If the Democrats liked health care, they will love cap and trade.An expensive and divisive attempt to fix a problem that, if we trust the polls, most Americans don’t think exists, the cap and trade bill that is next on the Democratic agenda has all the hallmarks of a historic train wreck.  Right now, the […]

The credibility of the IPCC, the reputation and the job security of its chairman, the consensus among key (and rather skeptical) countries that global warming is man made and needs to be fixed:  it’s all melting away, to judge from the latest news from New Delhi.  The only thing that isn’t melting is the Himalayan […]

The London Times continues to follow the glaciergate story–and it keeps getting worse.The latest disclosure: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s (formerly) prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (known as the IPCC), may have raised millions of dollars for his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim by the IPCC […]

Matthew Yglesias really, really doesn’t like me.  He’s come after me again on his blog, attacking me for being a graduate of Groton and Yale and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and yet presuming to know what populism is.  Please, Mr. Yglesias; I may not quite measure up to your severe standards […]

W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden was one of the great Anglo-American poets of the twentieth century.  Like T.S. Eliot, he was an Anglican who became more so with age; otherwise they went in different directions.  Eliot started out in Missouri and ended up domiciled in Britain, becoming a British subject in 1927 at the age of […]

The list of trends that will be driving world history during the next decade looks pretty daunting; it’s even more so if you reflect that by my logic, the 2020s will be even more challenging than the 2010s and the 2030s will be more challenging still.As I listed the trends that are likely to shape […]

The single best description of the changes in the world system I’ve ever heard came from Henry Kissinger.  When assessing the political importance of recent events, he said sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall that “the unification of Germany is more important than the consolidation of the European Union.  The fall of the […]

Over at The Arena this morning they are asking whether the Democrats understand the meaning of their defeat in the Massachusetts senate race.  My thoughts:Do the Democrats ‘get it,’ you ask?It’s a big tent party; some do and some don’t.Somebody very cruel once said that Hubert Humphrey is a man who is twenty years ahead […]

The accelerating pace of world history poses a single, common challenge to all the world’s governments, cultures, religions, businesses, civil society groups and individuals.  But if the challenge is the same, the capacity to respond is profoundly unequal.  Some governments, some people, some cultures, some businesses and even some religions and civilizations are better placed […]

The BBC reports that the Vice Chairman of the IPCC has just admitted the obvious: the IPCC’s terrifying prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 is wrong.And not just a little bit wrong.  Totally, catastrophically, eye-poppingly, inexcusably and blatantly wrong.Readers of this blog knew this was coming; the consequences have yet to unravel.So […]