The Mother of All Green Groups has devoted itself to finding every way possible to make our lives miserable, all in the name of protecting the environment.
While most of us spend our time working to pay our energy bills and put food on the table, Friends of the Earth (FOE) spend theirs doing everything in their capacity to insure that the nation and the world will not have sufficient energy to meet the needs of the human family. They may be friends of the earth, but they are no friends of those of us who live on it.
This Mother of All Green Groups has devoted itself to finding every way possible to make our lives miserable, all in the name of protecting the environment. They are, of course, totally devoted to the Big Lie about Global Warming.
In a recent news release (10/3/07) FOE said, “The science is unequivocal. Global climate change is real, occurring at an alarming rate with catastrophic consequences.”
Well, let’s understand something. The climate is always in a state of change.
If, by “climate change,” FOE means “global warming,” a term they’re trying to use less these days because they know how discredited it has become, then the assertion that “catastrophic consequences” are due any day now demonstrates how the entire environmental movement is based on scare tactics and oblivious to the truth.
The FOE news release told of “a coalition of environmental advocates (who) filed a petition today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to set pollution rules for large, ocean-going marine vessels. These vessels include cargo and cruise ships.” Now, if you want to push up the cost of every single thing that is transported by cargo ship, this is the way to do it. And, while they’re at it, they want to add more to the cost of that cruise you may be planning.
FOE and its friends, Oceana and the Center for Biological Diversity, assert that, “Ships are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The global fleet of marine vessels releases almost three percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, an amount comparable to the emissions of Canada.”
The fact that 95 percent of greenhouse gases consist of water vapor is conveniently ignored, or that the oceans of the world trap and release carbon dioxide all the time is also overlooked. Every human on earth exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day, but FOE does not want to deal with real science.
If you are FOE, the only thing that matters is the lie and using the lie to drive up the cost of moving goods, raw materials, and people around the world. Their proposal benefits no one.
FOE doesn’t care what kind of energy resource it attacks because these Green loonies are opposed to all forms — with the exception of wind and solar power, two of the most inefficient and inadequate ways of providing energy anywhere other than isolated places like the Poles, deserts, or jungles.
An example of this was another news release (10/4/07) that attacked nuclear power. For three decades FOE and other Greens have successfully thwarted efforts to introduce nuclear power more widely throughout the nation while loudly decrying the use of coal and other resources used to generate electrical power. “Many of you know why nuclear power isn’t an answer to global warming: in stark contrast to solutions like wind power and increased efficiency, nuclear power involves too much time, money and risk.”
As our nation’s leaders worry about events in the Middle East, from where easily a third of our oil is imported, Congress has begun to consider a loan guarantee proposal to encourage new nuclear plant construction. One might think this was a good thing insofar as nuclear fission does not produce any of that horrid “air pollution” attributed to other forms of energy production.
FOE asked, “If we are really talking about meeting the challenge of global warming, nuclear power is about the slowest way to go about doing so. It takes at least 10 years for nuclear power plants to go from conception to operation. Wind turbines can go up in a year, and efficiency improvements can be realized almost immediately.” This is utter nonsense.
Wind power is the least efficient way to provide electrical energy and would involve having to cover an entire state with windmills to come even close to matching the output of a single nuclear power plant with a footprint of a few acres. Nor is it even remotely possible to achieve enough energy “efficiency improvements” to reduce or meet the needs of a nation with three hundred million people and growing.
Lastly, need it be said that “meeting the challenge of global warming” is no challenge at all, given the fact that there is no catastrophic global warming?
What people have to understand is that “enough” is never enough for the Greens.
Until they have us all growing our own crops and raising chickens, cattle and sheep in the backyard, digging latrines instead of using flush toilets, using bicycles or horses for transportation, they will never been satisfied.
Welcome to the Bad Old Days.
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
FOE omits, of course, that over half of the 10 years they say it takes to build a nuclear power plant is taken up addressing all the frivolous lawsuits brought against the builders, lawsuits that also drain almost half the cost.
And these people call themselves progressives?
FOE and their ilk don't want us to go back to an agricultural society, they want to reduce the global population to the about the population of the US, and they want to be in charge when that happens, so only they will have access to the upper levels of technology, while the rest of us unwashed languish as their peasant stock..
Comment by daverock | November 5, 2007
Call me paranoid, but I am seeing the planets start to align such that it will probably be fashionable (as in first-century-Rome fashionable) in my lifetime for Christians to be vilified for everything. We are seeing a series of publications from guys like Hitchens and D'Souza actually seriously debating whether Hitler was a Christian, with the clear underlying Atheist contentions being that the Christian Church is at least partly responsible for the Holocaust.
We are seeing guys like Sam Harris get lots of press with his unending message that religion is essentially the root of all evil.
We are seeing many of these "earth worshipping" movements such as FOE drawing on their underlying belief that the Genesis command for man to "subdue the earth" is the evil at the root of global warming, raping and pillaging the land to get oil, deforestation, and all the other gripes of the extreme environmental left.
We are seeing the culture slowly begin to drink the Kool Aid that if it weren't for "intolerant" Christians, we'd be well on our way to utopia in terms of sexual freedom - and that Christianity is basically a hate-mongering belief system at its core that has the audacity to proclaim moral absolutes.
Every one of these things has a latent anti-Christian sentiment in at least part of its implicit or explicit message.
Yeah, call me paranoid. We think we are so advanced as a culture, but it isn't all that big a step from these various seemingly unrelated issues to finding a belief system as the new thing-that-must-not-be-tolerated. And increasingly, that appears to be Christianity — the new twin brother to Islamo-fascism…presented as two sides of the same coin by many on the left who want religion to be a lap dog rather than an actual culturally defining force.
Yeah, I'm starting to get worried.
Comment by Steve Sabin | November 5, 2007
In reality, they don't want alternative energy. They want a society that moves backwards in terms of total energy consumption and dependence on energy.
Wind turbines kill birds and are unsightly. Solar farms require huge footprints to generate the same power as a conventional fossil-fuel plant, destroying delicate desert ecosytems (one can almost see the anti-solar ads already showing Monument Valley covered with solar panels). Hydropower floods animals and "indiginous" peoples out of house and home. Nuclear is too dangerous. Lunar (tidal) generation adversely impacts ocean habitats. And, of course, the burning of fossil fuels is single-handedly responsible for warming the planet. In other words, no matter what form of energy generation is being discussed, they will find a way to stridently oppose it. Meanwhile, they buzz about cluelessly in their electric vehicles, blissfully ignorant that somewhere, somehow, fossil fuels are being burned to boil the water that spins the turbine that moves the electrons that follow the wire and towers that had to be mined from a pit that comes out the outlet that powers that car. Yup, they're sure doing their part. Out of sight, out of mind. And never mind that we haven't really found a way to store large amounts of electricity for any length of time. No, the average person seems to believe that the equivalent of a 500 MW duracell battery exists out there somewhere.
We are dealing with people that would never admit to earth-worship, but that is at least part of what is at the root of their fanaticism, even if subconscious. Man was told in Genesis to subdue the earth. We can do that intelligently or unintelligently, sustainably or non-sustainably, with stewardship or without, but these enviro-extremists are increasingly unwilling to entertain the notion of "subdue" at all. Pretty soon, the underlying assumption that the earth exists for man's benefit, rather than vice-versa, will be treated with the same contempt that I recall being reserved for "manifest destiny" in my college textbooks of 25 years ago.
Comment by Steve Sabin | November 5, 2007
To add to Steve Sabin,
When I was in London, I was approached by a FOE activist looking for donations. A student diligently doing what they though was good.
At the time they were pushing for renewable energy and against nuclear energy and the traditional power plants. At the time I was living in Luxembourg close to the German border, so saw first hand the giant wind turbines in place generating energy. I pointed out that the one thing you notice about living near wind turbines is the lack of birds. Occassionally you will come across the body of one that had been mangled by the turbines. The poor activist seemed oblivious to this. Living in a big city such as London, they had no experience of the effects that turbines have on the environment. When I pointed out, that on the otherside of Luxembourg near the French border, there was a nuclear power plant, you could see more wild life there then near the supposedly eco friendly wind turbines.
Indoctrination playing on ignorance and peoples willingness to do good.
Comment by Leigh | November 6, 2007
Like the Elders of Zion or the Gnomes of Zurich before them, the “greens” are working behind the scenes in a hidden conspiracy aimed at global domination. Their particular goal: To turn civilization back to an earlier age where sparsely populated, scattered communities till the earth with makeshift plows and live in true harmony with nature.
Nah! I think it’s all about the money - all the time. Have you ever checked out the salaries and perks of these selfless crusaders of various causes that fill the daily news? Is there a law that you can’t save the planet and make a very good living while doing it? Can you be a modern-day P. T. Barnum and cash in on the public’s desire for novelty and the bizarre? And, what’s more bizarre than these constant doomsday scenarios?
Global cooling, global warming, nuclear winter, virulent diseases that sweep the planet – do your part, send in $100 and help stop the looming disaster. Here we are, the gullible and guilt ridden, victims of our own wealth and eager to buy indulgences to stave off certain disaster. And, what’s so unusual about entrepreneurs rushing to fill a marketing need?
I don’t buy the “world domination” or “turn back the clock” explanations as to what motivates the greens. Global warming is a business just like any other business. And, like any business, it has its particular problems. One reason we are seeing constant and frantic pleas to address global warming is that time is running out for this product line; the market has reached maturity and is trending down.
“Where are the signs of disaster?” the public is asking. “When will we see some of the predictions come true?” is another frequently asked question. If the oceans don’t rise soon or massive storms sweep the globe, the public will surely become angry and resentful. After all, we were promised horrible consequences, but so far nothing out of the expected normal has occurred. Global warming would cause increasingly powerful hurricanes was one recent prediction. But, so far, this hurricane season has been one of the mildest in the past decade. And, CNN’s Anderson Cooper blaming massive forest fires in Southern California on global warming has to be an act of desperation since these fires have been common to that region for decades.
So, what’s really going on here? Global warming hysteria has a short shelf life and the public isn’t responding rapidly enough with gifts of money to propitiate the global warming gods. The GW hustlers have yet to see the kind of financial returns that were predicted by the early business models. Congress, even with semi-hysterical Democrats leading the charge, hasn’t voted enough taxpayer funds to satisfy the global warming entrepreneurs.
And, what’s worse, the return on investment has been, excuse the pun, disastrous. It cost a great deal of money to fund a global disaster scenario – there’s advertising costs, travel expenses, conference expenses, banquets, expensive recognition award ceremonies to buy celebrity and media support, “save the planet” concerts, etc. A lot of cash has been spent so far, but revenue is dribbling in slowly and not at the rate the GW business models forecast.
Soon, the jokes will start – late-night talk show hosts will lampoon the global warming business, the public mood will turn bitter and mockery will increase to ugly proportions with the suspicion we are being conned. The famous, public icons who supported GW in the early stages will head for the hills when realization sets in. Oprah Winfrey once predicted that HIV/AIDS would kill 25% of this planet’s inhabitants. And, she would eventually excuse her gullibility by claiming she was misinformed and had, with the best of intentions, overstated the problem. However, billions were made on the AIDS scare before the truth leaked out and that market matured. Folks that were once driving Honda Accords were now spending their AIDS profits on Lamborghinis, Bentley Arnages and Maybachs – the AIDS profiteers made a killing. But, so far, there has been no such windfall for the global warming promoters.
Another disappointing market sign is that scientists are acting like rats leaving the ship. There have always been respected scientists like physicist Freeman Dyson and MIT’s Richard Lindzen who expressed skepticism about global warming. But now respected journals like “Science” magazine are starting to pull back from their previous disaster scenarios. Early on, “Science” and “Scientific American” magazine were heavy supporters of global warming, firing editorial after editorial at the public like a pro football player trying to get the crowd into the game with pleas to make more noise. But, the mood among scientists is turning cautious with the growing fear the public will remember who made the scare predictions and those scientists who authored them will forfeit their special status as priests and acolytes to the angry and all-powerful god Nature.
As the desperation builds, we can expect the GW business promoters to pull out all the stops. And, sure enough, the “it’s for the children” ad campaigns have begun to appear – I caught one last night on the tube – young, attractive children of all races; their innocent faces missing front teeth and pleading with us to save their future. All this money spent on advertising and promotion is surely a buildup to a major funding bill in Congress and the hope is the public will respond with massive monetary grants and restrictive laws leading to the opening of new markets and opportunities to profit from global warming.
But, even mature markets can continue to generate revenue and we can expect global warming to be around for years to come. Those GW wannabe business moguls now driving Toyota Camry’s, or more likely Honda Prius’s, will probably only graduate to Mercedes or Jaguars within this disappointing market. But, that’s better than a net loss. As members of the public, we will continue to feel the heat of global warming, but I think it will be future “end of the world” business promoters who will get burned.
Comment by Pat Skurka | November 6, 2007
Pat Skurka, it may be true that there's a "short shelf life" but it's long enough to do damage. People are duped into sending money and giving moral support to movements that purport to be for the good of the future generations. Hardly anyone doesn't want to ensure the world is safe for children and grandchildren.
I know the planet contains evidence of warming and cooling shifts in climate over its lifespan. A swing away from the Sun for a few thousand years may have already begun. But even if they could prove it, scientists and policy-makers alike would be hard-pressed to convince people they should care about something that takes so long to occur. Instead those with vested interests try to create spin for little-known or understood phenomena which nevertheless sound like they are going to occur in our lifetimes, or at least our childrens' lifetimes.
Unfortunately, by the time the truth is accepted, the fraudulent are long gone, and time and money have been wasted and nothing accomplished except a few individuals' pockets lined. Funny how those are often the loudest squawking about the evils of capitalism for the same reason.
Fact is, whether there is actually a climate change towards generally warmer or generally cooler temperatures, as a species our best bet IS nuclear energy. Every form of energy has some risk attached; objective studies show that nuclear is the safest. The ten years it might take to build a nuclear plant are being wasted arguing and attempting to find alternatives, all the while denigrating nuclear energy as vaguely "dangerous." The more that people fear nuclear, the greater the risk that if a major climate change is just around the corner, it will wreak havoc and leave us unable to cope.
The call at present is to alter behavior to "conserve" energy. This is also misguided. Our energy needs grow exponentially.
My view is, people care about their children, if not themselves. To deal with whatever climate change may be coming along (and let's agree for argument's sake that there is), honest science already knows that such change is not due to human activity. Therefore, in any given region, what we really need is the ability to generate greater amounts of power to maintain climate-controlled buildings and provide the means to handle whatever nature dishes out.
Comment by AMAI | November 25, 2007
Actual nuclear power plant construction only takes about 4-years. The rest is spent in endless red-tape and haggling with environmentalists satisfying a public excited into believing nuclear far more dangerous than it is. There are very real concerns to nuclear, but, by now, they are well known and the design work has been done in hundreds of foreign power plants. Back in 1979, when a moratorium was put on new plants, design was still evolving and it really did take that long. Now, when Greens claim it still takes 10 years from drawing board to pumping electricity into the grid, it is only because they are throwing monkey-wrench after road-block. DOE has streamlined the licensing process, but there is still plenty of environmental baggage on that beast.
Despite the need, building new nuclear plants is not yet competitive with building fossil plants to keep up with demand and won't be until the cost of fossil is considerably higher (see http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2004/prn200405.html). Yet, if we wait until it is competitive ,it may be too late to keep up with demand. Therefore, it is important we figure out the right time to start so that these new plants so they come on line in time to take up the slack.
Comment by Bob Stapler | November 27, 2007