Global Warming in Perspective

Global warming is in the news again, with a British report suggesting "failure to act swiftly on global warming will have a cataclysmic effect on the global enconomy ... during the current generation if changes are not made soon."

Meanwhile, a book I'm reading now (America Alone, by Mark Steyn) points out that while global warming may or may not be a big problem in our lifetime, declining birthrates around the world among everyone except Muslims is already a huge problem.
"Much of what we call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries."

Steyn explains: "...if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90 percent of the population or only 60 percent, or 50, or 45 percent."

He adds "...it ought to be the Left's issue. ... When the mullahs take over, ...It's the feminists and gays who'll have a tougher time."

According to Steyn, among Western nations, only the United States is reproducing itself, and even in the U.S., that's happening only in "Red" states.

One of my few regrets in life is that we didn't have more kids. It would have been better to have had more, if only so more in the next generation might be aware of our values.

Steyn makes one other excellent point: "All dominant powers are hated--Britain was, and Rome--but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it."

"That's one reason why its disparagers have embraced environmentalism. If Washington were a conventional great power, the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Gabon or some such. But because it's so obviously not that kind of power the world has had to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation state but to the entire planet, if not the entire galaxy."