The City of Boulder is Colorado’s version of Berkeley, a deeply blue bastion in which an attitude of “lefter than thou” dominates all political conversations. Example: Section 6-8-3 of the Boulder Municipal Code states: “After December 1, 1986, no person shall knowingly produce, store, process, or dispose of a nuclear weapon or component of a nuclear weapon within the city.”
Never mind that no one is or plans to produce or possess nuclear weapons there. Never mind that if the federal government decided to do so this ordinance would not have the slightest effect. Moral preening is its own reward.
Several years ago I was trying a case in which the city was a party. The city was building a hydroelectric power plant, and I represented a supplier to the project. The issue was whether my client had breached the contract by substituting a comparable component made by a Japanese company for the one specified in the contract. I will never forget my cross examination of one of Boulder’s witnesses. I asked how the city was harmed because the components were essentially identical. He agreed that as far as the power plant was concerned there was no problem, but the City of Boulder has its own foreign policy he testified, and it was boycotting this particular foreign supplier. I knew I was going to win the case when I glanced at the judge and caught her rolling her eyes.
Now the City is jumping on the climate alarmist bandwagon.
Never mind that the computer projections upon which climate alarmism has been based for the last decade have been wildly innacurate. Never mind that there has been no significant overall increase in global temperatures for the last decade. Never mind that the city acknowledges that any action it takes will certainly be meaningless. True believers cannot be bothered with considerations of costs and benefits (or in this case, the lack thereof). The city council would gladly ruin the City’s economy if that were necessary for them to preen.
Someone once asked that consummate leftist Lenin to justify the atrocities the Bolshevik’s were committing in the name of a socialist future. Lenin famously replied, “If you want to make an omelet you have to be willing to break a few eggs.” To which his interlocutor replied, “Comrade, I see the broken eggs everywhere. But where, oh where, is the omelet?”
True believers are dangerous. At least Lenin (however mistakenly) thought he was building a socialist paradise. The Boulder city council knows its economy-killing regulations will be meaningless. They are more than willing to break eggs even in the face of absolute certain knowledge that no omelet is to be had. Indeed, it seems that breaking the eggs to demonstrate their moral superiority, not the making of an omelet, is the whole point of the exercise.