face the scientific fact that it is not my body being aborted therefore abortion is not my choice rather the choice should be left up to the human being who is being abortion.

Penny, thanks for writing that. I've always thought it odd that pro-abortion women talk about "their choice" when they're really choosing for two people, one of whom has no say in the matter. Since the other person would probably choose to be born, it would seem wise to err on the side of caution and let that person's "yes" vote trump the would-not-be mother's "no" vote.

Granted, these same people have tried to dehumanize the other person's vote by referring to them as a "piece of tissue," but that doesn't seem very honest to me.

Oops, that second paragraph of mine should have been attributed to syn (not Penny); maybe HMTL tags close automatically at a paragraph change on this site? (I'm a longtime reader/infrequent poster here, so sorry for the Epic Fail in those areas.)

Once you are ready to accept pre-natal abortions, then post-natal abortions are a simple step forward.

I've wondered this, too. When the left comes to the defense of liberties, it's in a way that reduces them to their most trivial elements.

Free speech? Pornography, foul language, sedition -- but even the mildest criticism of their favored groups becomes "hate speech" and (along with worthless squishes like McCain) POLITICAL speech is subject to endless regulation that leaves only their power bases able to make their political arguments.

Privacy? Oh, do what you want "in the privacy of your own home" -- unless it's FINANCIAL privacy. You have to tell the government every detail of your financial life every year, they have the power to simply declare you're lying -- and you have to prove your innocence. Anyone listened to Limbaugh lately? The state of New York has been auditing him for every year since he moved from New York, demanding he prove FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR WHERE HE WAS. But the good Democrats in Albany would undoubtedly declare their fealty to the "right to privacy".

Association? You're free to associate as you choose, at least until one of the left's favored groups feels excluded. Ask the Boy Scouts about their freedom of association.

The right to bear arms? Listen to Democrat politicians talk about the 2nd Amendment -- they'll babble about hunting and target shooting, but never a word about your right to self-defense or to resist tyranny.

Andrew C., I must take issue that abortion does not affect anyone else. Don't you think the fact that we are missing 48 million potential citizens argue for increased immigration, which leads to all manner of problems culturally? We are constantly told that we need more workers while the elephant in the room goes unmentioned.

A "carbon emissions tax", you say? Maybe we could tax gasoline! Oh wait, we do that already, nevermind.

Really I think liberals should just agree to pay twice as much for gas so they wouldn't feel so guilty about it and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

The problem is too many lawyers. Lawyers make laws the way cats make kittens. Laws limit liberty.

Don't forget the new 'sin' tax aiming at food. All your dinner tables belong to us. Sugar is being demonized right now to justify big daddy/sister to control what foods are 'right' and what foods are 'evil' with 'punitive' levies. If you think the Chinese are going to cap CO2 emissions, you just wait till the Indians and Argentinians laugh in our collective faces when when downsize the cattle population to reduce methane production. Food - the New Sin (tm), Socialist Puritanism for the Collective! /sarcasm off

Emissions are identical to “exploit the earth or die”. In normal times, I’d be worried that these goofs would choke off life with their enviro-games. When you anticipate a cultural / state collapse due to the gluttony of ever increasing government spending / scope, this becomes just one of countless deathblows to the country.

In the gogo 90s, we all thought that freedom, human rights, and capitalism would be adopted everywhere.

Then Russia and China hit on a good formula for economic success in the absence of political freedom (sorry Francis Fukayama).

The formula is so successful that the far-left of the Democratic party (ie. the Obama admin) and its institutional allies are moving the US in the same statist direction.

"Who gets to define harm? Or impact?"

Why "the powers that be", of course.

And they do it without benefit of an amendment that gives them the authority to do it!

How much impact and harm to we owe them as a freebie before we share it back to them? Federales uber alles is not going to perpetually fly, especially when The Annointed One is letting slip we are out of cash.

Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp

If "getting the government out of our bedrooms" was the goal, why are there so many people pushing so hard to get the government to license same-sex marriage? What business does the government have being involved?

Democrats are all about control and this new push for CO2 regulation is more of the same.

By labeling the gas all people exhale, CO2, a dangerous pollutant, the government can now regulate industries and people in ways no one could have imagined a few short years ago. Think about it, your very existence is now deemed a hazard to the ‘environment’ even though CO2 is a necessary component for plant life.

http://motorcitytimes.com/mct/cafe-standards-and-your-freedom/

Steve

You're right. Its a magician's trick. Watch the hand with the wand. Don't watch my left hand as it picks your pocket,and slaps handcuffs on your wrists.

Some very insightful and knowledgeable comments up above mine. I'm reduced to going 'Bravo.'

Even under libertarianism, there is a good case for government regulating pollution. Pollution directly reduces my quality of life against my will, so I must be compensated by the polluter for their infringement on my health, and the polluter must be punished. It seems completely obvious to me that the government should be regulating pollution.

You don't understand libertarianism. In a free society, if someone thinks somebody else's pollution had harmed them, they would be free to bring suit, demonstrate that harm, and collect damages. Personally. Of course, they would have to prove that harm, which might be a tough row with the "Global Warming will kill us all" fanatics, or the hysterics who think one part per trillion of mercury will result in three-headed children. (And they'd have to show their three headed children, while they are in court, and prove that mercury was the cause).

I like that the government is out of my bedroom. Now if they would just get out of toilet, my shower, my refrigerator, my dishwasher, my television, my back yard, my front yard, my car, my pants, my wallet, my veins, and my mouth... then things might be cool.

Remember Huxley's "Brave New World"? All it took to keep the population contented slaves of the government was consequence-less promiscuity, soft propaganda, and Soma. Promiscuity we have. The national media provide plenty of soft propaganda with more to come from government bailouts of newspapers. I'm too married for the promiscuity benefit and the propaganda simply annoys and bores me, so where's my soma?

What's the libertarian position on Home Owners Associations?

I always thought of Soma as a drug, but in Greek it means "body", and the brain chemicals of orgasm are addicting, and illicit drug use aspires to the same high.

Thomass' comment is illuminating. The Sexual Revolution was the gummint's distribution scheme of Soma, to distract the sheeple while it sought more money, power, and control.

It didn't cost the gummint much, except the costs of vastly expanded welfare to support all the new children conceived outside of a marital context, and to support the broken families the new "freedom" created. Subsidizing poor, single mother, sexually available women really makes the gummint a big ol' pimp, and the women into prostitutes. LBJ was really eager to expand this scheme and that seems appropriate somehow...them big hat Texans like their hoors...made the country in to the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. LOL

Just Say No To Soma!

I'd say another strategy is the expansion of entertainment. When people used to "do" music, they'd inevitably end up writing songs that illustrated the problems of their lives, and that could be dangerous to the gummint. Which Side Are You On?

So if you have vast expansions of passively consumed entertainment--movies, TV, radio, music, etc.--people become passive consumers and quit raising their fists in the air.

Is "Andrew C" really that naive/disingenuous/stupid to think the bedroom is the one place where actions can be taken that have no consequences on anything else?

What happens in the "privacy" of one's bedroom can have enormous consequences. Out-of-wedlock pregnancies. STDs. The effect on our culture of separating sex and reproduction. I happen to think that the potential negative consequences and outcomes that can occur in the privacy of one's bedroom do not give the government any right to regulate the activities that occur within. But I'm not so naive or disingenuous or stupid as to claim it is a room where actions occur without consequences.

How much carbon I emit is none of your business. Whether I decline to waste resources under the fraud and fallacy of recycling is none of your G.D. business. Whether I want to drive around my town for in my SUV (yes, an SUV: take that) for no reason other than I like to drive, as long as pay for my gas: that's none of your effin' business. If I want to eat a steady diet of trans-fats, get your laws off my body.

It really is true that the definition of a liberal is the same as what used to apply to Puritan: they're terrified that someone somewhere is having fun. They think we're so sex-mad that we'll give up our economic freedom, our freedom of speech, our rights against unreasonable search and seizure, our freedom to transport ourselves as we want, our freedom to eat what we want, the freedom to avoid the petty indignities of the left-liberal cocoon: we'll give all that us for the theoretical right to f**k as we see fit.

I will be quite happy to get the government out of my wallet.
The rest would be icing on the cake.

Sad but true facts of life:

Infanticide and abortion have been features of the human species for a very long time.

Early abortion is preferable to throwing born babies on the fire.

And what are the determinants of abortion:

1. A baby from "that guy" will ruin my social status because I will never marry him. That is being fixed as the stigma of out of wedlock births decline.

2. A baby at this time will hurt my educational situation. Schools must be more motherhood, single motherhood, friendly.

3. I/my family can't afford another child. The only answer to that is more capitalism. So those of you who are anti-abortion and voted for Obama, as did 54% of professed Catholics - shame on you. It is not just his stance on the legalities of abortion (none of the governments business IMO) it is his self professed intention to wreck the economy.

And what happens when government gets total control of health care and demands abortions for babies that will engender high cost health care for the rest of their lives?

Not to mention killing off by neglect non-viable old folks.

One more thing to consider: socialist states don't reproduce.

BTW if it is a scientific fact that an embryo is a human then nature/God is the biggest abortionist of them all.

I look forward to a slew of articles: "God Aborted My Baby Without My Consent, The Bastard".

The second sexual revolution (the first happened in the 20s) was caused by an excess of females over males. Same thing that caused the first one. I just hate it when all kinds of cultural motives are applied to human nature.

Demographics

Of course birth control pills, diaphrams, and Trojans provided an ample assist.

HO Associations? Some libertarians are for them. Some are against them. Some think they should be regulated. Others prefer free choice.

I always thought of Soma as a drug, but in Greek it means "body", and the brain chemicals of orgasm are addicting, and illicit drug use aspires to the same high.

We already have laws suitable to fix the situation. Regulate and incarcerate humans as illegal drug manufacturers. Any one caught getting high from sex: twenty to life.

zywotkowitz,

May I suggest a look at what Pravda thinks of our current administration.

My wife won't let me engage in this promiscuity. Unfortunately early in our marriage I was working funny hours so we got her a .38 Special. No promiscuity for me!

That doesn't mean you can't have any. I just don't want to pay for yours. After all, nobody but me pays for my wife's bullets.

Jeebus, but you people are so full of crap. It took a while, but the public has finally seen through your BS. "Don't take away my right to emit!"...f*ck you. What a bunch of pathetic douchebags.

jeebus:

Get out much? I think you need to reflect on your anger - without breathing.

BTW, everyone who has ever been exposed to oxygen has died. I guess we should rid the world of oxygen - or just keep it in those steel bottles, and sell it to you if you've been good...

Reductio ad absurdium, meet jeebus. jeebus, bye.

M. Simon · May 24, 2009 03:33 PMHO

"Associations? Some libertarians are for them. Some are against them. Some think they should be regulated. Others prefer free choice."

Can you provide links to any that either are:
"for them"
or
"think they should be regulated"

I think they s-u-c-k and would never consent to live under one... but they're free choice. I've never heard any libertarian say any different.