How Could We Ever Expect Government Regulation to Trump Market Forces For the Good, I Write in My Invisible Sarcasm Font?

OJSTW guest blogger Stephen Colbert didn't seem to get around to my request to pitch in with an acid-tongued critique of the Senate's failure to enact climate legislation of any kind.  Regardless, I'll step up and do the duties - and in my most seething faux-pundit voice, to boot.

Ahem.  Mi mi mi mi mi.  Is this thing [my keyboard] on [plugged in and recognized by my laptop's device manager]?

Where do you get off?  Yeah!  I'm talking to you, liberals!  Has your on-average five-and-a-half years of university education taught you nothing about capitalism's infinite dominance over state-imposed legislation?  You can tax-jack cigarettes all you want, but the consumer will always make the final choice as to how much cancer he or she chooses to get!  Because you see America is about choice.  And the inaction our Congress has taken this summer has shown that their constituency wants this energy crisis.  You keep crying about a "two-degree rise" - well maybe it was two degrees too cold in here!  Ever think of that?

[Okay, the biting-parody voice doesn't suit me.  Let's now return to my own Teddy-Pendergrass-tender-parody voice.  Seamlessly, too.]

Is there an example in our recent international history where we faced a collective problem, together mounted a firm stance against it, and actually resolved said problem in a way that kept our species going and lead to the longest high-five sesh on record?  How quickly we've forgotten. 

The light....spreads out...the letters.

 Image credit: burnbarrel.org

In a month and a week - September 16 - I will be celebrating alone, in my loft studio rent-controlled apartment time-share...loft (god I'm suburban), because no one seems to recall that we have a world-recognized holiday called International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.  Its penchant for falling out of memory is probably due to its timid tagline: "Nine-Sixteen - We'll Never Forget...To Try To Remember...As Best We Can...To a Reasonable Degree".

Let's face it, our situation is comical!

The year was 1994.  PM Dawn was rocking the charts.  Four Weddings and a Funeral was revolutionizing the multiple-and-varied-festivities genre.  It was then that the United Nations General Assembly commemorated the date September 16 - when in 1987 the Montreal Protocol was signed.  I can assure you, they don't just give out holidays - this one was worth it.

The short story: it was learned in 1985 that there was a hole over Antartica - no ozone where there should have been ozone.  Ozone, of course, being the gas that naturally occurs in our atmosphere to protect us from ultraviolet radiation.  So a gaping hole would mean excess UV radiation - skin cancer, respiratory system irritation, cataracts, and ultimately accelerated climate change. 

But once recognized, the world's leaders had a series of sleepovers, shared super-secret secrets, and when all was said and done, made a totally serious pact to limit production of chlorofluorocarbons, the stuff that eats ozone like Four-Cheese Cheez-Its.  Screw hair control, they basically said.

Am I right??

And it worked.  In only a few short years, it was determined that stratospheric quantities of CFCs and other harmful gases had leveled or decreased, and the ozone was reforming.  Boo-yah.  International cooperative enforcement policies FTW.  Let's get these guys a holiday - is 9/16 available?  Sweet, stamp it [this presumes there's a form of some sort and the 'stamping' thereof makes it fully official].

Shall we close with some lessons?  This is what proverbs were made for:

1. There's more than one way to skin a cat.  (Market forces only take you so far; when society's general interest is involved, a government body can trigger positive change faster than any unregulated market.)
2. Necessity is the mother of invention.  (A threatening issue arises, and humanity's innovation steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park.  Home run.  And there was a runner on second.  Plus it was a walk-off.  Also broke up a no-hitter.)
3. Never mix your liquor.  (I'm prepping for that 9/16 celebration.  Evites to come.)