International Conference on Climate Change: Rep. Tom McClintock on the contradictions of green policy

At the 2nd annual International Conference on Climate Change, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) warns against that "radical global warmongers are now enacting" in the Golden State and elsewhere.

In 2006, he notes, California called for a 25 percent reduction in man-made carbon dioxide emissions by 2020--something that could not be accomplished even by junking every car on the state's roads. At the same time, the state legislature called for $40 billion in infrastructure improvements, an undertaking that will release massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Such contradictory policies are common when it comes to agriculture, winemaking, ethanol and more, says McClintock, and will lead to a greatly weakened economy in California and elsewhere, all in the name of fighting exaggerated effects of climate change.

Read Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey's dispatches from the conference here.

Watch highlights of Czech and European Union President Vaclav Klaus' opening address here.