Premier Gordon Campbell's ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions were in a sense drawn out of thin air.

Rather than any serious analysis of what it would take to get there, the goal of a 33 per cent reduction from 2007 levels by 2020 was based on his determination of what we need to achieve if we want to play an effective role in limiting the potentially harmful effects of climate change.

We got our first look at the changes required with the carbon tax and other measures introduced earlier this year.

Now the B.C. Climate Action Team has issued its recommendations to the provincial government that give a much clearer view of the magnitude of change that will be needed, along with interim targets that will have to be met by 2012 and 2016 to stay on track for the 33-per-cent reduction by 2020 reduction.

What is immediately clear is that the carbon tax now causing all the fuss at the gas pump is just the beginning. The panel recommends changes that will have much greater impact over time in the form of higher costs for any goods or services using energy and/or more provincial regulation of housing, transportation, community design and industry.

Ms. Nancy Pelosi and Mr. Harry Reid, Democratic Party, Washington, D.C.,

Dear Party Leaders,

As a proud member of the Republican Attack Machine and a charter member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I want to personally thank you for giving the Republican Party new life in the 2008 presidential campaign and congressional races.

You accomplished this by refusing to drill for new oil when a majority of the American people are in favor of it, and that majority is growing. Demonstrating the same brilliant leadership that has catapulted Congress to a 12 percent approval rating, you have not even allowed the issue to come to a vote. This makes one wonder whether your party is really democratic. Instead, you decided to go on a 35-day vacation without taking action to produce more energy and without passing 11 of the 12 appropriation bills.

I can’t thank you enough for handing the GOP a great issue on a silver platter. Before this happened, Republicans were dead in the water and John McCain’s presidential campaign was going nowhere. Aside from somebody stealing Obama’s teleprompter, I can’t think of anything that could have been more detrimental to the Democratic Party or more beneficial to the Republicans.

Dr David Stockwell, a leading expert on ecological niche modeling, checked the CSIRO’s figures and assumptions behind its warning of more drought thanks to global warming, and found in fact:

… that the results show no significant increase in drought due to greenhouse warming in almost all regions of Australia

Stockwell’s conclusions were hampered by the CSIRO’s refusal to hand over the data it had used to make its terrifying predictions. Eventually the CSIRO caved in, and Stockwell has since crunched its numbers and found the CSIRO’s models are in fact worthless, not even being able to “predict” past climate: 

This Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi again promised to use all her power to prevent the House from voting on any measure that would allow new oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. A majority of Americans support new oil exploration in these regions. Pelosi has tried to prevent the House from even debating whether or not to increase domestic energy production, but this past Friday a small group of conservatives took over the House floor after Democrats voted to go on a five-week paid vacation.

After the vote to adjourn, 48 conservatives simply refused to leave, continuing to speak from the well of the House floor. The lights were turned off, the microphones were shut off, and the C-SPAN cameras were ordered to go dark, but the remaining members stayed to do the people’s business. Reporters were asked to leave the speaker’s lobby but the remaining conservatives escorted the press one by one to a press gallery directly above it. When Capitol Police closed the tourist galleries, the House members invited the visitors down to the chamber floor. A boy in the visitors gallery asked, “When do you think you’re going to get this vote?” Republican Policy Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) declared, “This is the People’s House. This is not Pelosi’s Politburo.”

Yesterday in Florida, Mr. Lower-the-Oceans-Heal-the-Planet Obama distanced himself from Ms. Save-the-Planet Pelosi and other drill-dodging Dems. In fact, he called the speaker rigid.

The Palm Beach Post reports:

"[W]e have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage — I don't want to be so rigid that we can't get something done," Obama said.

Ouch. Botox jokes are a little below the belt, aren't they, Barack? But seriously . . .

Hell -- otherwise known as Congress -- has officially frozen over. For the first time since the 1950s, Members will skip town today for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill. Then again, Democrats appear ready to sacrifice their whole agenda, even spending, rather than allow new domestic energy production.

Or even a mere debate about energy. The Democratic leadership is stonewalling any measure that might possibly relax the Congressional ban on offshore drilling. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that they would lose if a vote ever came to the floor, and they're desperate to suppress an insurrection among those Democrats who are pragmatic about one of the top economic issues. Behind this whatever-it-takes obstructionism is an ideological commitment to high energy prices. The rulers of the Democratic Party want prices to keep rising.

A good gauge of the radicalism of their energy blockade is the lowest common denominator of this energy fight: The effort to blame "speculators" for $4 gas was promoted by both Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as nearly everybody else in Washington. Sure enough, the House voted 276-151 on Wednesday for a bill that would have driven oil futures trading overseas.