Real and Phony Threats
by Paul M. Weyrich

Environmentalists have spent the better part of three decades decrying global warming. Well, I've got some news to deliver, they should add a new concern that could be just as deadly to our country as the purported calamity that has so preoccupied their minds

There is an island located in the Canaries called La Palma that has a volcano, Cumbre Viega. If the volcano erupts, our East Coast would be placed in grave, mortal danger even though we are 4,000 miles away.

The volcano's eruption in 1949 caused a huge mass of La Palma to lose its mooring, sliding further into the sea. Once the volcano erupts again, the odds are, at least according to some scientific experts, that the island's entire western portion will fall quickly into the sea.

That would trigger a massive tsunami which would take anywhere from nine to twelve hours to reach our country's East Coast, submerging the eastern coasts of Canada and the United States underwater.

The volcano has erupted twice in this century, 1949 and 1971 -- the last time evidently to no effect. Before that, it erupted in 1712. Even those scientists who are raising the doomsday calls about this volcano admit that they cannot tell us with any certainty when this volcano will erupt -- whether it is next year or two centuries from now, although one, Bill McGuire, Director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London, suggests it would be a prudent move for greater international monitoring of La Palma and the volcano and that it could be accomplished at a fairly inexpensive cost.

This is an interesting news story and one that -- if widely agreed upon by the scientific community -- obviously should be of concern to our nation's policymakers, but do we need to have a massive relocation of East Coast residents to prepare for a calamity that may occur tomorrow or two centuries from now?

Are you ready to vacate your home to move to the Rocky Mountains?

I think not. But tell that to the Chicken Littles who have been raising the alarm about the specter of drastic climatic changes, even to the point of using the opening of the recent movie "The Day After Tomorrow" to advance their case. This well-financed green lobby is so concerned about global warming to the point where they would have our country surrender its sovereignty by ratifying an international treaty that would force drastic changes on our way of life.

The existence of global warming as advanced by the environmentalists is in itself debatable. Recently, Iain Murray, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was asked what would be a wise replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that seeks to place significant restrictions on our country's ability to emit greenhouse gases. Murray stated, "James Hansen of NASA now suggests that we'll only be facing a 1 degree Fahrenheit rise by 2050 even if nothing is done to restrict greenhouse gases. So I'm not sure we need anything to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Perhaps we might need to do something in 50 years time, but it's likely that the world will be a very different place then and it's possible technology will have solved the problem for us without needing to put restrictions on energy use.

Most Christians who are true believers take predictions about global climactic change, even a massive tsunami, in stride. We are less concerned about making these draconian changes to prepare for speculative natural threats, particularly something such as global warming in which the environmental lobby wants us to uproot our way of life at great expense, to prepare for something that is highly debatable or, if what Professor McGuire says is accurate, may not matter much anyway.

Instead, we are more concerned about how we live our lives now and to be prepared to be called to account to God -- no matter what happens. Sure, I want our country to have a missile defense system; there is a real possibility that a country or terrorist group could launch a missile against a U.S. city in the near future. Not 50 years from now. One year from now. That's to protect our way of life. Any doubters of the coming reality of this threat need only to consult Jane's Defense Weekly. A missile defense system is a sensible investment that can actually prevent a disaster from happening in the first place.

There are real threats and there are speculative threats. As for me, count me as someone who wants to be prepared for real threats, not that which is conjured by the green lobby.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation