One of the disappointments of increasing interconnection is the realization that so many of those in positions of influence are so meagerly endowed.

The House bill contains a provision, inserted in the middle of the night before Friday’s vote, which requires the president, starting in 2020, to impose a “border adjustment” — or tariff — on certain goods from countries that do not act to limit their global warming emissions.

The bottom line is that Waxman-Markey, as it currently stands, would in fact be counterproductive, once the international scale of the problem is taken into account. That we learn about this provision only now is startling enough.

I write this all as someone who a) favors a much higher price for fossil fuels, b) thinks that if micro-nutrients are a good idea they are not an alternative to addressing climate change; we could do both with positive expected long-run return, c) thinks that many people on the "Right" oppose W-M mostly because its passage would raise the status of environmentalists and others on the "Left" (but they will not admit as much), and d) thinks that our collective American incompetence in limiting emissions does not eliminate our moral obligation to address the problem.

What does "address" mean? Follow the links and search till you're blue and all you will find is hand wringing, empty rhetoric and promises that are never kept. All you will find is political exploitation, grifters seeking rents, and bureaucrats nodding yes on cue, no on cue, and obfuscating when confronted.

Climate change is not a political problem, it's a technological problem. Morality is irrelevant. The mindless assumption that something can be done to fix it if only we have the will to do so - shamed if need be by moral suasion - is either very stupid or very devious.

Both, it often seems, which is a good demonstration of why politics is inadequate to the problem. Those in the game lack the intellectual power to understand the issues much less make useful responses. The more political power they have the worse things get since they do the wrong things and displace some of the right things that would otherwise have happened. They are the drunken posers who suck the air out of the room and make intelligent conversation more difficult.