Collapse of financial institutions is just part of a disturbing failure of leadership in the business segment of society. It is part of a wider crisis of leadership at all levels of society, but is the most immediate and potentially dangerous right now. The business world pushed by government has capitulated to greed and deception and has put people in financial jeopardy. Sadly, all this plays to a conundrum identified by David Lillenthal, Big business is basic to the very life of this country; and yet many--perhaps most--Americans have a deep-seated fear and an emotional repugnance to it. Here is monumental contradiction.

The financial debacle is serious but ultimately small change compared to the cost of unnecessary programs to deal with non-existent global warming, natural climate change and many other so-called environmental problems. 

As Louise Gray explained in The Daily Telegraph, 17 September 2008 about the problems facing Britain, ”We are looking at something that looks like a slow motion train crash,” Fells said, accusing the government of vacillating over climate change and energy policy, starving the power industry of direction and reducing investment to a minimum.

Why Do Most Climate Skeptics Accept ‘The Consensus’ that Humans are the Principal Source of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels?

WE have all heard about the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.   Along with most people, I have accepted that this is mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels. After-all, this is the accepted view, even for most so-called climate change skeptics.

But there is evidence indicating that most of the increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could be from natural sources.

So, asks Alan Siddons from Holden, Massachusetts, why do most climate skeptics tacitly and even explicitly accept that man is the culprit?  

Let’s consider some of the available evidence.

According to Free Press staff writer Candace Page, "Vermont should be a winner" in the upcoming Sept. 25 "cap and trade" auction by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative ("Cap and trade," Sept. 7). "RGGI has been important in so many ways as a model" says Judi Greenwold of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (funded by the same people who brought you Enron).

The question is, important to whom? The list of people who will benefit from carbon trading is impressive. Ten Northeastern states have adopted mandatory caps on CO2 emissions by power plants under their jurisdiction.

Adopted by the misguided legislatures of these states, "We don't know if the program is actually going to cause reductions in carbon," but we do know it'll cost money, the speculators will take their percentage, and that the costs will be passed to us. "We, the People" pay when new "financial products" are speculated on.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have been fighting over everything from lipstick to the financial meltdown to the future of Social Security. But when it comes to fighting climate change, the two campaigns seem to agree more than they disagree.

In the latest battle of campaign surrogates, McCain and Obama spokesmen contrasted the campaigns’ approaches to fighting global warming. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and instigator of the recent “Blackberry flap,” spoke for the McCain camp; Yale environmental professor Dan Esty for the Obama campaign. The panel discussion took place at the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Global Forum held in New York today; the climate-change panel was moderated by the WSJ’s own Alan Murray.

Nancy Pelosi has changed her mind. She’ll allow a vote on drilling for America’s offshore oil potential after all—sort of.

To paraphrase the old saying, however, “A woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion still.” Pelosi’s first reaction to the public’s drilling demands was, “We’ve got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it.”

Mrs. Pelosi represents the most liberal city in America, and she wants the U.S. to cut its greenhouse emissions in half by 2050. She’s backing cap-and-trade legislation that would literally make gas, oil and coal too expensive to burn.

The Population Research Institute raises concern over an Australian video game for children, designed to teach them about environmental responsibility.

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, says the game called Planet Slayer is funded by the Australian government. "It's a global warming game that basically tells children that they should die at a young age because 'they've used up their fair share of the planet,'" Mosher explains.

Youngsters playing the game called "Greenhouse Calculator" on the Planet Slayer Web site see on the screen the figure of a pig representing them.