Mr. Sptizer declares that the Chamber of Commerce "has been wrong on virtually every major public-policy issue of the past decade".

Funny, but environmental activists have been wrong for the past FOUR decades yet Mr. Spitzer appears to feel they aren't to be questioned (in his view, this is apparently one of the Chamber's biggest sins).

Back in 1970, environmentalists said we'd all be wearing gas masks outdoors due to air pollution by 1980. The 1968 book, The Population Bomb, predicted that "hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death" during the 1970s "in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Both these predictions weren't just wrong, but spectacularly so.

A good discussion of these ideas may be found here: <link>

Either we care about accuracy and the historical or we don't. But let's not judge the Chamber by standards we refuse to apply to others.

Donna Laframboise

NOconsensus.org

Indeed environmentalists have waged a pretty dishonest fight (which is par for the course in Washington).

Spend a lot of time pointing out legitimately bad facts, and then illegitimately derive hugely negative worst case scenarios as the natural outcomes of these facts.

We need to be more sensible and forward looking in our treatment of the environment, but if we did that honestly I am not sure we would actually need to change our behavior that much. The planet is not falling apart around us. It is disappointing when even the scientists advance their careers making exciting if unwarranted predictions based off sound facts.

Sea level rise going to flood 10% of some major city, well lets just mark that city down as a total loss and claim there will be a need to relocate all its inhabitants...

Katrina remains the key example of why environmentalists need to paint such scary pictures. No one in leadership and certainly not the average voter pays attention to the environment until we have a catastrophe or a disaster.

If I tell you the river is getting pollutted you ignore it until its on fire on CNN.

If I tell you the safety measures arent very good you do nothing until Bohpal India has thousands dead in a chemical leak or 3 Mile Island is working on the China Syndrome.

Its the same in historic context too....when Hitler invaded Poland he was just looking for a little elbow room.......

Funny but when its convenient to the right we can look at unlikely worst case scenarios (like Iraqs WMD) but when its about the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat you'll wait until someones dead.

Remember that for the most part environmental policy needs to be shaped with the future in mind thus we need to predict with a lot of open variables. But just because things changed and kept the worst from happening doesnt make all environmental claims wrong or even ill conceived.

Look at the predictions Bush used for investing social security in Wall Street just a couple years ago....had he succeeded social security would have tanked with Wall Street....its a good thing we saw the danger in trusting Bush on that one (still looking for the WMD that has cost 4000 plus US troops).

Prognostication is a poor science. But if we dont try all we have is reactions to the disasters we didnt try to stop.

You're probably right that we dodged one small bullet that Bush didn't succeed with the Stock Market investment of SS funds. But you know for the first time in 35 years ..the Social Security coffers are so low that there will be no increase in cost of living increase ,annually.

As usual the government is sticking it to the retired 'little people' and bailing out the big banks.

And the corporations continue to shamelssly give themselves millions upon millions in personal CEO bonuses when they retire.

Bush's idea was a desperate one and he knew SS was in trouble, but he never realized or predicted the collapse of The Housing Market that happened..just prior to the election.