QOTD

Though linked a few days ago, here's another quote from an editorial in Tuesday's Investor's Business Daily (links added):

Environmentalists celebrated a victory on Monday when the White House acknowledged that the Environmental Protection Agency had transmitted its proposed finding that global warming is a public health threat. The U.S. Supreme Court directed the EPA two years ago to decide that question, ruling that if it found warming to be a threat, it must under the law regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The EPA's dire finding echoes last month's testimony by Howard Franklin, who directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health, before a Senate Committee. Franklin said the CDC "considers climate change a serious public health concern" that could accelerate illnesses and deaths from heat waves, air pollution, and food- and water-borne diseases.

But warming may actually save lives. Warmer weather means longer growing seasons for both food and the raw materials for biofuels. Ironically, the push to biofuels has caused hunger and food riots around the world as crops are diverted and food prices rise. The environment is harmed due to increased biofuel cultivation and agricultural runoff.

A recent BBC report noted that 20,000 deaths are linked to the cold each year in the U.K. and that those deaths fell 3% a year from 1971 through 2003. Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied and written extensively about global warming, believes as many as 40,000 American lives would be spared each year.