Romney as governor was advised by global warming guru

This is from an Investor’s Business Daily editorial (via NRO):

The GOP front-runner for 2012 sought advice on global warming and carbon emissions from the president’s current science czar—an advocate of de-developing America and population control.

Politics is said to make strange bedfellows, but no coupling in our view is more bizarre than when John Holdren, now President Obama’s assistant for science and technology, once advised GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on environmental policy.

Holdren’s bizarre views are best suited for an adviser to someone like, say, Pol Pot.

He views humanity as a plague on the planet and the Industrial Revolution as a tragic mistake. The fewer people, he believes, the better, and he’s not shy about the ways he would use to reduce their number.

Why Gov. Romney, a reasonable person, would pick such a man to advise him on anything is beyond us.

On Jan. 1, 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants, something the Obama administration is trying to do to all states through the Environmental Protection Agency’s draconian job-killing regulations and mandates.

A Dec. 7, 2005 memo from the governor’s office announcing the new policy listed among the “environmental and policy experts” providing input to the policy one “John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at Harvard University.”

This is the same person who wrote that a “massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States.”

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Alexis Zarkov writes:

Hot Air has a more complete discussion of Romney and Holdren, including a 2005 memo on new carbon dioxide regulations. Thus Romney gave Massachusetts the forerunner for Obamacare, and the recent EPA regulations on carbon dioxide. Romney solicited input from Holdren and Billy Pizer, both environmental extremists. I remember Holdren from the 1970s—he’s a crackpot. In 1971 he co-authored (with Paul Ehrlich) the notorious Impact of Population Growth. I have to ask: why Romney would solicit input from such an extremist? Why not someone like Richard Muller from UC Berkeley who supports the global warming idea, but remains a rational, fair and intelligent scientist who does not demonize the global warming skeptics? Either Romney was careless in the extreme, or essentially agrees with the environmental agenda. Some Romney supporters are trying to whitewash Holdren by saying Impact of Population Growth and other Holdren articles represent his thinking from 40 years ago as if the mere passage of time means he has necessarily has repudiated his positions. However as Hot Air points out, Holdren is still a crackpot—see his 2007 Redistribution as a cure for American exceptionalism.

In the absence of a good explanation from Romney on Holdren, I will not vote for him if he gets the nomination. I would be voting for an Obama lite. The usual chorus of phony conservatives would then go into the support mode as they did with Bush. Isn’t a bogus conservative worse than a correctly labeled liberal?

LA replies:

Let us suppose for the sake of discussion that President Romney will be identical to President Obama in all respects, except that Romney will effectively kill Obamacare and Obama won’t. Between those two alternatives, wouldn’t it be preferable to have Romney as president?

Alexis Zarkov replies:

Should Romney become president, I’m not confident he can or will kill Obamacare. He can’t repeal Obamacare by himself. He needs Congress to pass a bill to do that. As sure as day follows night, the Democrats in the Senate will filibuster the repeal bill. Thus the Republicans would need to hold at least 60 seats in the Senate. Most likely more because some Republican senators might vote against cloture.

On the other hand, the issue of Obamacare could become moot if the Supreme Court holds the individual mandate unconstitutional. At least one lower court has struck down whole bill because the mandate is not severable, and the Supreme court might do that as well. As chief executive, Romney might be able to kill Obamacare by lack of enforcement, but don’t count on that. Should the Supreme Court uphold Obamacare then Romney will have an excuse to do nothing, and Obamacare will take effect as scheduled.

How can we trust a man who keeps reversing and misrepresenting himself? Romney keeps telling us that Obamcare is good policy for each and every state individually, but not for the nation as a whole. He has to take this position otherwise he would have to repudiate his past, which he won’t do. I don’t think his argument that Obamacare is not good for the nation as a whole is based on the constitutionality of the mandate. For all these reasons and many others, I can’t see voting for Romney.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 16, 2011 09:42 AM | Send