Between December 2006 and April 2007, I was sent to the UK three times by my Big Evil Company employer. The first trip was a stop over on my way to Algeria, while the latter two trips were made to backfill for my counterpart while he took time off for knee surgery and for paternity leave. I spent a total of nine weeks over in the Sceptered Isles.
While I was on the other side of the pond, it was impossible not to notice the amount of environmental hysteria that was being broadcast in the news, whether watching the BBC or reading the newspapers. Hardly a day went by where it seemed that there wasn't some reference to the Kyoto Treaty or that the Labour government was working towards some commitment to cutting greenhouse gases and telling the public that it must have shared sacrifices and belt tightening, all in the name of the Greater Good.
Well, lo and behold, here were are in July 2008 and we now hear of the news that in a recent by-election, the Labour Party lost a stronghold Parliamentary seat in Glascow. For those of you who are not quite up to snuff on your British politics, the world - very broadly - breaks down like this. The Labour Party has long held a very strong grip on Scotland and the north, while the Conservatives do better in southern England. To reiterate, this is a generalization, but as a broad picture statement, it does hold true. Hence, the fact that the Labour Party lost a long time seat to the Scottish National Party is quite a shocker.
As things stand now, the Labour Party majority in Westminster is now down to about 60. When Tony Blair first ascended to power in 1997, Labour had 418 seats. Now Labour has under 350 out of some 646 seats. It is in this context that the loss of a seat in Labour stronghold does not bode well for the Party come 2010, which is when the next general election must be contested. However, it may well be that there may need to be a coalition government formed in order to maintain a majority in the next general election.
But circling back to Labour's woes, much of the political commentary has been centering on the idea that people are starting to get fed up with paying high taxes on fossil fuels, all in the name of environmentalism. One adviser to the Labour government, Richard Parry Jones, warns that if Labour does not ditch its heavy taxes on automobiles, then UK voters are going to throw them out at the next election.
This is a fate that has happened to the Socialists in France and in Germany, where Sarkozy's rightists outright defeated the Socialists and Angela Merkel came to power via a grand coalition. As as this article points out:
In recent years, almost all of Europe's social democratic parties have lost in national elections. The collapse of support for Gordon Brown and his policies reveals a general decline of Europe's social democracy as a whole.
There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left's political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.
In short, Britain's Labour Party has discarded its "progressive" principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster.
...
Eighteen months ago, Labour's David Miliband proposed the introduction of carbon "credit cards" that would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. He suggested the allocation of an annual allowance for basic needs such as travel, energy or food. Two days after Labour's disastrous defeat in the local elections, the whole scheme was hastily abandoned.
Motorists in the UK are paying the highest fuel taxes in Europe, an average of almost £900 annually. In the name of climate change mitigation, the government has progressively increased fuel, road and car taxes. It has burdened companies with a so-called Climate Change Levy and introduced an emissions trading scheme -- costly policies that have had damaging effects on British competitiveness, energy prices and living standards. As a direct result, a record number of people, particularly Britain's poorest, oldest and most vulnerable, are increasingly falling on hard times. As many as five million households, more than 20% of the UK's population, are today living in "fuel poverty."
Progressives in America have, in many ways, followed a similar pattern. It used to be in the early years of the 20th century that progressivism meant that there was a belief in scientific and technological progress that would make our world a better place. This belief would be coupled with some kind of redistributive and social safety type measures to uplift the poor and catch those who had fallen through the cracks. Instead, it seems that Progressivism now substantially means that technological advancements are not to be pursued because of fears or objections to science and technology. Instead, we are told that we have to cut back, all in the name of saving the planet from some imagined environmental catastrophies, damned the cost.
All the Wizard has to say is that Progressives had better take a look at what has happened across the water and pause, lest they find that voters decide eventually to drive them off of political agenda.
Wizard
On June 17, 2008, National Public Radio picked up on a property rights battle, previously covered by the Wall Street Journal, involving a friend of the Wizard named Brooks Porter. Brooks, along with his wife Merry, own a beach front property in Surfside Texas, near Freeport, which they have held for 25 years.
As the NPR story relates, the Porters purchased the house as a rental and occasional weekend beach house. The problem is that over the past 25 years, the Gulf of Mexico has eroded the local beach heads dozens of feet, sweeping grasses and dunes with it. The Porters, along with some other locals, now have housing that sits just yards away from the shoreline. That in turn puts them on the beach which is in violation of the Texas Open Beaches Act, which states that the beach is effectively a park.
Brooks told me a while back that the problem is that the beach erosion is not entirely a natural phenomenon, due to acts from the Army Corps of Engineers and other entities. He and the wife intend to stay put.
As the NPR story correctly concludes, this is a big looming problem. To quote NPR:
How this case gets resolved could set a precedent far beyond Texas. What if rising seas threaten one day to swamp skyscrapers in Manhattan or entire towns in Florida? Whose responsibility will it be to move buildings out of the way? Who will take the hit for the lost property value?
Mr. and Mrs. Porter have fought this battle for 10 years now. Stay tuned.
Sigh...
Wizard.
This past week, several members of Houston City Council voted to tag revisions to Chapter 19 of the City of Houston's ordinances, which deal with flooding and development in floodplains and floodways. The story came out that several members of council were given short notice on what those changes would be before being asked to vote on them.
The Wizard has been counseling the Floodway Coalition in this property rights battle. I've spoken to some influential people about the matter, and was responsible for giving them some ideas which they have put into practice. Recently, I learned that Council members have seen those signs. I will leave it at that.
And so it was that in the past six weeks, an amazing turn around has come to pass where Council members have in fact come to officially revisit the issue. I have helped go over the revised Chapter 19 ordinances. The Wizard finds himself both puzzled as to why the Mayor is wanting to cement the ordinance revisions quickly, and strongly believing that a vote on this ordinance should be delayed, if for just a short time. The whole matter would not be so bad if Council were only revisiting Chapter 19-43 (the floodway ordinance itself), but the problem is that parts throughout the entire ordinance have been revised, which makes going over the volume of material and making sense of it all a vastly more complicated task. I've spent some 10-15 hours going over the ordinance and there are probably 2-3 pages of questions that I have come up with, much less what other interested parties will spot.
Without going into much detail, there is some language that probably does not need to be in the ordinance. Because of the volume of revisions, I have some doubts that busy, term limited Council members may not fully catch all of the revisions of what is now on offer. The ordinance could still have some unforeseen consequences, which is what the initial changes voted on in 2006 caused, and which are at the root of what started the controversy to begin with. Council members really should listen to what the people who have been the most active and have become far and away going the most educated citizens in this city over the past two years have to say on this issue. To Council's credit, they have stated that they are waiting for a response and the Wizard helped FCOH thrash through the revised ordinance to help put together that response.
I should say here though that the experience of having gone over the proposed revision of the ordinance has given the Wizard a new appreciation of how much effort it takes to get some hopefully decent legislation passed into law.
Credit must be given to Council and the Mayor, which did the right thing and took out the most destructive aspects of the current ordinance which were at the heart of the fight, including the 50 percent substantial damage clause, the no build provision on vacant land in the floodway, and some other onerous regulatory burdens that were laid on improved land with currently existing structures.
What is good is that we were given some time to look over the ordinance and come up with recommendations on changes. The Floodway Coalition probably will not get everything they want, but it seems clear to the Wizard that Mayor White finally realized that the issue was not going to go away and wants to settle the issue - equitably for all parties involved - once and for all.
Wizard