“The White House,” Politico reports,  “offered measured support for the idea of studying how to block sunlight from hitting Earth’s surface as a way to limit global warming …”

Such geoengineering solutions to “global warming” might range from injecting sulfates into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space (as happens naturally with large volcanic eruptions) to placing gigantic  “sunshades” at key points in space.

Eyebrows, naturally, rose.

While suggesting that there are only two sides to the “climate change debate” is an over-simplification, there seem to be two MAJOR sides to that debate, both opposing “solar radiation modification” on principle.

Side A: The typical “environmentalist,” who believes that human activity is responsible for an undue warming trend that will ultimately lead to catastrophic results for both humanity and other species if something isn’t done.

Side B: The typical “climate skeptic,”  who believes that the warming isn’t happening, or that the warming is a natural cycle not caused by human activity, or even that the warming is a good thing that will, for example, increase the amount of arable land in areas currently too cold for farming.

It’s pretty obvious why Side B isn’t interested in engineering solutions for reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the planet’s surface and warming it. If it’s not happening or is a good thing, why try to fix what ain’t broken (and  possibly end up  causing real damage by interfering with natural cycles)?

As for Side A, its loudest voices tend to share convictions above and beyond concern for the environment as such.  They’d be against the activities they blame for environmental damage whether those activities actually caused said damage or not. They don’t like people flying around in airplanes and driving gas-guzzlers, mega-corporations producing cheap goods in smog-belching factories, large farms producing  “monoculture” food  (as opposed to the multi-crop/multi-stock small farms of days past). They gear their environmental prescriptions toward changing an economic system they oppose (and, to be fair, most on Side B support). They don’t want  “environmental problems” solved in any way that doesn’t involve drastic deindustrialization, depopulation, and a command economy.

Then, of course, there’s me, on neither of those sides.

I suspect “anthropogenic global warming” is a thing.

I suspect it’s damaging/dangerous to humanity and other life forms.

As, for that matter, “natural cycles” can be.

I’d like to see something done about it.

But it’s not like we’ve been living in an anarchist society until just now, and suddenly need that new-fangled government invention to ride in and save the day.

We are where we are either because centuries of government got us here, or because centuries of government failed to prevent us from getting here. So why should we expect government to be either able, or inclined, to fix things?

But if it’s going to be a government thing, I’d prefer the most easily reversible/changeable government thing possible. So I guess put me down in lukewarm support of a giant, remote-control “sunshade” at Earth/Sun LaGrange Point L1.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“A Washington, D.C.-based bar discipline committee,” Politico reports, recommends that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani be disbarred for his efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election on Donald Trump’s behalf.  “By prosecuting that destructive case,”  the committee’s report states, “Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law.”

Meanwhile, another attorney associated with Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results, L. Lin Wood, surrendered his Georgia law license and went into retirement rather than face similar proceedings from that state’s bar association.

While Giuliani and Wood seem to have quite a bit to answer for, and might rightly face court-ordered sanctions for wasting judges’ time with vexatious, malicious, and frivolous litigation, the whole idea of a “license to practice law” is both evil and, historically, un-American.

There’s nothing wrong with “bar associations” as such. Practitioners of many arts, crafts, and occupations join professional organizations, which range in function from membership clubs to mutual aid societies to training and continuing education providers.

But occupational licensing, and especially government-conferred monopolies on such licensing to those professional organizations, deprive individuals of both the right to practice their chosen trades and the right to choose whichever practitioners of those trades meet their needs.

Is it unthinkable for someone who’s not a bar-association-licensed lawyer to represent someone else in court? Not at all.  In fact, New Hampshire’s circuit court rules explicitly provide for “Non-attorney Representatives.”

The US Constitution guarantees those accused of crimes the right to “the assistance of Counsel” for their defense. It says nothing to the effect that said “Counsel” must be a member of a particular club, or have sought, prior to the case, the government’s permission to “practice law.”

Based on their records, I wouldn’t likely choose Giuliani or Wood to represent me in court if my neck was on the line. But it’s my neck, and I should be free to hire the person I deem best qualified to save that neck, no matter what the bar association has to say on the matter.

Similarly, knowing my own limitations, I wouldn’t consider hanging out my shingle as a “lawyer” and offering my services to represent others before a court in matters civil or criminal. But if I was silly enough to do that, and if you were silly enough to take me up on it, the decision should be up to us, not to an association neither of us either belong or have agreed to accept the supervision of. Again, it would be your neck and my reputation — not theirs — on the line.

The theory of law as such is that we’re responsible for our actions. Why should we be robbed of our agency when it comes to defending those actions?

As you may have gathered, I am not an attorney and this column is not intended to constitute legal advice. I’m not sure I legally HAVE to say that, but given the legal profession’s stranglehold on such things, better safe than sorry, right?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“A violent drug cartel is suspected of leaving a severed human leg found hanging from a pedestrian bridge Wednesday in Toluca, just west of Mexico City,” CBS News reports. “[T]he trunk of the body was left on the street below, near the city’s center, along with handwritten signs signed by the Familia Michoacana cartel.”

Familia Michoacana, which apparently specializes in the production and distribution of methamphetamine, “has become known for carrying out ruthless, bloody ambushes of police in Mexico State and local residents in Guerrero” to protect its lucrative business.

Meanwhile, over the last several months, opportunistic US politicians have used increasing US drug overdose numbers linked to increasing use of fentanyl as an excuse to get an “invade Mexico to fight the cartels” bandwagon rolling.

Given the history of stupid US foreign policy ideas, it seems like it should be incredibly hard to come up with one that out-stupids the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined, but with not so much as a “hold my beer” warning, these idiots seem to have managed it.

If any of those past fiascoes could be said to have had any saving graces at all, the main one was that they were conducted far, far away, versus enemies who lacked much ability to bring the war home to America.

Mexico, as you’re no doubt aware,  shares a 2,000-mile border with the US. Millions of people cross that border every year, with or without permission from or even detection by the US government. And the major cartels, as part of their drug distribution operations, already maintain a permanent presence in the US.

Any “war on the cartels” would be fought at least partly on US soil, and it would be fought by the kind of people who don’t quail from things like leaving severed human legs hanging from bridges to send their messages. Do we really want more of that kind of thing here? I have to ask, because sending US troops barging into Mexico is how we get things like that here.

The US government has been fighting — and losing — a “war on drugs” for most of a century now.

That war created the cartels.

That war empowers the cartels.

Expanding that war would unleash the cartels’ most vicious behaviors on US soil, while reducing unsafe drug consumption little if at all.

Legalizing drugs, on the other hand, would devastate the cartels’ profit and loss statements, put production and distribution of substances Americans obviously want into the hands of reputable/peaceable businesses, and reduce overdose deaths and other negative side effects of drug use by bringing standardized dosage and quality to American consumers.

Whose side are the “invade Mexico” demagogues on? Not yours.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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