Ross Douthat also questions the wisdom John Holdren, Obama's new science advisor.

Given that Holdren is something of a doomsday believer it is not surprising that Obama would have picked him.

Holdren bought into Paul Erlich's "Population Bomb," which predicted mass starvation and upheaval, due to the growing population of the world. His predictions were as wrong as wrong could be, but he still has his followers. Holdren is just one of them.

Obama apparently still buys Ehrlich's theory too.

He has also bought into the Al Gore "Earth In The Balance" approach to "global warming." We need a "wrenching transformation of society," Gore wrote and Obama either believes that, or is cynically using it as a pretext for his Trillion Dollar Baby of government works programs.

Current economic woes can be made worse by government interventions into markets and private business. FDR's political hubris and usurpation of power made the depression last longer.

Despite his inexperience, Obama has shown the same hubris, the same faith in government to "fix" problems and the same inability to understand that often forever busy and activist governments make things worse, not better.


Holdren is just an advisor so he doesn't have to submit to senate confirmation, where he would be approved by anyway by Democrats anyway. But at least that would allow Republicans to ask him a few embarrassing questions.

Never mind.

So far, Obama's cabinet picks have been for the most part, within the political mainstream. That his biggest controversy so far has been his selection of anti-gay marriage preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration works to Obama's political advantage.

The hissy fit being thrown by obnoxious gay activists suggests to middle of the road Americans that Obama is doing something right.

But gay marriage isn't nearly the threat to America that environmental lunacy is. The cost of Al Gore's green "transformation" of our society truly would be "wrenching."

The assertion that "green jobs" would pay for themselves, blah, blah, blah, is bunk. It's nothing but a con by green activists, who have created their own faith-based science to impose their beliefs on the world.

Give me gay-marriage over a world controlled by these zealots, any day.

UPDATE: In the meantime, Czech president Vaclav Klaus is one politician who continues to stand up to the onslaught of the green political/scientific community.