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In a guest commentary in the Herald, Snohomish County Councilman Dave Somers is telling us that because "vehicle emissions comprise half of the state's greenhouse gases that fuel global warming," that therefore we should "devise ways that allow us to live prosperously while driving less."

Somers' main point is that we should reduce "car-dependent sprawl," that is, that we should all live in cities so we can reduce resource consumption.

The message is clear: your quality of life doesn't matter nearly as much as slavish belief in unsubstantiated claims about anthropogenic global warming.

We shouldn't try to come up with solutions to problems that will improve our quality of life; instead, we should solve problems by reducing our quality of life. Make no mistake: the point here is opposition to all change, except change that reverses our positive direction. Forward is backward. Up is down. Progress is regress.

Somers wants HB 2797 to pass, an ignorantly written bill that proffers the false claim that "the effects of global warming are becoming evident in Washington, adversely affecting its residents, economy, and environment."

That's a claim that even the UN's IPCC dismisses, as it has not been able to link events or effects to global warming: in their words, "[i]t is likely [i.e., greater than 66% probability] that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems." They continue: "Limitations and gaps prevent more complete attribution of the causes of observed system responses to anthropogenic warming. First, the available analyses are limited in the number of systems and locations considered. Second, natural temperature variability is larger at the regional than the global scale, thus affecting identification of changes due to external forcing."

In other words, the IPCC is basically saying: "what we see in the evironment is mostly consistent with the theory of man-made-CO2-caused global warming, but we don't have nearly enough data, or understanding, to come to a serious conclusion."

How can the legislature be certain of something that our world's top group of pro-global warming scientists say cannot be certain? Simple: truth does not matter to the regressives. It's the ends, not the means. If the argument works, it is right, whether it is true or not.

This is Washington State. No one here wants to destroy our beautiful forests, and everyone wants to decrease pollution. But we also want to live well, not just "prosperously." I can't enjoy the forest if I live in the city, both because I won't see it very much, and because even when I do, I'll be so completely stressed and depressed by my living conditions that it will provide little solace.

I don't like cars much. I work at home in large part because I hate being on the road. But it is necessary, because I'll be damned if I am going to live in, or near, a city. You think us gun-toting rural individualistic citizens are scary now? Wait until we all go crazy from having to live in an urban area.

That's not meant as a threat, of course, but just a reminder that the colonies went to war over significantly less than the right to own and improve land. And they weren't driven mad by living in a duplex or townhouse.

If you like living in the city, great. If that is for you, then that is for you. The point is not that you shouldn't live in the city, but that each of us makes our own choices, and the government doesn't make those choices for us. That's what liberty means. It's astonishing to me that people out there still insist that it's Republicans that want to control people's lives, when the Democrats prove every day with bills like this that they want to completely control our lives right down to what we are allowed to buy, drive, eat, and live in.

Maybe it won't be so bad; the Democrats will probably just force us to take antidepressants to address our "anti-social" behavior. And I wish that sounded a lot more like hyperbole than it does.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.