The Duke of Wellington, Climatologist

The growth in air travel is one of the culprits behind the alleged global warming crisis. (See, for example, Cheap Air Travel Adding to Global Warming Woes). Yet while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in the forefront of the congressional push to deal with global warming, she’s also been pushing for an upgrade in the special military airplane service available exclusively to her.

This sort of resembles the Duke of Wellington’s view of railroads when they were introduced in Britain in the 1800s: they would, he sniffed, “only encourage the common people to move about needlessly”. The Duke, of course, never had much problem moving about, nor much need to justify it to anyone else.

Whether technologies upset the aristocracy or upset the climate, we only hear complaints about them when they’re utilized by us commoners.