Deep Thoughts, By Mike Lee
By 
Principled, reasonable, thinking person’s Reformicon Mike Lee has some thoughts he chose to chair about climate change on the floor of the United States Senate today:
The solution to climate change won’t be found in political posturing or virtue signaling like this. It won’t be found in the federal government at all. You know where the solution can be found? In churches, wedding chapels, and maternity wards across the country and around the world. This, Mr. President, is the real solution to climate change: babies. Climate change is an engineering problem – not social engineering, but the real kind. It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and technological invention. And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans!
More people mean bigger markets for innovation. More babies mean more forward-looking adults – the sort we need to tackle long-term, large scale problems. American babies, in particular, are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing regions. As economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote on this very point, “by having more children, you are making your nation more populous – thus boosting its capacity to solve [climate change].” Finally, Mr. President, children are a mark of the kind of personal, communal, and societal optimism that is the true pre-requisite for meeting national and global challenges together. The courage needed to solve climate change is nothing compared with the courage needed to start a family.
When reporters say he’s one of the smartest people in the Republican conference, they might not even be wrong! Anyway, the key is that once you’ve had the courage to have kids you should also have the courage to get them full-time jobs as soon as they graduate from elementary school. This will end carbon emissions once and for all. Mike Lee is definitely not a crackpot.