Could Congress Fight Global Warming By . . . Invalidating Local Prohibitions of Clotheslines?
As the Times’ Kathleen Hughes points out today, some 60 million Americans are governed by laws that prohibit them from hanging a clothesline and line drying their laundry. What does this have to do with global warming? As she explains:
There were more than 88 million dryers in the country in 2005, the latest count, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. If all Americans line-dried for just half a year, it would save 3.3% of the country’s total residential output of carbon dioxide, experts say.
But what is the law preventing such activism? Thousands of homeowners’ associations have covenants doing so. Yes, that most American of traditions, the clothesline, is often outlawed by that most suburban of traditions—the private agreement governing the aesthetics of the subdivision. (There is a real irony here I will resist commenting upon.) Individuals are not without options. But it got me thinking (especially given how my friends are always telling me I’m nuts for writing off federal authority when it comes to solving complicated social problems): would Congress have the constitutional power to invalidate all these covenants?
It would not be unprecedented: Section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibited the enforcement of any covenant or ordinance banning satellite dishes of less than a meter in diameter. See, e.g., Daly v. River Oaks Place Council, 59 S.W.3d 416 (Tex. App. 2001). Although . . . maybe it would be a taking under the Court’s mangled jurisprudence of constitutional property.
There were more than 88 million dryers in the country in 2005, the latest count, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. If all Americans line-dried for just half a year, it would save 3.3% of the country’s total residential output of carbon dioxide, experts say.
But what is the law preventing such activism? Thousands of homeowners’ associations have covenants doing so. Yes, that most American of traditions, the clothesline, is often outlawed by that most suburban of traditions—the private agreement governing the aesthetics of the subdivision. (There is a real irony here I will resist commenting upon.) Individuals are not without options. But it got me thinking (especially given how my friends are always telling me I’m nuts for writing off federal authority when it comes to solving complicated social problems): would Congress have the constitutional power to invalidate all these covenants?
It would not be unprecedented: Section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibited the enforcement of any covenant or ordinance banning satellite dishes of less than a meter in diameter. See, e.g., Daly v. River Oaks Place Council, 59 S.W.3d 416 (Tex. App. 2001). Although . . . maybe it would be a taking under the Court’s mangled jurisprudence of constitutional property.
posted by Jamison Colburn @ 11:51 AM
3 Comments:
At 3:40 PM,
Geo Karras said…
UNDERSTANDING THE MANIPULATION OF GLOBAL WARMING
Even for those in agreement with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, or for those who merely doubt its human causation, it still remains important to be wary of the certain attempt by financial interests to manipulate or subjugate the issue on behalf of an unstated private agenda. Recently a group of individuals, publishing at GeoKarras.Org have begun to document and reveal the interests, personnel, and finances associated with the Laurie David effort, the film, narrated by Al Gore: “An Inconvenient Truth”.
In various notes, presentations, and media introductions, they show plainly that Laurie David’s environmental activism is waged on behalf of private equity groups with direct financial interests in the regulation of CO2; the stated goal of Laurie David and the Al Gore film she produced. Moreover the consortium associated with the Global Warming Media effort states clearly to its members that the stakes are gigantic, in their words, “a big chunk of 17 trillion dollars”, and they clearly see the employment of CO2 regulation as a means to accelerate the emerging global body politic of globalization. This is exactly what one would expect, the manipulation and subjugation of the idea on behalf of private interests.
In brief, the mechanism of manipulation documented at GeoKarras.Org, reveal Laurie David and her Hollywood cohorts to be associated with fake grass roots efforts funded behind the scenes by members of a European Oil Consortium, or “Transnational Cartel”; to include Anglo-Dutch giants BP and Shell, and their allied multinationals within the United States.
The transnational cartel has also created a parallel policy propaganda organization, “The Alliance for Climate Protection”, which functions as a subsidiary of the larger foreign propaganda front, “The Council on Foreign Relations”, or “CFR”. The Alliance in accounting and functional terms is also subsidiary of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, also a senior institutional associate of the CFR, and NRDC: another fake grass roots environmental front to which Laurie David serves as director.
The lead promoter of “policy” choices on behalf of the cartel is David G. Victor, and his Stanford Research Center on Climate Change. This individual serves simultaneously as lead director of the Global Warming Propaganda activity of the cartel at the CFR, while also pretending to serve as an independent academic researcher at Stanford-his center at Stanford receives subsidies in the area of Climate Change from both BP and Exxon, as well as the Heinz [Teresa Heinz Kerry) foundation.
So there exists a pyramid like structure of fronts and “cut-away” organizations created to disseminate the message of the cartel on this issue-Global regulation of CO2 production, and the trading of CO2 emission credits, so called “Carbon Trading”. Not incidentally both BP and Shell have made extensive preparations and investments in carbon trading.
The sincerity of the effort as an environmental policy is put further into doubt when the outcome of the Kyoto mechanisms; that is taxation primarily of North Americans, and restrictions on North American industry, results in huge indirect subsidies to the exempt industries of China and India, to which the Cartel is closely aligned. This is the subjugation of Global Warming on behalf of a private agenda: de-industrialization of the United States, propulsion of Indo-China into a new industrial and military super-power, restrictions on the economic emergence of developing nations, i.e. Globalization. As these methods of manipulation are not restricted to the area of Global Warming, it is important for all to consider the case study of Laurie David-NRDC, and the cartel, at WWW.GEOKARRAS.ORG
At 10:57 PM,
egarber said…
would Congress have the constitutional power to invalidate all these covenants?
Help me out here. If we're talking about Congress, the power would have to extend through the commerce clause, no? And there, it would seem that Lopez and Morrison might lean in the negative.
If keeping guns away from a school doesn't have a "nexus" with commerce, it's hard to imagine that keeping clotheslines available in golf course communities would.
But I suppose the
Raich precedent might cut the other way -- though if any conceivable effect on commerce is the test (I guess here it would be that clotheslines impact the market for dryers), then the commerce clause would seem to be a plenary power over anything. There's something wacky about that.
Of course, I might be missing something.
At 8:17 AM,
jamisoncolburn said…
I think the Raich and Morrison/Lopez split would be about as egarber puts it--two different wings of the Court, two different modes of analysis. On the other hand, I would love to be defending the Congress that found "commerce" as we know it is on the brink of taking its biggest hit ever if the US doesn't get religion soon on GHGs.
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