New website: Climate Debate Daily

Arts & Letters Daily has started a new website (as of January 2008) devoted to the global warming debate:  Climate Debate Daily.  That’s right, it’s not called “The Global Warming Consensus.”  Sorry folks, that’s another website!

I am very pleased to see a website devoted to give-and-take on the issue.  My own position is that of a skeptic, but I’m also in the “So what?” camp.  As in:  so what if global warming were caused by human activity?  Because if there is global warming, and if it is caused by human activity, and if the only solution is to de-industrialize the Western nations and prevent the undeveloped nations from industrializing, the cure is worse than the disease.

To put this in a feminist libertarian perspective, women, while still disadvantaged in many respects, generally enjoy the highest status in developed nations such as the United States.  In lesser-developed nations, women do the dirty work like hauling water and inhaling wood smoke fumes, and–oh yeah!–they’re treated like chattel or worse!  In other words, comfortable First Worlders with their shiny Priuses and Macbooks who denounce global warming are effectively telling the rest of the world to stop developing, thereby condemning literally billions of women to second-class (or last-class) status.

I am not categorically stating that West Is Best, but when I peruse statistics* on female genital mutilation, mass child prostitution and dowry killings, a case for the more developed nations becomes apparent, at least to me.

*On a daily basis, usually over breakfast.