The most surprising thing about the current heat wave affecting much of the United States is that no global warming charlatan is claiming that it is the result of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Since the late 1980s, Americans were assailed with the global warming hoax until, in November 2009, the release of emails between the trolls ginning up false “climate models” were exposed.

These days the term “climate change” is used as a substitute for “global warming”, but fewer of us are fooled by this. Al Gore is planning a last-ditch effort in September to revive the hoax, but that will fail.

Even those in the mainstream media are too embarrassed to report the absurd notion that CO2, a trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere (0.0380%) vital to all vegetation on the planet has anything to do with climate cycles. A new cooling cycle that kicked in around 1998 is the predictable result of less solar activity.

This is not to say it’s not hot. Heat waves are as common to summer months as blizzards are to winter ones. For those who possess the memory of fungus, there was a heat wave that engulfed the East Coast from July 4 through 9th in 2010. Weather records reflect that heat waves are a natural event, often following or preceding record setting cold waves.

While Al Gore and the last holdouts of the global warming hoax continue to tell us that CO2 emissions (the use of fossil fuels for energy to produce electricity, drive anywhere, and manufacture anything) will destroy the world, the world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory, CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, will soon announce a finding that will blow the CO2 nonsense to bits.

Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute, reports CERN has demonstrated “that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in the earth’s atmosphere.” Cosmic rays are subatomic particles from outer space. More clouds means that less of the sun’s warmth reaches the Earth’s surface.

This completely overturns the torrent of lies that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been churning out for decades. The IPCC’s scientists went into full panic mood as a new cooling cycle asserted itself in 1998.

As Avery points out, the IPCC scientists had deliberately ignored “the Medieval Warming (950-1200 AD), the Roman Warming (200 BC-600BC) or the big Holocene Warmings centered on 6,000 and 8,000 BC.” There was also a Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850 to account for as well.

While the global warming crowd has been telling everyone that they must stop burning coal, using oil or natural gas, and “reduce our carbon footprint”, a recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, in just four days, negated every government-mandated effort to control or reduce CO2 emissions worldwide for the past five years! When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it put so much smoke and other gases in the atmosphere that it cooled the Earth’s temperatures for a few years until they dissipated.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is frantically issuing new rules and regulations to reduce the CO2 emissions from utilities and manufacturing facilities before the public realizes that its actual goal is to kill the U.S. economy by increasing the cost of electricity and everything else. It is insanely trying to shut down the mining of coal, while other elements of the Obama regime are trying to stop any drilling for oil.

Unable to scare everyone with the global warming hoax, new horrors are being invented, from ocean acidification to the claim that the atmosphere is being overloaded with nitrogen. Relax, there’s four times more nitrogen in the atmosphere than oxygen and it’s no big deal.

The Greens think you’re stupid

Americans need to be aware that major environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth are desperate to maintain the fictions required to deprive the U.S. of the energy it needs to function.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just gave $50 million to the Sierra Club to support its “Beyond Coal” campaign. Bloomberg actually thinks it’s a good thing the Sierra Club has managed to stop 150 coal-burning plants from being built. Meanwhile, during the current heat wave, providers of electricity are worrying whether they can continue to meet the increased demand for it. Coal provides 50% of all the electricity we use in America.

How stupid or evil do you have to be to stop building the plants that provide electricity at a time when the population and the demand for it is rising? Must America become a third world nation with rolling blackouts and brownouts?

Friends of the Earth are in a panic that Republicans might actually get the U.S. government to cut back on the insane spending that has put the nation on the edge of sovereign default. Lately they’re claiming that Majority Leader, Eric Candor (R-VA) “is threatening to sink the American economy and undermine environmental protections so that his wealthy friends, including big oil corporations, can keep sitting on their cushions.”

That’s the same Big Oil that hasn’t been able to build a single new refinery in the U.S. since the 1970s. That’s the same Big Oil that has seen ten oil rigs leave the Gulf of Mexico since the May 2010 Obama “moratorium” for drilling sites in Egypt, Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Brazil. They took a lot of jobs and revenue with them,

If you wanted to destroy America, all you have to do is make it impossible to access several century’s worth of its own huge reserves of coal and the billions of barrels of oil inland and offshore that would, indeed, make America more energy independent.

The next time anyone speaks about “sustainability”, they are talking about turning out the lights and emptying the highways of America. The next time anyone talks about “the environment”, they mean the same thing.

So, remember, it’s just a heat wave. It will end just like all the others and, in a few months, we will all be talking about the blizzards.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

The vote to end the $6 billion in subsidies to ethanol producers reminded me how much Greens love us all. Surely only love could inspire taking corn and turning it into moonshine, and then mixing it with gasoline. The result caused food riots in far off nations while raising the cost of a gallon of gas every time we fill up at the pump. The ethanol mandates actually reduced the mileage a gallon will provide.

At some point, even the Greens grew disenchanted with ethanol and signaled their permission to end this costly boondoggle to our fearless leaders in Washington, D.C.

You may recall they got off to a strong start when the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. Its first act was to ban DDT and the result of that has been the needless death of millions who could and should have been protected against malaria. The nation these days is experiencing a bed bug population explosion that could be stopped in six months if the EPA would only authorize a pesticide to kill the critters. They won’t.

Nor have Greens given up on the Endangered Species Act which has not truly saved any species in the course of spending billions to protect, for example, a spotted owl that needed no protection whatever or gray wolves that were doing quite well in Canada and Mexico when not wandering across our borders. What the ESA did accomplish, however, was to thwart all manner of development, whether it was a new hospital or the irrigation of farms rumored to grow crops people wanted to eat. The latest proposed use of the ESA is to shut down one of the most productive oil reserves in the U.S. to protect a lizard!

These are the same saintly folk who have managed to get a law passed banning the sale of 100 watt incandescent light bulbs in favor of those twisty ones that come with a complete hazmat instruction manual because they contain mercury. The EPA fears mercury so much it is implementing regulations that have already led a utility to announce it is going to close several coal-fired plants rather than spend millions to rid emissions of mercury so small as to constitute no hazard whatever.

When not interfering with the free marketplace, agriculture, timber and other industries, one Green obsession has been energy and, in particular, oil and coal, which they deem “dirty.” Coal is dirty. I used to shovel a bucket or two into the basement furnace until my folks turned to natural gas. The U.S. has billions of cubic feet of natural gas, but you get more mileage from a teaspoon of oil and more electricity from a tablespoon of coal than from any other source of energy.

The U.S. is the virtual Saudi Arabia of coal in terms of the vast reserves known to exist. We have billions of barrels of untapped oil as well. Greens are insanely opposed to both.

Greens are all about not “wasting energy” so naturally that are advocates of two of the least practical ways of producing it, wind and solar energy. Together they comprise less than three percent of the electricity we use in America. In the process, they fill up acres of desert (where lizards and other endangered species live) with solar panels that only work when the sun is shining or defile other acres with huge, ugly wind turbines that chop all manner of birds and bats into confetti while also occasionally catching fire.

The only way to truly “conserve” energy is to not use it and in a nation where everything runs on electricity or gasoline, that means not turning on the lights or driving anywhere. That is a great way to destroy the economy. Getting more mileage from a gallon of gas is another Green fantasy. It has a finite amount, so that translates into making lighter, more dangerous cars.

The Greens have all manner of plans to save America’s forests, swamps, and other areas from the taint of human beings actually having any access to them for any reason. Pretty soon you will have to settle for a stroll in a local park if you want to see a stretch of grass or a bunch of trees. And please do not disturb the Canada Geese, they are a protected species.

The Greens are always fretting about the way members of the horrid human species are destroying the Earth or just endangering it in some fashion. They spent from the late 1980s to the end of the last decade caterwauling about a “global warming” that, in 1998, stopped happening.

Actually, the Earth had begun to warm again around 1850 after three hundred years of what was dubbed a Little Ice Age. Now scientists are warning that, due to a lack of sunspot activity, the Earth is looking to enter yet another Little Ice Age. Some even think we are looking at the big one because we are literally at the end of the 11,500 year cycle between ice ages. The last Ice Age lasted 100,000 years.

In case I didn’t mention it, “global warming:” was a complete hoax, a fraud concocted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in order to gin up a market for the sale and trade of “carbon credits.” Anyone—and I mean anyone—who tells you that humans are causing climate change is a charlatan or a dupe. Avoid them.
My general recommendation is to avoid anything that has the word “green” attached to it. You are being conned into spending more for something than necessary. Learn to love the concept of synthetic. Plastic, a product of petroleum, is synthetic and we use it everywhere for everything. It is one of the greatest inventions of all time.

You cannot “save the Earth.” The Earth is full of volcanoes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, hurricanes, blizzards, droughts, earthquakes, and other completely natural activities, any or all of which can kill you. It is an utter delusion to think the Earth cares about you even if you care deeply about it.

This is not to say we should not have a profound respect for the Earth and the good sense to marvel at the beauty and majesty of its mountains, oceans, and other manifestations. Just remember to pack a sandwich and bring along a bottle of something to drink if you plan to wander into its “pristine” parts.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

Falsehoods about insecticides and bednets continue to leave a path of destruction and death

By Paul Driessen and Robert Novak

Fina’s little body shook for hours with teeth-chattering chills. The next day her torment worsened, as nausea and vomiting continued even after there was nothing left in her stomach. Finally, her vomiting ebbed and chills turned to fever, drenching her body in sweat. Then more chills, fevers, nausea, convulsions, and constant, unbearable pain in every muscle, bone and joint.

She cried out, and tears mixed with sweat. But no one could help her. She had no money for doctors, medicines or a hospital room. She didn’t even have a mother or father to comfort her. All the orphanage school staff could do was caress her, pray and hope she’d get better – and wait for her to die.

And in agony that never stopped from the time the malaria first struck her down, Fina Nantume did die. So did 49 of her classmates, out of 500 students in the APEA Primary School for orphans in Kampala, Uganda, in 2005. Most of the survivors were also afflicted with malaria at least once that year. Some became permanently brain damaged. Others died in subsequent years.

Fina didn’t have to die. None of these spirited, beautiful young students had to die. None of them had to get malaria. The disease is preventable, treatable and curable.

Then why did they? Why does half the world’s population remain at risk of getting malaria? Why are some 250 million people infected annually – with 90% of the agonizing chills, fevers, nausea, brain damage and death occurring in sub-Saharan Africa?

It’s said malaria is a disease of poverty, and poor countries don’t have enough funds, doctors or medicines to treat the disease – or prevent it in the first place. True enough. But malaria is also, and much more so, a disease of callous, intransigent environmental extremism and wanton disregard for human life. A disease whose prevention is hampered, and actively thwarted, by pervasive opposition to mosquito-killing insecticides, and mosquito-repelling DDT.

Anti-pesticide activists say they support other interventions: education, “capacity building,” modern drugs and bednets. Indeed, international funding for malaria prevention and treatment has risen from perhaps $40 million in 1998 to almost $2 billion in 2010. Millions of women and children now sleep under insecticide-treated nets. Millions now get diagnosed quickly and receive decent care and medicines.

These anti-malaria programs “saved nearly 750,000 lives over the past ten years.” the World Health Organization enthusiastically asserts. “That represents an 18% reduction in child mortality, compared with 2000.” That’s wonderful news. But it’s not good enough.

We would never tolerate 18% as “good enough,” if American or European kids’ lives were at stake, or if a 70-90% reduction in disease, misery and death rates were possible. And it would be possible, if we could end the lies and obstructionism that restrict access to mosquito killers and repellants that can dramatically reduce infection rates and the need to treat a quarter-billion cases of malaria every year.

But the lies and obstruction are prevalent, and effective. Here are just a few of the most egregious.

“Nets are just as good as insecticides.” Prevention should always be the first line of defense. That’s why we chlorinate drinking water and vaccinate people against measles, mumps, polio and flu. Insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) certainly help and should be used. But they are a supplement to, not a substitute for, larvacides, insecticides and DDT that kill mosquitoes and keep them away from people.

Bednets help if they’re used regularly and properly. They don’t help if they’re torn, people are working, there are only enough nets for a family’s small children and pregnant women, or it’s too hot to sleep under one. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) eliminates behavior as a consideration; it protects everyone in the house, 24 hours a day.

“Bednets are more cost-effective than indoor spraying.” This assertion is backed by several studies that anti-pesticide groups and ITN manufacturers allegedly financed. However, the studies compare bednets with IRS using pyrethroids like ICON, instead of DDT. Pyrethroids are far more expensive and must be applied more often than DDT, which raises IRS costs significantly. The studies also fail to include all the costs associated with manufacturing and distributing the nets. Independent analyses found that nets are actually four times more expensive than spraying the inside walls of homes with DDT.

Much more important, spraying DDT once or twice a year keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering the home, irritates those that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. No other chemical, at any price, has these repellency and irritation features. DDT helps doctors treat more patients with often scarce ACT drugs and dramatically slash disease and death rates – often by 90% or more.

“Mosquitoes will become resistant to DDT.” This is highly unlikely. DDT use today is restricted to disease prevention, whereas pyrethroids are used extensively in agriculture and ITNs, greatly increasing the risk of resistance to these DDT “alternatives.” Once that happens both non-DDT indoor spraying and bednets will become far less effective, and malaria rates could skyrocket. In addition, there is no evidence that mosquitoes have ever become resistant to DDT’s repellency and irritation effects.

Moreover, reliance on nets and pyrethroid sprays significantly reduces prevention and increases the need for treatment. This can stretch scarce hospital, medical staff and drug resources to the breaking point. It increases the likelihood that malaria parasites will become resistant to Artemisia-based drugs, especially monotherapies. And it magnifies the pervasive and growing problem of substandard and counterfeit drugs replacing scarce supplies of reputable ACT combination therapies.

“DDT has dangerous side effects.” Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network, Environmental Defense, International POPs Elimination Network and affiliated radical groups love to say “some researchers think” DDT and its break-down byproduct DDE “could” inhibit lactation, “may” weaken immune systems and are “associated with” low birth weights in babies. Not only is this rank speculation, but malaria definitely has all these side effects; it also causes severe brain damage, an inability to work for weeks on end, and agonizing death. Opposing DDT use on the basis of bogus side effects is infinitely worse than opposing cancer-curing chemotherapy because of the nasty and very real side effects of vincristine, asperaginase, methotrexate and other chemo drugs.

“DDT will poison the global biosphere.” Anti-pesticide zealots claim even indoor spraying with DDT will “contaminate” soils and waters for decades and “damage entire regional environmental systems.” Baloney. IRS involves small amounts of DDT on walls. The chemical and its derivatives break down. Detection does not equal destruction. Our ability to detect chemicals at the equivalent of one second in 32 years does not equate with damage to any organism, and certainly not to entire ecosystems.

There is no magic bullet. We need every weapon in our arsenal to control and eradicate this vicious disease. DDT and insecticides aren’t necessary or appropriate in every case – but when needed health officials must be able to employ them, without recrimination or retribution.

The “net” effect of these bald-faced lies is that anti-pesticide zealots are perpetuating poverty, misery, disease and death in malaria-endemic regions all over the world. Safe in offices made malaria-free by the very chemicals, technologies and prosperity they deny to others, these baby killers and their financial benefactors are violating the most basic human rights of people in poor nations: the right of access to technologies that enhance and safeguard life.

Their reign of terror must end, before they usher in a disaster of truly epidemic proportions.

_________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. Robert Novak is professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and has devoted much of his life to combating malaria.

Fina Nantume – 1996-2005 – APEA Primary School, Kampala

Requiescat in pace. May her memory be a blessing, and a call for better malaria policies.

 

WesternFront America

Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session. It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia.

First, when exactly is something not sustainable? When known deposits (proven reserves) may be depleted in ten years? 50? 100? What if looming depletion results from government policies that forbid access to lands that might contain new deposits – as with US onshore and offshore prospects for oil, gas, coal, uranium, rare earth minerals and other vital resources?

Rising prices, new theories about mineral formation, and improved discovery and extraction technologies and techniques typically expand energy and mineral reserves – postponing depletion by years or decades, as in the case of oil and natural gas. But legislation, regulation, taxation and litigation prevent these processes from working properly, hasten depletion, and make “sustainability” an even more politicized, manipulated and meaningless concept.

Second, should the quest for mandated “sustainable” technologies be based on real, immediate threats – or will imaginary or exaggerated crises suffice? Dangerous manmade global cooling morphed into dangerous manmade global warming, then into “global climate disruption” – driven by computer models and disaster scenarios, doctored temperature data, manipulated peer reviews, and bogus claims about melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Shouldn’t policies that replace reliable, affordable energy with expensive, intermittent, land-intensive, subsidized sources be based on solid, replicable science?

Third, shouldn’t inconvenient sustainability issues be resolved before we proceed any further, by applying the same guidelines to renewable energy as courts, regulators and eco-activists apply to petroleum?

Most oil, gas, coal and uranium operations impact limited acreage for limited times – and affected areas must be restored to natural conditions when production ends. Effects on air and water quality, habitats and protected species are addressed through regulations, lease restrictions and fines. The operations generate vast amounts of affordable, reliable energy from relatively small tracts of land, and substantial revenues.

Wind turbines generate small amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity from gargantuan installations on thousands of acres. Turbines and their associated transmission lines dominate scenic vistas, disrupt habitats and migratory routes, affect water drainage patterns, impede crop dusting and other activities, and kill bats, raptors and other birds, including endangered species that would bring major fines if the corporate killers were oil or mining companies. And yet, wind operators receive exemptions from environmental review, biodiversity and endangered species laws that traditional energy companies must follow – on the ground that such rules would raise costs and delay construction of “eco-friendly” projects.

Kentucky’s Cardinal coal mine alone produces 75% of the Btu energy generated by all the wind turbines and solar panels in the USA, Power Hungry author Robert Bryce calculates. Unspoiled vistas, rural and maritime tranquility, and bald eagles will all be endangered if 20% wind power mandates are enacted.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station near Phoenix generates nearly 900 times more electricity than Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base photovoltaic panels, on less land, for 1/15 the cost per kWh – and does it 90% of the time, versus 30% of the time for the Nellis array. Generating Palo Verde’s electrical output via Nellis technology would require solar arrays across an area ten times larger than Washington, DC.

Building enough photovoltaic arrays to power Los Angeles would mean blanketing thousands of square miles of desert habitat. Once built, solar and wind systems will be there just this side of forever, since there will be no energy production if we let them decay, after shutting down whatever hydrocarbon operations aren’t needed to fuel backup generators that keep wind and solar facilities operational.

Wind and solar power also mean there is a sudden demand for tons of rare earth elements that weren’t terribly important a decade ago. They exist in very low concentrations, require mining and milling massive amounts of rock and ore to get the needed minerals, and thus impose huge ecological impacts.

If mountaintop removal to extract high quality coal at reduced risk to miners is unacceptable and unsustainable – how is it eco-friendly and sustainable to clear-cut mountain vistas for wind turbines? Blanket thousands of square miles with habitat-suffocating solar panels? Or remove mountains of rock to mine low-grade rare earth mineral deposits for solar panel films, hybrid batteries and turbine magnets?

Since any undiscovered US rare earth deposits are likely locked up in wilderness and other restricted land use areas, virtually no exploration or development will take place here. We will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers, like China, which are using them in their own manufacturing operations – and selling us finished wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries. The United States will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers for renewable energy, just as we rely on foreign countries for oil and uranium.

To claim any of this is ecologically or economically sustainable strains credulity.

Green jobs will mostly be overseas, subsidized by US tax and energy dollars – other people’s money (OPM). Indeed, Americans have already spent over $20 billion in stimulus money on “green” energy projects. However, 80% of the funding for some of them went to China, India, South Korea and Spain, and three-fourth of the turbines for eleven US wind projects were made overseas. This is intolerable, indefensible and unsustainable. But it gets worse.

Denver’s Nature and Science Museum used $720,000 in stimulus money to install photovoltaic panels and reduce its electricity bills by 20 percent. The panels may last 25 years, whereas it will take 110 years to save enough on those bills to pay for the panels – and by then four more sets of panels will be needed.

As to biofuels, the US Navy recently waxed ecstatic over its success with camellia-based eco-fuel in fighter jets. But the PC biofuel costs $67.50 per gallon, versus $5.00 per gallon for commercial jet fuel.

To meet the 36-billion-gallons-a-year-by-2022 federal ethanol diktat, we would have to grow corn on cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, to get 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol – plus switchgrass on farmlands and habitats the size of South Carolina, to produce 21 billion gallons of “advanced biofuel.” By contrast, we could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from frozen tundra equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge weren’t off limits.

OPM-subsidized ethanol also means a few corn growers and ethanol refiners make hefty profits. But chicken and beef producers, manufacturers that need corn syrup, and families of all stripes get pounded by soaring costs, to generate a fuel that gets one-third less mileage per tank than gasoline.

Hydrocarbons fueled the most amazing and sustained progress in human history. Rejecting further progress – in the name of sustainability or climate protection – requires solid evidence that we face catastrophes if we don’t switch to “sustainable” alternatives. Computer-generated disaster scenarios and bald assertions by Al Gore, Harry Reid, John Holdren and President Obama just don’t make the grade.

We need to improve energy efficiency and conserve resources. Science and technology will continue the great strides we have made in that regard. Politically motivated mandates will impose huge costs for few benefits. Sustainability claims will simply redistribute smaller shares of a shrinking economic pie.

“Renewable” energy subsidies may sustain the jobs of lobbyists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats and politically connected companies. But they will kill millions of other people’s jobs.

Let’s be sure to remind our elected officials of this along their campaign trails – and on November 2.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

(Environmentalism Not About the Earth But About Control, Part 1)

Those still not convinced should ask themselves before they run off and join such groups how much control they want to cede over their lives to the beneficence of the collective. For once one signs over the very right to ownership to one’s dwelling and possessions, where does it end?

Willing to relinquish rights to the conjugal affections of your spouse to the group? Don’t snicker.

In many cults, those not willing to surrender their spouses to the group are labeled as being insufficiently devoted to the group or “too individualistic” in orientation. Interestingly this allegation is invoked increasingly in the churches of today as they totter ever closer to the edges of apostasy and unbelief.

Those enamored with their own smug progressivism will claim such excesses are more characteristic of the religious mindset. Secularists would never stand for such outrages and the infringement on the most basic of relationships?

Think so do you? Though he might have started off religious, before the last drop of Kool-Aid was slurped, Jim Jones’ position on the Scriptures and the beauties of socialism had more in common with the National Counsel of Churches than Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition. And for those that think Marx is the cat’s whiskers, what do they have to say about this thinker’s proposal that the individual family and private marriages should be abolished?

And even if one happens to have a proclivity to these bizarre living arrangements without all the kinky wifeswapping and such, on what grounds does one object when these compounds lay claim to your children? Some of these COMMUNITIES conspire to undermine familial bonds between parents and offspring in a group setting or by minimizing the time parents spend alone with their biological progeny.

Yet one does not have to be locked away on some dope-smoking commune to be influenced by this kind of childrearing mentality. The perspective is already prevalent throughout the social welfare establishment that children do not belong to the parents but rather to the COMMUNITY as manifested by the state. If anything, a child enjoys a status barely above that of a library book since the parent is granted permission to enjoy the child for a time but forced to surrender the youngsters to the state on the terms of the state as evidenced in laws establishing lower and lower ages for mandatory preschool and bureaucratic homevisits.

With America’s relative prosperity, citizens are pretty much able to ignore such kooks. But what will happen when these lunatics acquire more and more power unto themselves and connive to impose their cherished deprivations upon the rest of us?

For if these neo-primitives have their way, you won’t even be permitted to procure the same quality of sustenance to which you and your family are accustomed. Rather, you will be compelled to gnaw on the twigs and shrubs beneath your very feet if you are fortunate to be deemed worthy enough of the privilege of continued existence.

For a while now, it has become popular in eco-socialist circles to whine incessantly about how far food must be transported to reach the masses of humanity. Instead of marveling at the bounty and variety of food available year round and in the most hostile of climates, environmentalists lament this fact.

Anybody that is anybody these days has a website (I wonder if the ones run by these people function on moonbeams and fuzzy thoughts since the rest of us are suppose to cutback on electricity), an organization, and a cadre of propagandists to spread the message. The mass starvation racket (or the inconvenient food syndicate) is no different.

One such outfit fomenting this hooey is Slow Food USA, described as “supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America.” Let me point out they are not referring to a burger, fries, and a Coke.

The organization’s executive director Erika Lesser (“lesser” is the amount of food you’ll be eating if her organization has its way) gave a lecture titled “Live Slow: On The Path To A Delicious Future”. Those in attendance were invited to “Join the slow food table on biodiversity issues and the benefits of good, clean, and fair food.” This ought to be considered because, “Education in taste is the first step towards transforming consumers into co-producers who can help safeguard food traditions and the health of the environment. By choosing wisely and eating with pleasure, you — as well as your community and the planet — can reap the delicious and healthful rewards of responsible coproduction.”

From that litany, the primary thing that stands out is how the consumer will be “transformed” (New Age socialistic euphemisms meaning revolution imposed from above whether you want to participate or not) into a “coproducer”. In other words, it is the intention of this to drag you out into the fields for a little conscripted labor.

For some reason, upon reading about being transformed into being a coproducer, I can’t get out of my head images of what I’ve read about the placards that use to hang on the gates of the concentration camps run by the Nazis reading “Work shall make you free” or how the Khmer Rouge use to march the people out to labor in the rice paddies. You know, the entire reeducation through labor bit (or as it is called today, “community service”).

Though slow food fronts disguise themselves in an agrarian or proletarian cloak, as with most that make playing unscrubbed revolutionary their life’s work, the movement is quite elitist in nature. For example, on the website the organization laments the advent of low-cost chickens consumed by the masses.

Rather, the group advocates more expensive breeds. Most likely since the consumption of meat will be limited to the revolutionary vanguard whereas those of us deemed to possess a consciousness of insufficient awareness and sensitivity will be compelled to simply piddle in the dirt for a root or a grub; but we will probably be forbidden that as well since disturbing the soil to even a miniscule extent will be an example of the butterfly affect that could lead to an erosion-based environmental disaster.

As with most of the other groups mentioned in this epic epistle, Slow Foods USA has a phobia about people doing things by themselves. This is for pretty much the same reason the Nazis did not want people listening to the radio alone. When you are alone, you are more likely to be critical since in that context you are more apt to pay attention to the message rather than taking cues on how you are to respond from those around you.

Rather than eat alone, the socially responsible are obligated to join and take their gastronomical orders from a group called a “Convivium”. Since everything to these people is group and movement oriented, if food is now to go in one end in the presence of the group, I guess it won’t be long until one will be obligated to have the remnants emerge at the other end in the presence of the COMMUNITY. After all, only those with something to hide want privacy we are constantly reminded by the radical communalists.

Use to be, one ate meals with one’s family. Maybe if these hags had not aborted themselves into sterility, supper time would not have had to be turned into an act of COMMUNITY service measuring one’s devotion to the good of the cause.

Slow Food USA prides itself on being everything fast food is not. Thus, one good thing about the movement is that the shrill biddies comprising the membership might be forced back into the kitchen where hussies with too much time on their hands belong and won’t have enough energy to undertake their idiotic activism.

As stated, left to themselves and cordoned off from the rest of us, these radicals would not present all that much of a problem. However, as with other useful idiots manipulated by the elites, these halfwits play a vital role in bringing an end to life as we know it when they form strategic alliances with the other mouthpieces of perdition for the purposes of getting the American people to surrender their freedom with a wink and a smile.

To the regular American blissfully ignorant of the ideological struggle being waged all around, television news outlets and correspondents exist to convey in an objective manner information of use and importance to concerned citizens. However, often these communicators and the interests they represent are as partisan as those blatantly seeking to persuade you as to the veracity of a particular opinion.

Prominently featured in the top half of page 10 of the 2006 edition of the Green Festival program was an advertisement for a panel discussion conducted by WRC-TV news personality Wendy Rieger. From the text, the reader learns that Rieger’s “Going Green segment features green lifestyles and products.”

However, had Rieger earned a reputation for grilling adherents of this movement and exposing the fallacies in the arguments endangering the nation’s very standard of living, it is doubtful she would be given a place, the promotional literature categorizes, as on the “main stage”. Furthermore, if Rieger is snuggling under the mulch with environmentalists, how can we be sure the remainder of her reportage is not as slanted?

Would the Green Festival allow a correspondent more critical of the celebration’s claims to ascend the rostrum such as John Stossel or Rush Limbaugh? Tolerancemongers will snap, “But its a private function and the organizers are not required to invite anyone they don’t want.”

And they are absolutely correct. Perhaps we should remind them of that as these Reds drag out notions such as the Fairness Doctrine in the attempt to silence Conservative talk radio.

Conversely though, if we are suppose to trust some dyed-blonde newsgirl in the green movement’s pocket, would those having no problem with that be as quiet if some newsgal was in Jerry Falwell’s back pocket getting chummy with the Moral Majority gang at one of those kinds of shindigs? The aging beatniks do not consider what they believe to be a bias as anyone that does not believe as they do will be carted off to electroshock therapy once they ascend to unrivaled power.

Some will dismiss this clarion warming, claiming it has gone all over the map and too far afield. However, Francis Schaeffer once pointed out that a shortcoming of the Judeo-Christian mind and thus the conservative worldview as an extension of that perspective is the failure to view reality as a single comprehensive unit.

As such, if the free peoples of the earth give a foothold to these Communitarians in one area, by curtailing our innate liberties in that particular area, it won’t be that long in terms of the totality of history until we will have surrendered all the areas that make life worth living. If today we allow these so-called “guardians of the earth” to alter driving patterns and the like, what will prevent them in the future from coming back to take our cars and even our homes away all together?

 

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I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one “crisis” after another using wretchedly bad “science” to support their scams. On Tuesday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network is going to “release new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity as a whole, and the current ledgers are sobering.”

Well, of course, they’re sobering. Everything the Greens announce is sobering because, as you well know, the oceans are rising, the glaciers and polar caps are melting, we’re running out of oil, every animal on Earth is endangered, incandescent light bulbs and global warming will destroy all life on Earth, yada, yada, yada.

“The figures provide a data-driven look at some of the most pressing issues facing humanity, from climate change to equitable distribution of resources.”

Is the “equitable distribution of resources” the same as Barack Obama’s “redistribution of wealth”? Is this shorthand of every liberal’s wet dream, communism? Oh, yeah. Been there, seen it, don’t want any part of it. After giving communism a try for over seventy years, the Soviet Union imploded because it doesn’t work, never has, and never will.

After Chairman Mao Zedong introduced communism to China, his various programs managed to kill off several millions through starvation until his death allowed a revision toward capitalism that initiated the transformation that holds out vastly improved lives for its 1.3 billion citizens.

However, according to the Global Footprint Network, “Humanity now requires the resources it would take almost one and a half planets to sustainably produce, according to figures to be released.”

The Greens have an established pattern. They use bogus computer modeling to conjure up scads of “data” that take years to debunk and dispute. In the meantime, billions are wasted on their schemes.

This new hogwash conveniently debuts just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. The many delegates will wine and dine their way through tons of champagne, caviar, and other delicacies while trying to convince everyone the Earth is doomed unless virtually all industrial activity is ended

They will warn that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are responsible for “global warming”, but there is NO global warming beyond what the Sun provides and CO2 plays no role whatever in climate change.

The phony “carbon footprint” ignores the fact that carbon compounds form the basis for all known life on Earth!

Their bogus “carbon footprints” ignore the fact that CO2 is vital to life because it is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animals. It is food! More CO2 is better than less because it would provide for more abundant crop yields, healthier forests, and would reduce the spread of deserts.

The “carbon footprint” and the mountains of phony data built around it provides the Global Footprint Network the ability to announce that “The new numbers also reveal a growing disparity between those countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per capita and those with the smallest.” This is their way of saying that nations that produce more food and more commodities have an unfair advantage over those that do not.

It ignores the fact that “poor” nations are famous for despotism, oppression, and corruption, none of which have anything to do with whether they have abundant resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. It has everything to do with encouraging class or tribal warfare, religious strife, and all the ills common to humanity.

The key to spotting the Big Green Lie is the word “sustainability.”

Sustainability is a subterfuge for the destruction of property rights, a concept so essential to success in America that it is protected by the Constitution.

Wherever you see the word “sustainability”, you know that the Greens are emphasizing “renewable energy” (solar and wind) which cannot begin to compare with oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable energy is responsible for a mere one percent of all electricity generated in the United States and reliance upon it will leave people in nations such as Great Britain freezing to death in the dark.

The Greens want to replace hydrocarbon fuels with “biofuels” such as ethanol which diverts real food like corn into a useless form of energy that reduces mileage and actually emits more CO2! The Greens want to pack humanity into crowded cities, forbidding people from living in suburbs filled with trees and lawns. They want to reduce vehicle size and encourage the use of electric vehicles.

There is little evidence that the Earth is running out of oil or other sources of energy. Oil not only provides for transportation, but is the basis for fertilizers and other beneficial chemicals that ensure more crop yield to feed humans and livestock. It has a thousand other uses as well. Coal is so abundant that its use is calculated in centuries.

In short, the Greens want to impose the most stupid and evil standards and restrictions on human life. They would drag humanity back to an age when horses and oxen were the modes of transportation and means of agriculture.

This is the goal of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and its treaty to impose a One World Order with its incumbent oppressive government structure to deprive its victims of privacy, dignity, and initiative. And, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, of life itself.

The “carbon footprint”, along with “global warming”, should be consigned to the dustbin of failed and false economic and schemes known as socialism and communism. They are a synonym for suffering and death.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

 

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I doubt that most Americans have a clue what the leading Green organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club have as their agenda for 2009. They have already made it known their members, so I will share it with you.

There are literally dozens of these groups in the United States and each has their own particular focus of attention, but the largest among them play well together in the giant sandbox of Green utopian fantasies. That’s why both FOE and Sierra Club announced they are looking forward to “a clean slate” from the Obama administration.

“There’s nothing like a fresh start. On his first day in office, President Obama could make four decisions that would start 2009 with a ‘clean slate’ of energy policies,” said Friends of the Earth at the same time, the Sierra Club announced its own “Clean Slate Energy Agenda” that—surprise—was the same.

The focus of both is on energy use and accessibility. Both want a lot LESS energy use. Along with all other environmental organizations both use the bogy man of “global warming” to demand huge reductions in “emissions.”

The Sierra Club informed its members that it wants to “reduce global warming emissions quickly by making it possible for over a dozen states to implement their clean car requirements.” This is the objective of one of President Obama’s earliest executive orders. Driving up the cost of owning and operating a car directly strikes at the ability of Americans to be mobile and independent. Justifying it as necessary to reduce global warming is just a big fat lie. There is NO global warming.

Friends of the Earth are totally opposed to any economy stimulus that might include improving the nation’s infrastructure of highways. They warned the plan “is in danger of being hijacked by the road-building lobby, which wants billions of dollars for unnecessary new roads that would increase global warming pollution.”

Over the years I have come to marvel at the ability of environmental organizations to conjure up statistics faster than a magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat. “”Transportation is responsible for 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of our oil consumption” warned Friends of the Earth. What does it matter that carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) have no impact whatever on the Earth’s climate? And just what is wrong with oil consumption if it contributes to the success and growth of the nation’s economy?

“Just 10 miles of a new four-lane highway lead to emissions that are equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 46,700 new Hummers,” said Friends of the Earth. To which I reply, who cares? With oil prices plunging, those Hummers, particularly in parts of the nation hit by bad weather, look like a good idea. Bottom line: if you can afford a Hummer, where is it written you should not be allowed to own one?

Friends of the Earth, however, want to “shift the debate” in the environmental community to get the nation to avoid “car-centric highways and toward sustainable alternatives such as transit, biking, walking, and smart growth development, that will help fight global warming.”

What are these Green groups going to do when the vast population of the United States and elsewhere around the world concludes that there is no global warming? That day is not far off insofar as the Earth is now fully a decade into a cooling cycle that promises longer, harsher winters and a shift to generally cooler temperatures that will affect all northern hemisphere nations in particular and to an extent those in the southern hemisphere as well.

This explains why the United Nations environmental program has shifted into high gear to get the bogus Kyoto Protocols ratified. Not surprisingly, the U.S. has never signed on to it and even European nations that did are balking at emission reduction mandates. Meanwhile, neither China, nor India, nor many under-developed nations are subject to any of the restrictions. It’s a plan to undermine the economies of developed nations because greens hate humanity in general and successful economies in particular.

We’re not even halfway through the “clean slate” proposals. They include Sierra Club’s call to “require new and existing coal power plants to limit their global warming emissions” and to “end destructive mountaintop removal mining…” Finally, they want to “restore America’s international leadership in the fight to end global warming by publicly committing the U.S. to cut its CO2 emissions at least 35 percent by 2020.”

The Greens are so demented that the American Bird Conservancy released a statement in mid-December hailing the appointments of the new Obama administration. Its idea of stimulating the economy was to “invest $29 million dollars over the next four years in the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act” because “bird watching is now big business.” The Conservancy wants the U.S. to “invest “$540 million in America’s 543 national wildlife refuges” to create more “green jobs.” What a big help that will be to Americans who live primarily in America’s cities and suburbs.

The bird-lovers are a bit conflicted over another recommendation to “invest $30.5 million in the five year extension of the renewable energy production tax credit and making renewable energy tax incentives fully refundable. Wind energy is one of the alternative sources of energy” they recommend, but “if left unregulated, has the potential to kill large numbers of birds and bats and harm fragile habitats.” Well, which is it? Dead birds or more “alternative” energy? Both are extremely bad ideas.

The Greens for all their enthusiasm to spend tax dollars on their favorite notions remain opposed to any real energy generation by coal-fired or nuclear plants to meet current and future needs for electricity. They are utterly opposed to people driving around in cars for any reason and, one must assume, trucks that deliver the goods we require to live.

The longer one listens to what the Greens want, the more one becomes convinced that the members of these organizations must be utterly brain dead and that their objective is to render America a third-world nation by opposing the building of new power plants, along with the exploration and extraction of our natural resources of coal, natural gas, and oil.

Does this sound like a good plan to you?

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Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

 

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