Rich Trzupek’s insightful piece in Friday’s American Spectator(“Obsessive-Compulsive Environmentalism”) outlines how Big Environment is a well-financed industry, just another political player in the Washington establishment — like Big Labor, Big Business, Big Education, et al. — and as manipulative, shrill, and self-interested as anyone in town.
Environmentalism for many of its members is also a religion, replacing the faith of our fathers with concern for the spotted owl, and other fashionable but inconsequential eccentricities. The groups in the green lobby — The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, et al. — amount to upscale Earth worship cults, peddling a form of eco-paganism to Lexus luddites. The meaning that traditional religion has supplied in the past is pumped back into otherwise vacant post-everything lives through competition to see who cares for the planet most. Care for the planet being expressed through support of fantastical policies that would destroy our economy but would not improve the environment.
Back to the industry point, environmentalism is hardly an economic weak sister. Ian Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in his 2008 book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, reported that these eco-groups have hundreds of thousands of members each, more than two million in the case of Sierra, and had annual resources then in excess of a half billion dollars. We’re not talking about a dowdy group of down-at-heels bird-watchers. These folks have lots of money and enormous clout.
Unlike large financial institutions that have been declared too big to fail, Big Environment is too big to succeed. No one on this gravy train wants to step off of it, even though America is a much cleaner place than it was in 1970, in many cases as a result of sound legislation whooped up by environmental groups decades back when their goals and methods were more sensible. If America ever became so clean the entire continent could pass a Marine Corps white-glove inspection, no one in the Sierra Club would ever say,“Mission accomplished.”
As Eric Hoffer taught us, great causes almost invariably evolve, in a straight line, from a justified moral crusade, to a business, to a racket (see the civil rights movement in America). Environmentalism has reached the racket stage, where the folks running the enviro-organizations grossly exaggerate environmental problems and make up new ones (see global warming) in order to keep the members worked up and the money rolling in. They use the most extreme and emotional rhetoric, and are uncivil to anyone or any group that opposes their fantastical agendas, which are based at least as much on left-wing ideology as on concern for the environment.
Enviros are more conspiratorial than even the tin-foil hat division of the far right. They’re apocalyptic. At the Sierra Club, the end of times is always right around the corner if we don’t immediately turn the economy over to Al Gore.
For those tempted to say — “Well, they may be a little extreme sometimes, and their policies, if adopted, would turn America into a third world country. But they’re well intentioned” — please look over some purple prose from recent Sierra club press releases. Then determine how well intentioned you believe the granola crowd is.
In a March 15 release, the club urges President Obama not to support vehicles that use natural gas, as gas is a fossil fuel and therefore evil, contributing as it does to what enviros call “the climate crisis.” Sierra wants no new drilling for oil and gas and no fracking:
Polls show the American people want investment in clean energy jobs and climate solutions. But instead, this proposal tries to gut our clean energy economy while decimating programs that keep our air and water clean and subjecting our families to more climate-poisoning tar sands, oil, and coal. Of course, if Paul Ryan listened to the American people, he might be in the White House right now. Instead, he’s doing the bidding of fossil fuel billionaires, forcing their reckless agenda into our national debate and forcing American families out.
Hmm. I guess I was out of town that weekend and didn’t catch the polls Brune is talking about. If a large number of Americans wish to dismantle the economy in the name of global warming, and wish to see more Solyndras, word has not reached me.
America has sufficient domestic oil and gas to tell the Saudis and the Venezuelans to bugger off and to return to economic growth. But thanks largely to policies pushed by the Sierras and like-minded types, we’re prevented from recovering and using a large fraction of these resources. A big part of our energy future, if we can sneak it past the granola crowd, is natural gas. The Sierra Club not only doesn’t want America to use natural gas, it doesn’t want us to export it either.
Read More at The American Spectator
Here are 10 winning reasons for continued climate-change hysterics:
1. Indoctrination from grade school through graduate school has inculcated the "incontrovertible conclusion" that people are destroying the planet. By acting to save the earth, precious self-esteem is elevated, while guilt is assuaged.
2. Lack of depth of understanding about science and scientific practice, not only because of being uninitiated, but partially because inadequate science education has left the public either clueless about, intimidated by, or apathetic to science in general and climate change in particular.
3. Man-made climate-change hype acculturation has infused acceptance of human culpability into the psyche of everyone, from industrialists and businesspersons to the "man on the street."
4. Billions of dollars are up for grabs with consultants making beaucoup bucks advising on carbon credits, technocrats raking in the cash with carbon dioxide control and sequestration contraptions, and researchers securing grant money to tie every wind of change to human excesses.
5. Those who sincerely believe they know the long-term future of the global climate are committed to the cause. Commitment can be admirable, but nobody, no matter how smart, can predict the future climate decades ahead with any serious degree of accuracy. That has already been demonstrated with the leveled temperature trend that belies predictions. (Could it be that if humans are responsible for a significant portion of the global warming in recent years, that we could be witnessing the maximum effect people have on the planet's temperature?)
6. Politicians and bureaucrats can increase their power over the proletariat. Control of energy is near ultimate control.
7. Journalists and bloggers have found a juicy, fruitful topic to squeeze.
8. Environmental and social activists have discovered a new "higher-calling" cause to champion and cash in on.
9. Sales of T-shirts and bumper-stickers advertising imminent world environmental cataclysm and its simple solutions--"Go Green," "Hug a Tree," "Love your Mother (Earth)," "Death to Deniers" (I just made up that last one, I hope!)--would dry up like the Aral Sea. Without such capitalistic merchandizing where would socialism be?
And last, but certainly not least:
10. People get to defend their deeply held religious beliefs and can feel they're doing something good for Jesus, God, the Buddha, Vishnu, Gaia, the Universe, children or grandchildren, pets, polar bears, plankton.
So, everybody wins... everybody that matters, that is, but not the middle-class who ultimately end up footing the bill, and definitely not the poor who are simply used as a sanctimonious diversion, yet end up as impoverished as ever.
Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist with 35 years of experience in atmospheric science and science education, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic's Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012) (www.InGlobalWarmingWeTrust.com).
Read more: americanthinker
Environmentalism for many of its members is also a religion, replacing the faith of our fathers with concern for the spotted owl, and other fashionable but inconsequential eccentricities. The groups in the green lobby — The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, et al. — amount to upscale Earth worship cults, peddling a form of eco-paganism to Lexus luddites. The meaning that traditional religion has supplied in the past is pumped back into otherwise vacant post-everything lives through competition to see who cares for the planet most. Care for the planet being expressed through support of fantastical policies that would destroy our economy but would not improve the environment.
Back to the industry point, environmentalism is hardly an economic weak sister. Ian Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in his 2008 book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, reported that these eco-groups have hundreds of thousands of members each, more than two million in the case of Sierra, and had annual resources then in excess of a half billion dollars. We’re not talking about a dowdy group of down-at-heels bird-watchers. These folks have lots of money and enormous clout.
Unlike large financial institutions that have been declared too big to fail, Big Environment is too big to succeed. No one on this gravy train wants to step off of it, even though America is a much cleaner place than it was in 1970, in many cases as a result of sound legislation whooped up by environmental groups decades back when their goals and methods were more sensible. If America ever became so clean the entire continent could pass a Marine Corps white-glove inspection, no one in the Sierra Club would ever say,“Mission accomplished.”
As Eric Hoffer taught us, great causes almost invariably evolve, in a straight line, from a justified moral crusade, to a business, to a racket (see the civil rights movement in America). Environmentalism has reached the racket stage, where the folks running the enviro-organizations grossly exaggerate environmental problems and make up new ones (see global warming) in order to keep the members worked up and the money rolling in. They use the most extreme and emotional rhetoric, and are uncivil to anyone or any group that opposes their fantastical agendas, which are based at least as much on left-wing ideology as on concern for the environment.
Enviros are more conspiratorial than even the tin-foil hat division of the far right. They’re apocalyptic. At the Sierra Club, the end of times is always right around the corner if we don’t immediately turn the economy over to Al Gore.
For those tempted to say — “Well, they may be a little extreme sometimes, and their policies, if adopted, would turn America into a third world country. But they’re well intentioned” — please look over some purple prose from recent Sierra club press releases. Then determine how well intentioned you believe the granola crowd is.
In a March 15 release, the club urges President Obama not to support vehicles that use natural gas, as gas is a fossil fuel and therefore evil, contributing as it does to what enviros call “the climate crisis.” Sierra wants no new drilling for oil and gas and no fracking:
The President should instead go all in on electric vehicles and clean energy sources like wind and solar, while boosting common sense climate solutions like energy efficiency.A March 12 release demonstrates that Sierra’s concerns for the birds of the air and the fish of the sea can be stretched to support a more general left-political agenda. Here are some temperate remarks by Sierra executive director Michael Brune on Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, which in enviro-think is nothing more than Republican’s perverse desire to pollute the planet:
With this budget, Paul Ryan is trying to revive the dirty fuels agenda that the American people rejected in last November’s election. It’s policy that nobody but the big oil and coal billionaires who bankrolled his campaign could love. Today, Ryan and Congressional Republicans released a budget proposal straight out of the polluters’ playbook — one that doubles down on dirty fuels, throws open the gates of our public lands to destructive drilling, mining, and fracking, and hands billions in tax breaks to the biggest oil companies in the world.Wow. Makes you want to check under the bed for oil speculators before turning in. Catching his breath, Brune goes on:
Polls show the American people want investment in clean energy jobs and climate solutions. But instead, this proposal tries to gut our clean energy economy while decimating programs that keep our air and water clean and subjecting our families to more climate-poisoning tar sands, oil, and coal. Of course, if Paul Ryan listened to the American people, he might be in the White House right now. Instead, he’s doing the bidding of fossil fuel billionaires, forcing their reckless agenda into our national debate and forcing American families out.
Hmm. I guess I was out of town that weekend and didn’t catch the polls Brune is talking about. If a large number of Americans wish to dismantle the economy in the name of global warming, and wish to see more Solyndras, word has not reached me.
America has sufficient domestic oil and gas to tell the Saudis and the Venezuelans to bugger off and to return to economic growth. But thanks largely to policies pushed by the Sierras and like-minded types, we’re prevented from recovering and using a large fraction of these resources. A big part of our energy future, if we can sneak it past the granola crowd, is natural gas. The Sierra Club not only doesn’t want America to use natural gas, it doesn’t want us to export it either.
Read More at The American Spectator
10 Reasons Climate-Change Hysterics Continue
Here are 10 winning reasons for continued climate-change hysterics:
1. Indoctrination from grade school through graduate school has inculcated the "incontrovertible conclusion" that people are destroying the planet. By acting to save the earth, precious self-esteem is elevated, while guilt is assuaged.
2. Lack of depth of understanding about science and scientific practice, not only because of being uninitiated, but partially because inadequate science education has left the public either clueless about, intimidated by, or apathetic to science in general and climate change in particular.
3. Man-made climate-change hype acculturation has infused acceptance of human culpability into the psyche of everyone, from industrialists and businesspersons to the "man on the street."
4. Billions of dollars are up for grabs with consultants making beaucoup bucks advising on carbon credits, technocrats raking in the cash with carbon dioxide control and sequestration contraptions, and researchers securing grant money to tie every wind of change to human excesses.
5. Those who sincerely believe they know the long-term future of the global climate are committed to the cause. Commitment can be admirable, but nobody, no matter how smart, can predict the future climate decades ahead with any serious degree of accuracy. That has already been demonstrated with the leveled temperature trend that belies predictions. (Could it be that if humans are responsible for a significant portion of the global warming in recent years, that we could be witnessing the maximum effect people have on the planet's temperature?)
6. Politicians and bureaucrats can increase their power over the proletariat. Control of energy is near ultimate control.
7. Journalists and bloggers have found a juicy, fruitful topic to squeeze.
8. Environmental and social activists have discovered a new "higher-calling" cause to champion and cash in on.
9. Sales of T-shirts and bumper-stickers advertising imminent world environmental cataclysm and its simple solutions--"Go Green," "Hug a Tree," "Love your Mother (Earth)," "Death to Deniers" (I just made up that last one, I hope!)--would dry up like the Aral Sea. Without such capitalistic merchandizing where would socialism be?
And last, but certainly not least:
10. People get to defend their deeply held religious beliefs and can feel they're doing something good for Jesus, God, the Buddha, Vishnu, Gaia, the Universe, children or grandchildren, pets, polar bears, plankton.
So, everybody wins... everybody that matters, that is, but not the middle-class who ultimately end up footing the bill, and definitely not the poor who are simply used as a sanctimonious diversion, yet end up as impoverished as ever.
Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist with 35 years of experience in atmospheric science and science education, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic's Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012) (www.InGlobalWarmingWeTrust.com).
Read more: americanthinker
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