Wednesday roundup

Steven Hayward column at the WSJ entitled "Climate Change Has Run Its Course":

Climate change is over. No, I’m not saying the climate will not change in the future, or that human influence on the climate is negligible. I mean simply that climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers. 

Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. You can date the arc of climate change as a policy priority from 1988, when highly publicized congressional hearings first elevated the issue, to 2018. President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident.

A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ” Another is Sarah Myhre’s address at the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in which she proclaimed that climate change cannot fully be addressed without also grappling with the misogyny and social injustice that have perpetuated the problem for decades. 

The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out.

We're at the stage of discussing the SCOTUS decision regarding Masterpiece Cake Shop at which the focus is on how narrow or not narrow the ruling was. I think Ben Shapiro gets it right in his Townhall column entitled "Be Polite When You Violate Others' Rights."

. . . the court ruled that the baker didn't have to bake the cake because the members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission were unduly mean. You see, the commission pilloried the man's religious viewpoint rather than giving it a respectful hearing; it compared his viewpoint to pro-slavery and pro-Holocaust viewpoints. This was extreme and nasty. Thus, Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded: "The commission's hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment's guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. ... The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts."

[snip]

Of course, the Supreme Court likely ruled on narrow grounds in order to achieve a 7-2 majority including liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer. But the ruling bodes ill for the future: It doesn't protect religious Americans, nor does it protect freedom of speech.

In reality, the founders would have been aghast at this issue ever rising to the level of the judiciary. Freedom of speech, and, by extension, freedom of association, were designed to allow private individuals to live their lives as they see fit, free of the burden of an overreaching government. Freedom of religion was to be guaranteed by a small government unconcerned with the day-to-day matters of business. Free markets were considered enough incentive to prevent mass discrimination in public accommodations. 

Here at LITD, we have an entire category of posts called "Corporate Acquiescence to the Left." Starbucks has appeared in it, and for good reason. Under Howard Schultz's leadership, it has amply burnished its woke bona fides. But Schultz is not completely ate up. He has his head on straight about government spending and goofy leftist notions about health care and employment:

Without naming names, Schultz said in a "Squawk Box" interview: "It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left. I say to myself, 'How are we going to pay for these things,' in terms of things like single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job. I don't think that's realistic."

He's aware that, even if these were good ideas, which everyone who isn't ate up knows they are not, there is no money to pay for them:

"I think the greatest threat domestically to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future generations," Schultz said. "The only way we're going to get out of that is we've got to grow the economy, in my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements."

Good piece at City Journal by Milton Ezrati entitled "Why China Can't Afford A Trade War."  Spoiler alert: China's central-planning premise makes for huge oversupplies of the stuff it makes.

Jay Nordlinger at NRO on the captain of the all-girl robotics team from Afghanistan.

Andrew Malcolm at Hot Air on how post-Americans are reeling from information overload:

Apparently, many of us feel that way under the sensory assault of today’s flash-mob news cycles, overwhelmed by the daily flood of news.

You’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the overwhelming majority of conscientious news consumers who sense so many stories flashing by their eyes at such speed. It’s an overwhelming sensory overload. As with those Japanese phone poles, the eyes can’t track the stories. And the mind is confounded.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds almost seven-in-ten Americans (68 percent) ​are ​feel​ing​ worn out by the flood of news coming at them these days. Only three-in-ten like the flood.

The key, it seems to me, is to have a strong foundation that allows you to ask yourself, what's really going on here? What are the underlying tectonics of these rapid-fire developments?