So confident am I that the number of deaths from violent storms will continue to decline that I challenge Mr. McKibben - or Al Gore, Paul Krugman, or any other climate-change doomsayer - to put his wealth where his words are. I'll bet $10,000 that the average annual number of Americans killed by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes will fall over the next 20 years. Specifically, I'll bet that the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010.

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing.

For those who fancy that government's projects are uniquely important, or for those who imagine that holding government office makes someone unusually saintly or trustworthy, entrusting government with power that we would never entrust to our neighbors or other private citizens might seem sensible. To me, it's dangerous, unjustified, and unjustifiable.

Politicians will pander to special-interest groups eager to gain at the public expense.

So confident am I that the number of deaths from violent storms will continue to decline that I challenge Mr. McKibben - or Al Gore, Paul Krugman, or any other climate-change doomsayer - to put his wealth where his words are. I'll bet $10,000 that the average annual number of Americans killed by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes will fall over the next 20 years. Specifically, I'll bet that the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010.

To worry about differences in earned incomes simply because some persons earn more than other persons is to wallow in envy. And envy is, and ought to remain, a deadly sin rather than be fashioned into a livewire for energizing public policy.

Let's be clear about one indisputable fact: capitalism vigorously pursued has never produced the atrocities - starvation, tyranny, and genocide - that are produced by statism vigorously pursued. Nothing remotely close.