Current Events Watch

The Rocky Mountain News (Colo.) unveiled Denver’s new green plan aka the Climate Action Plan in a news feature and shortly thereafter, the Drudge Report popped up a link. Then, the paper says, Mayor John Hickenlooper’s phones started ringing. Read about the plan and you’ll wonder if the mayor recently took a ride on a UFO.

People around the country started calling the plan a “crackpot scheme.�

Here are a few highlights courtesy of the News:

The plan includes several controversial ideas, including making residents who use large amounts of electricity and natural gas pay higher utility fees, boosting insurance rates for people who drive long distances and mandating that homes be energy efficient before they can be sold.

The mayor told the paper, “According to most polls, 70 percent of the people in Colorado recognize there is global warming,” he said.

Politicians love those polls. On a daily basis, media outlets cite polls for everything from how often married people have sex to Americans’ top ten priorities.

What intrigues me, other than a near-complete distrust of all polls, is who takes the time to answer these things?

If a pollster calls my house, I politely (most of the time) decline.

Here’s why. The way most polls are worded requires an absolute answer. Check out online polls. There’s almost always no wiggle room. As a wordsmith, I could design a poll that would produce any outcome I wanted, or come close to it.

I even wonder is there some sort of psychology at play in people who respond to polls. Is there a type of personality that enjoys this sort of probing confessional? Do such people see the world in terms of absolutes? I especially find irony in polls conducted in foreign countries where there is little to no freedom of the press. Do you think people always tell the truth in such matters?

Denver’s climate plan is a perfect example of the encroachment of socialist thinking in America. Socialism is defined by a popular encyclopedia as “a system of social organization in which property and the distribution of income are subject to social control rather than individual determination or market forces.�

I think each of us can do a lot more to be good stewards of our land and our planet. We can waste less, we can consume less and we can definitely use less plastics.

But we should work on doing these things as a matter of principle, not because some liberal politician quotes a poll so he can get your insurance increased because you have to commute to go to work everyday. We can start by doing something about limiting immigration to stabilize our ever-increasing population, limiting development of special natural areas to protect habitat and forested areas that complement our oxygen supply, and choosing wisely when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. Those are just a few options.

Somebody should remind the good mayor Denver is still a U.S. city. And maybe get him a therapist just in case he’s gone through some sort of mind-altering alien abduction.

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