Sorry, guys, but I have to keep my reply short since I'm at work. In fact, I may not have much time home tonight either so please don't mistake my brevity for a snide response! Really, I'm just trying to understand the mind-set here !
So, the problem you guys are having with this isn't so much that global warming may not in fact be occurring (it is, you can't argue with melting glaciers!) or whether or not it's man-made, the problem is the government stealing our rights? Correct?
Well, they are, no doubt BUT given that, would you have prefered that the EPA didn't step in & police-up the big businesses that were dumping toxic crapola in our streams decades ago? Your preference would have been that some ethically-minded executive at Company A would have mentioned to the "evil" CEO that perhaps said CEO needs to stop dumping chrome waste into River "A"? When dollars are involved that would never have happened.
Sometimes it's necessary for the big, bad government to step up to the plate & correct someone. The examples are near endless though I will grant that some of them go so overboard as to make me want to toss my cookies in the nearest wastebasket (helmet laws & seat belt laws are great examples! If I'm driving through my wee little town going all of 20 miles a hour behind Gramm's in her Buick do I need to be wearing a seat belt!? Ah, no!).
Sorry, Popeye, Y2K is a bad example. Remember, I'm in the IT field & was quite active in assuring my customers (I was in the field back then) that nothing was going to happen. It's only through the sheer effort of countless thousands of engineers & programmers & technicians, etc. that there weren't any Y2K issues! Been there, did that! We worked our collective asses off to square everything away.
By the way Pop, I'm 54, hardly a kid & lived through all the same decades of oddities you & Franc have lived through. I do worry about my kids & what kind of world they'll inherit. But, I worry more about the economics of the future (& especially China) than I do about the enviroment. I don't worry about pumping oil out of the Alaskan wilderness, someplace you can only fly into to see (I say pump it dry!) & offshore drilling is necessary & needed. I do worry about billions of tons of plastic floating in the oceans & what happens to the food chain when minute particles are absorbed in the fish we eat.
There has to be a middle ground between those who fear EVERYTHING & those who don't care. Somewhere, over a beer or two (or 3 or 4) I'd be willing to bet, if you & I (or Franc, my man) were elected co-presidents we'd find a compromise!
I've got to end this here.....surprised I took this much time (waaaay past lunchtime ). Back to getting my butt-kicked by a virtualized server.