On Tuesday, Bill Ritter “celebrated Earth Day” (to quote a Denver Post article) by showing us that he’s part of the same crowd that thinks we can save the planet by burning our food.

In typical imperial Ritter style, governing by Executive Order rather than through the legislature which at least might represent the will of the people, Ritter is trying to force the state to cut overall emissions by 20% in just over a decade, and by 80% by 2050.

The Executive Order can be read HERE.

Not only is this close to impossible, it’s reckless. The headlong rush by liberal elites in the US and the EU to the use of ethanol is now causing food shortages and riots in the Third World, and bringing zero benefit to the environment.

All the recent data that I’ve seen from reliable sources such as NASA show that the planet has been cooling slightly for much of the past decade. This past winter was the coldest and snowiest in recent memory, and the Arctic sea ice regained more than everything it lost in the prior summer (despite claims from climate alarmists that the world was going to come to an end.)

A new report by fifteen climate scientists shreds the alarmist propaganda of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, showing that they intentionally misrepresent or simply ignore data that does not fit with their pre-programmed political goal.

And, worst of all, Bill Ritter will be long gone…maybe even no longer living…by the time his precious 2050 target date comes around, leaving Coloradoans holding the bag of an economy and standard of living far worse than it should have been.

Beyond the silliness of current global warming hysteria (actually, they call it “climate change” now, because the data doesn’t support that we’re warming anymore), don’t think for one minute that unions and Democrats won’t use this sweeping mandate as an excuse to expand the size and scope and cost of government.

Some good news can be found in a recent Gallup poll which shows that “only about one-third of Americans say they worry a great deal about global warming — roughly the same percentage as in a similar poll 19 years ago.”

And while short-term data points should not be used to determine the accuracy of theorized long-term phenomena, I still can’t help a little smile when I read stories like the one about Earth Day in Edmonton being “crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations.”

Bill Ritter’s executive order represents everything wrong with the Ritter administration: A lack of respect for the people, pandering to the left, avoiding reason and rationality, expanding government at every opportunity, and doing everything he can to make himself look like a real governor when he is in fact one of the great “do-nothing” politicians in recent years. For that, I suppose, I should be grateful since we most certainly can’t afford his doing even more of what he has done so far.

Cross-posted at "Gang of Four" blog