Cuckoo In Cancun

Environmentalism: Still think those who continue to push the idea of man-made climate change are well-grounded and rational? Think again.

Consider Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She opened the U.N's global warming conference last week with a prayer to Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of the moon.

This mythological supreme being of fertility is supposed to be good for sending rain for crops. Maybe that's the sort of blessing Figueres had in mind when, from Cancun's — no joke — Moon Palace, she called Ixchel "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving" and hoped delegates would be inspired by her.

And did we mention that the multitasking Ixchel is also some kind of jaguar? Given her many roles, is it really reasonable to ask her to also save the planet from global warming?

But then if she did that, the alarmists wouldn't have to take junkets to balmy resorts in December to save the world from mankind.

One might think the climate change conference silliness would have a limit. But one would be wrong.

A week into the proceedings, the Sacramento Bee published a column by Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Her topic? Negotiations at the global climate meeting, she believes, "should be an opportunity for empowering women."

Moving on, we find a professor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who wants to use the summit to fight obesity. Fossil fuel energy, says Ian Roberts, is causing the world to get hotter, and fatter. How? As the British Telegraph reports, Roberts believes the use of cars and other fossil-fuel-using machines has made us all fatter.

Maybe Roberts should have taken his fight against obesity to summit delegates, as well. They threw themselves a party on the first night that was bursting with food, adult beverages and pinatas.

Did any give even a fleeting thought as to how their outsized carbon footprints would affect their waistlines?

Did a single one look at the virtually unlimited bounty before them and recognize the hypocrisy of promoting rationing in the developed world to cut carbon emissions?

Lest you think there's been no serious work done, Bolivia is using the summit to bring up — again — its idea for an International Tribunal for Climate Justice to prosecute "ecocide" — defined as a crime against an ecosystem "to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished."

"Supporters of a new ecocide law," the British Guardian reported in April, "believe it could be used to prosecute" the "climate deniers" who "distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming."

The hinges that are supposed to anchor these people to reality are quite obviously missing. There's more clear thinking at the typical UFO convention, tin hats and all, than at any global warming conference — including this year's big party on the beach.