On Point Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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“It’s not surprising to see Aspen’s City Council studying what it can do to mitigate the energy waste of large homes with huge energy appetites. The goal should not be to dictate the size of someone’s home (though we may eventually come to that) but to encourage energy conservation . . . .”
— Gail Schoettler,
The Denver Post, Sept. 9

Don’t you just love that phrase, “though we may eventually come to that”? When someone says “it may come to that” you can be sure it will come to that, or in fact already has come to that — and that the speaker couldn’t be happier with the news, either.

Sure enough, Boulder County is pondering even now a draft version of regulations to limit the size of homes, and has been grappling with the idea for months. And you can bet many other communities are poised to follow the same path in coming years.

Indeed, global warming — the prod for Boulder’s proposed rules and Aspen’s initiative — is an all-purpose excuse offering eager officials the justification to regulate just about anything: the size and style of homes, what we drive, if we drive, and even such relatively trivial matters as labeling the number of miles food travels to its sales point (a goal of some environmentalists, especially in Europe).

But why stop there? Or perhaps more to the point, why begin there? Those who favor cracking down on profligate energy consumers seem to conveniently overlook equally fat targets that positively cry out for regulation — at least under the same bossy logic.

If we are going to coercively reshape people’s lifestyles — not my preference, I trust it’s clear — why not impose a personal mileage quota on international travel, especially if it’s at public expense?

Now, this might be a matter of some delicacy for Schoettler, the former Colorado lieutenant governor whose carbon footprint has received an impressive boost from her many forays abroad. Earlier this year, in fact, auditors at the University of Colorado identified no fewer than six overseas trips she took with her husband, the former head of CU-Denver’s Institute for International Business, in which the university paid some of her expenses, in the auditors’ view.

Schoettler maintains no university funds were involved. Let’s hope so, given that, according to The Denver Post, “auditors noted that 12 days of the trip [to India] consisted of activities such as safaris, elephant rides and tours.”

Isn’t it high time that those most worried about the “frightening threat” of global warming, to quote Schoettler again, rein in their own fuel-guzzling ways before they urge reform on others?

And no, riding an elephant does not count as a carbon offset against two flights across the Pacific.

Inputs matter

Readers who disputed a recent column of mine skeptical of the movement to “buy local” groceries consider it self-evident that the farther afield we forage for food, the more energy we consume.

It simply isn’t true. Another reader called my grateful attention to a New York Times column last month that makes my point in devastating detail.

As James McWilliams recounts, Lincoln University scientists “found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.”

What matters is not only distance, it seems, but inputs such as “water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays . . . disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.”

Now admit it: Those grapes from Chile are looking more succulent already.

Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

READER COMMENTS

Get the hypocrits Vince! - you go man.

Left wing "progressive" socialists are always looking at ways to control the masses to force them to live according to the model that the elite have determined is correct . Some call it socialism, some call it communism. The hoax called "man caused global warming" is simply the latest excuse to control us. To save the earth, the socialists need to move to china and India where real changes are occuring and there is plenty of low hanging fruit to pick!

If people want to buy local, and producers then identify how far food travels, or if stores respond by pointing out their food is local... isn't that the MARKET (all praise THE MARKET) functioning...? I thought Vince "Free market Uber Alles" Carroll loved the market... Or only when it behaves in a manner that justifies HIS choices...

Achtung, achtung. Gail seems to be of the "one square per wipe" persuasion, it won't be long before control-Nazis like Gail tell you how to wipe your butt. Or have they already done that?

Amusing, these control Nazis want to control what goes in, how to cook it and how it goes out. And now Gail tells you what size bathroom is appropriate for you!

What's wrong wih the duly elected members of the Boulder county government enacting laws consistent whiththeir community's ethos? If they don't like it they can vote them out.

Why can't Vince come up with his own columns and instead always be crying about what someone else wrote?

I know why...

I have noticed that Carroll takes a lot of shots at the Denver Post. I have never, NEVER, seen anyone at the Post writing about Carroll. Makes me wonder if he lost a job interview or something at the Post. But then again not a lot of people read his columns.

Why is it the uneducated right always run home to mama and revert to the lowest common denominator by preaching about the spectors of Nazism and Socialism?

You wonder why 72% of the country doesn't take you seriously anymore.

Jay - You ARE a socialist. In the mean time read the below. As always, I await your rebuttal (feel free to consult with your many peer-reviewed anti-corporate redistributionist buddies): (heh)

Global ocean temperatures drop to coldest in 6 1/2 years

The temperature of the ocean has cooled 0.2 degrees C in the past few of years, and is now only 0.1 degrees C warmer than it was throughout much of 1944. This data set had been showing a general warming trend since the late 1970s, (as well as a warming trend from the 1910s through the mid 1940s) with the warmest time being recorded in the El Nino year of 1998.

Despite temperatures peaking in 1998, it's been reasonable to describe the temperature trend as continuing, since 1998 at the time was a flukishly hot spell. Since 1998, the "normal" trend line approached what had been flukishly warm.

The reversal to cooler temperatures is not yet long or strong enough to discredit global warming completely... by a long shot. However, global warming alarmists had been warning that global warming had dramatically accelerated in the past couple decades; although ocean temperatures had risen a mere degree over the last century, the alarmists had warned of an increasing rate of warming, or even an increasing rate of an increasing rate of warming, suggesting the next century could see temperatures increase by several degrees.

Although this data is still consistent with a long, gradual trend of increasing ocean temperatures, it is not consistent with any sudden accelerations in warming trends.

My source is a data table at the NOAA, which could not be linked to directly, since it is available over file transfer protocol (FTP), not hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). This is the link: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat It may be accessed from the bottom of the page I linked to in the source field, under "The Monthly Global Ocean Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)." My source is purely the data; the web page from which I derived it has not been updated to reflect any updated data.

Jay writes: "Why is it the uneducated right always run home to mama and revert to the lowest common denominator by preaching about the spectors of Nazism and Socialism?"

Wow, that's rich coming from an "educated" liberal (my assumption would be a philosophy major which explains why he has so much extra time to comment on this site) who misspells "specter". Or, maybe he was referring to Phil Spector?

lol...slouch are you still beating the Denier drum on global warming?

Shall we start debunking myths again?

What shall we tackle first this time...you pick.

Don't cut and paste the opinions of others...just have the intellectual honesty to tell me what reasons you have for choosing not to believe nearly every single peer-reviewed, field-appropriate scientist on the planet in regards to global warming.

As I've said before...if you'll stop running long enough to have an adult conversation on the issue, I'll be happy to address your "concerns" one by one and provide you with credible, peer-reviewed data and conclusions that paint a very real, very broad scientific consensus for global warming that is party being contributed to by the actions of human beings.

Please don't make me chase you.

Be an adult.

Speaking of acting like a child...Neville...I make more money before March than you do all year...now...if you have something relevant to add to the debate...if you're just here to be that guy...move along.

Once again, Jay avoids the debate. How sad. Also, Jay feels the need to bring forth his superiority - such is the province of small minds.

I found the following interesting, from the Daily Report, and I know Jay hasn't read it because it's not from The Post or NY Times. Thus, I seek to eddify him:

Though Ratcliffe [Pres. of the Southern Company] prefers that “something” to be voluntary emissions reductions rather than federally imposed ones, he says that if and when government regulations come, they need to provide an off-ramp to let U.S. businesses out of complying with emissions limits in the event that other nations don’t similarly restrict their industries. The point: letting U.S. companies maintain their competitive advantage.

“We may get out here and find that not only is the rest of the world ignoring this, but also we may find that we’re wrong, and that CO2 concentrations are not the causative factor here,” he says, gazing out at the brilliant blue sky beyond the windows of his 15th floor office at the company’s headquarters on Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard. “Maybe it’s something else.” http://www.dailyreportonline.com/Editorial/News/new_singleEdit.asp?individual_SQL=9%2F17%2F2007%4016618%5FPublic%5F%2Ehtm

I am not the one running from this debate like a scared child Slouch.

Which myth shall we tackle today?

Since all you'll do is cut and paste the opinions of others instead of giving me your own...I'll just start spouting data again and putting you in your place.

This would be so much easier if you'd just have a conversation like an adult.

Posted by VC on September 13, 2007 09:54 AM

Vince just wants to show the GW Nazis that they don't know everything and they are hypocrites trying to tell the rest of us how to live while they buy their carbon credits with money they stole from the tax paying wealth producing rest of us.

lol...and Hogar....is GW real and are humans contributing to it?

It would be funny, if it wouldn't be so painful and costly, that Jay continuously slips and slides from the hard realities that what we do here in Colorado with renewables will have absolutely no discernible impact on "global warming". You see, misguided people like Jay use global warming to ram through their feel-good platform of renewables which, in turn, assists in hobbling the economic engine of the United States. Where do you think jobs and economic growth will go in the future as electrictiy greatly increases in price in the U.S.? Why, of course, to those environmentally conscious countries of Inida, China, Mexico, Brazil, etc. Just like unions have ratcheted up labor rates and caused jobs to drift to India and elsewhere.

It's really simple economics. But then again they don't teach this in Womens' Study programs. So sad.

Slouch...at least you're no longer that GW is real or that humans are contributing to it...now you're just saying we shouldn't do anything about it.

brilliant.

I have been away from Colorado for WAY too long (4 years), now settled north of Atlanta. The papers here are The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Journal/Constitution. One is liberal. The other is LIBERAL. So it was a pleasure today when I clicked on RMN to catch up on my favorite, maybe ,champs; The Rockies. And then I researched your Opinion page and was so relieved to read your columns and get a more balanced view of news and events. And just to be fair, I read your co-columnists, also. I'll be back.

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