The end of civilisation?

In Scotland anyway, according to my colleague Neil Craig:

I previously quoted an SF writer on how nations decivilise & it seems appropriate. Scotland's parliament has unanimously voted for barbarism.

Neil's writing about the recent the unanimous vote at Holyrood:

SCOTLAND yesterday made itself a world leader in the battle against global warming, as MSPs gave unanimous backing to a bill enshrining a 42% cut in carbon emissions by the year 2020.

It means that Scotland will be lauded as the most forward-looking nation in the world in the run-up to the Copenhagen environmental summit later this year. But behind the rhetoric at Holyrood it was accepted that there were many caveats to the commitment.

Behind the subscription wall, the Scotsman's Bill Jamieson is in fine form, calling our new law "complete twaddle".

Bill points out that the man-made global warming theory is certainly not universally accepted by scientists. I'm not a scientist but I've been around long enough to recognise a probable scam when I see one. It's no coincidence, as the Marxists would say, that most of the scientists calling for more environmental laws owe their livings to the state.

But the really scary thing is that unanimous vote. There wasn't a single MSP willing to oppose the fashionable consensus even though that consensus is so last year and is under rapidly growing attack.

You know there's going to be a libertarian point here, don't you? And here it is.

There is a good reason why market solutions beat statist ones. When the state lays down the law, that's it. Everyone must act the same way. Choice is not allowed. The market on the other hand allows choice. There doesn't have to be one "correct" solution; there can be dozens or hundreds. And that's why the state should be kept in its box. That's why we should decentralise decision making away from politicians. When MSPs agree on everything, we should be on our guard. It's scary to know that no one at Holyrood bothered to look into the actual climate debate that's going on. Or worse, did so and were too afraid to rock the boat.