Re: Climate Change, Should Government Just Chill Out?
Stanford University physicist and Nobel Prize Winner Robert Laughlin suggests that the best thing governments can do about climate change is to simply chill out. In an article titled "What The Earth Knows" appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of The American Scholar, Prof. Laughlin says 
“Common sense tells us that damaging a thing as old as [Earth] is somewhat easier to imagine than it is to accomplish – like invading Russia.” He notes “The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we gaze into the future, not because it’s unimportant but because it’s beyond our power to control.” He recommends instead directing our focus and our money toward more traditional and much less glamorous conservation efforts - habitat preservation, for example.
The policy implications of Laughlin's argument are substantial and obvious. If Laughlin is right about the science - and his reasoning is grounded in very basic and well-accepted geology -then the entire basis for EPA's claim of right to regulate CO2 emissions falls away. At a minimum, Laughlin's argument suggests that those in Congress and EPA who rely on anthropogenic climate change as the justification for “remaking” our economy and imposing strict government regulation over consumption, production and transportation via cap and trade allowances, CO2 permits, and so forth, really ought to take a step back and slow down.
