This week, politics are tumultuous. Facing election, Prime Minister Rudd of Australia punted on “cap and tax” until 2013 showing that to him political survival is more important and the greatest moral imperative facing the world. New Zealand’s Environmental Trading Scheme (cap and tax) is facing opposition with the business community up in arms. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is moving away from any binding international agreements on cap and tax.

The British government is in the middle of an election campaign and thus far the parties are all ignoring environmental schemes and their costs to the citizens. And at this moment, the Democrats in the US Senate are schizophrenic. Should they pass a sweeping immigration law giving citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants in hopes of picking up additional voters? Or should they address the cap and tax bill disguised under any other name? It appears that politicians are beginning to realize that the citizens, “the great unwashed,” are becoming aware that the science is shoddy and the schemes are extremely costly.

ClimateGate continues but the great deference shown to those involved by the investigating organizations may be over. Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has demanded that the University of Virginia produce a swath of documents relating to Michael Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann was at UVA between 1999 and 2005. To most, it may not be illegal to manipulate data thereby falsify science. However to receive Virginia taxpayer money by doing so may be a violation of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayer Act. The caterwauling by the academic community should be most interesting.

In the interim, the US EPA continues its relentless march to control the US economy by demanding control of carbon dioxide emissions. In the name of ocean acidification, EPA is insisting on regulations to further control the run-off of water from rain. The logic is incredible. According to EPA, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase carbon dioxide in the oceans – thus lower the pH. Yet, EPA claims that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes warming. As shown by the Vostok ice cores, warming results in increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, from ocean outgassing – warm water cannot hold as much dissolved gas as cold water. To EPA power and control take precedence over logical consistency.

A tour of the southwestern part of California’s San Joaquin Valley, once some of the most productive farmland in the world, reveals the triumph of Federal policy by such agencies. Last year the Federal government cut off 90 percent of the irrigation water to about 500,000 acres, about the size of Rhode Island. This killed tens of thousands of acres of crops and thousands of acres of orchards. Unemployment in thriving farming communities went up to 40%. For thousands of years, a hallmark of civilizations has been irrigating arid lands to make them bountiful. These agencies are engaged in a campaign against civilization and the American citizen.

The leaking oil well and the resulting oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico are terrible news for those who have been supporting offshore drilling. No doubt, extremists will seize upon this unfortunate event to try to prevent drilling everywhere.