Here in New York, we are embarked on a religious campaign to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions dramatically.  It's to save the planet!  The official New York State Energy Plan, adopted in 2015, calls for reduction in total "greenhouse gas" emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.  By the same year, we supposedly will be getting some 50% of our electricity from renewables.  Dramatic!

California has announced very similar goals.  Indeed, their plan for GHG reductions by 2030 is exactly the same in percentage terms: a 40% reduction.

But somehow, when these plans and goals are announced and discussed, it's always put in terms of some percentage reduction, without any mention of absolute figures.  Nobody ever puts these plans into the context of overall world emissions to see whether anything meaningful is being accomplished.

Everyone knows that trying to control the climate by reducing CO2 emissions is a joke -- or at least, everyone knows it who is not completely deluded by climate zealotry.  But this is one of those jokes that you're not allowed to laugh at.  Instead, you must listen to terribly earnest people telling you how desperately important this is to "save the planet," even as you know that the whole thing is completely preposterous and you are struggling to suppress uncontrolled snickering.  Should you respond by making fun of them?  If so -- and if you don't want to risk physical violence -- you had better do it in a way that they are too blinded to understand.  Fortunately, this is much easier than you might think.

The strategy of making fun of the zealots seems to have been adopted recently by many of those on the receiving end of the zealotry.  Prominent among these have been the major oil companies, who have found themselves the targets of shareholder activists, as well as of lawsuits from various city and county governments in California, New York and elsewhere.  Other notable contributors to the humor include developing countries like China and India.   

Consider first some of the back-and-forth between shareholder activists and the major oil companies.  As we have gone through annual meeting season, all of the majors have found themselves attacked by shareholders demanding that they "do something" to reduce emissions and save the planet.  Many of the activists come from places like state and city pension funds, which by the way are not small shareholders.  Are these activists so dumb that they don't realize that the companies they have invested in are in the oil business, the whole purpose of which is to produce fossil fuels to get burned into CO2?  It would certainly seem so.