WARNING!! Your underwear purchase may kill polar bears.!

In a post the other day about loblolly pines I half jokingly commented on the idea of CO2 labeling on lumber:

As a carpenter I often consider the CO2 content in my lumber as I build, I assume soon Home Depot will be required to label CO2 content on their lumber so as to take advantage of some government subsidy.

Of course I should have known that both my jest and the scope of my idea was too narrow for the current paranoia that grips academia when it comes to carbon dioxide. I give you an article today from the UPI

Carbon labels for consumer products urged

NASHVILLE, March 29 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say a global carbon-labeling scheme for consumer products should be initiated as a sorely needed measure to mitigate climate change.

Writing this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, Michael Vandenbergh of Vanderbilt University and Thomas Dietz of Michigan State University say such a scheme could influence consumers to choose low-carbon products.

It could also improve the energy efficiency of firms, which would be concerned about brand reputation even if consumers only demonstrate limited willingness to pay for lower-carbon goods, they say.

While several carbon label efforts exist, no one scheme that accurately informs consumers and can be adopted cross-culturally and across products is in place to provide clear and effective labels.

Although labels by themselves will not solve the climate problem, the researchers say, the size of the consumer footprint suggests small changes in consumer purchasing behavior could bring significant emissions reductions.

Even more frightening is this is being seriously presented by a Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy (a very disturbing title in my opinion) and an an even more disturbingly credentialed Professor of Law , Tarkington Chair in Teaching Excellence Director, Environmental Law Program Director, Climate Change Research Network. One shudders to think of what these two gentleman brainwash teach our children, or how they can possibly use it in their future lives.

Besides the absolute worthlessness of the proposal, what are the chances that either of these two esteemed academics have a clue as to the terrible regulatory and economic burden this would place on global industry. Not to mention the government bureaucracies which would need to be established to create, monitor and enforce it. All of which would be passed onto the consumer and taxpayers.

How narrow and and closed minded has this entire exercise in elitist academic gobbledygook thinking gone when obviously intelligent people would consider such destructive policies as somehow warranted. This is what happens when people whose sole purpose in life is to sit around and think of theoretical schemes and have virtually no clue about the real world in which they live.


Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.