Blair isn't the only politician hoping to gain or increase power by exploiting climate change. In the US John McCain and Joe Lieberman, perennial losers for the presidential nomination of their their respective parties, have hitched their wagons to this issue.

"We cannot afford to ignore an issue that is not static," said committee chairman John McCain (R-Arizona). "We need to take action that extends well beyond eloquent speeches and includes meaningful actions such as real reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases."

McCain, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), has already sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act (SB139), which would limit greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States.

It failed to pass in 2003, but McCain and Lieberman are pushing for another vote in 2004.

The problem is that reducing emissions of GHGs is NOT a meaningful action and advocating it IS just an opportunity for speechifying. By the IPCC's own estimates a Kyoto like program would have almost no effect on climate over the next 100 years.

This isn't a political problem. The brain dead mantra of authoritarians to do something reveals the bankruptcy of their whole world view. They truly believe that all they have to do is get enough supporters, enough mindless demonstrators, with cell phones, to mob the capitol, raise their fists and sing folk songs. There is a complete disconnect between what can be done and what they think should be done. They live in an authoritarian political fantasy world that has one approach for every real or imagined problem: - force. They truly think they can force reality to match their superstitious fantasies.

Sensible people with sincere concern for the environment need to speak out about the harm to the environment being done by those who embrace political approaches to technological problems. They are a large part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Their crude minded addiction to the use of force is wasteful and destructive.

Perhaps it will help to compare their behavior and views to those engaged in biological fields such as agriculture. Some industrial farmers take a similar brute force approach to their concerns. They don't cooperate with natural systems, they simplify and dominate them. The results of their efforts are a success using selected narrowly defined measures, but a failure when the system as a whole is included in evaluation, and is increasingly less rewarding over time even with increasingly large amounts of force employed.

Better farmers, whether using industrial techniques or not, have always been more aware and alert, recognizing the paths of lesser resistance and greater reward. They cooperate with systems rather than dominating them. They have the breadth and depth of vision to think a few steps ahead and accept small losses in the near term to save large expenditure and reap large rewards in future. They use their limited resources more effectively.

There is nothing we can do at present to reduce GHG emissions on a world wide basis, the only basis that matters. Population is still growing and 5 of 6 humans lives in the developing world, poised to emit GHGs in quantities that will dwarf those of the rich world. The need is for improved methods that are much more effective while also being much more affordable so that the majority of humanity can adopt them.

We can't hole up safe in a little rich world life boat and beat off the developing world, still in the water and drowning, with the oars. We have to let them into the lifeboat too, even at the risk of capsizing and killing us all. This isn't an act of charity, a virtuous act that we ought to do, it is a necessity. If we don't cooperate and work with the developing world they will simply overwhelm us. There is no decision to be made. The political wankers with their fussy little treaties and programs are whistling past the graveyard, exploiting the fears of their constituencies for the short term profits they can reap, distracting us from the real problems and effective approaches.

McCain got one thing right: "We cannot afford to ignore an issue that is not static". But he doesn't know what he said, what that sentence means, and so advocates actions as if the issue was static. It's not just that GHGs are accumulating, it is that the rate of emission and accumulation is poised to rise asymptotically as the developing world comes online at long last. It wouldn't help even if the developed world ceased to emit any GHGs at all. McCain type proposals to make token reductions are empty gestures, the type of thing politicians do instead of real problem solving.

This threat cannot be fought directly, does not yield to brute force. It's amorphous, oozing around and over any barriers that can be erected, and corrosive, dissolving battlements and bunkers. It must be finessed rather than confronted. We need better technologies. The only useful thing we can do is to fund research and development and hope that the scientists and engineers solve the twin problems of effectiveness and affordability before too much damage happens. Then we can go on to phase two of responsible world managemnet and repair the damge done.