"Earth Hour's" Global Propaganda Campaign ... Alan Caruba

"Earth Hour's" Global Propaganda Campaign

By Alan Caruba

 On Saturday, 8:30 PM local time, everyone will be invited to turn off all their electrical devices and presumably sit in the dark. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour is intended to “encourage American cities to prepare for the costly impacts of climate-related extreme weather and reduce their carbon footprint.”

Earth Hour is an example of the enormous funding available to the Greens and of their continued assault on the world’s population to encourage and maintain its message that the Earth is imperiled by mankind’s activities, i.e., the use of energy. Earth Hour is a huge piece of international propaganda. Millions of dollars and man-hours have been expended to get the lights turned off from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building, the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Australia’s Opera House.

You may have noticed there is no longer any reference to “global warming.” That’s because a growing percentage of Americans have concluded that global warming is a hoax. The same charlatans behind Earth Hour and the forthcoming Earth Day on April 22nd have mostly abandoned any reference to global warming and are now lying to you about “climate change” and, soon enough, will shift their message to “sustainability.”

On December 21, 2012, you will find the same people who have drunk deeply of the global warming Kool-Aid sitting on mountaintops waiting for the end of the world as predicted by a Mayan calendar. You will not find any Mayans there because that civilization is long gone.

More recently, Pastor Harold Camping predicted the end of the world in 1994 and then revised his prediction to May 21, 2011. People have been predicting the end of the world for a very long time. They have all been wrong.

Earth Hour fits into this pattern, but its insidious purpose to maintain the same levels of anxiety and fear that has driven the environmental movement since it began in earnest back in the 1970s when it was predicting an ice age would arrive. A decade later they switched gears and began predicting global warming, projecting the end over periods of time from a decade to fifty years or so.

Global warming—a dramatic rise in the Earth’s temperatures—did not occur for two reasons; (1) it was a hoax based on computer models created by charlatans and, (2) largely due to a natural cooling cycle that set in around 1998 as the Sun’s sunspot activity began its own natural cycle in which fewer such magnetic storms occurred. Scientists have long known that a reduction of sunspots has always been accompanied by cooling on Earth.

The Green’s claim that a build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) would plunge the Earth into a period of warming is the greatest lie of the modern era. The Earth has had periods in which the level of CO2 was much higher. Vital to all life on Earth, CO2 is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animal life.

The notion that “man made” CO2 portends disaster is false and is directed at forcing the reduction of the use of all “fossil fuels” for industrial and all other uses. It is the greatest scam ever perpetrated because the Greens use it to sell “carbon credits”, worthless pieces of paper that could be sold or traded in the same way as the “indulgences” that were sold as a way to buy a ticket into heaven.

I recommend that you read a short book that explains how and why the environmental movement is a huge scam and a hideous attack on mankind. “Roosters of the Apocalypse” by Rael Jean Isaac ($8.95) is published by The Heartland Institute and can be purchased from its website. In less time than it takes to watch “Dancing with the Stars”, you will learn everything you need to know about the global warming scam and all the ways you and everyone else are being robbed by the schemes tied to it, to “climate change”, and to “sustainability.”

Ms. Isaac tells the story of how, in today’s South Africa, the Xhosa tribe destroyed its economy in 1856. Based on a prophecy of a 15-year-old orphan girl, they killed an estimated half-million of their own cattle, ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. “By the end of 1857 between thirty and fifty thousand of them had starved to death—a third to a half of their population.”

Turning off all electricity during Earth Hour is no different from what the Xhosa tribe did and refusing to allow the drilling for oil and natural gas, or mining coal, all of which the United States has in sufficient abundance to make us energy independent and exporters of these energy reserves, is an act of national suicide; one that this international symbolism portends for any nation that abandons the energy that sustains economic growth and the welfare of millions.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Human activity, mostly in the past five thousand years that we call civilization, has not had a thing to do with its existence, but some humans are foolish creatures, easily spooked by prophecies that do not come true or claims that they are responsible for its existence and future. Some of them will turn off their electricity on Saturday.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Greener Than Thou ... Alan Caruba

Greener Than Thou

By Alan Caruba

The most obnoxious and hypocritical people are those who are always preaching a “greener” way of life, insisting that anything that constitutes our modern lifestyles is destroying the Earth and depleting its natural resources. Never mind that we depend upon oil, natural gas, coal, and a host of minerals and chemicals for that lifestyle, the absence of which caused people in earlier eras to live shorter, far more unpleasant lives.

Oil, other than ust an energy source is also a component in countless products, starting with plastic, and is so vital to modern life that its value goes far beyond just being able to drive our cars to visit grandma.

Greener than thou has replaced holier than thou ever since Rachel Carson penned her pernicious and seriously flawed attack on DDT and other chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides in 1962. The result has been the needless deaths of millions from malaria in Africa and subtropical nations after the U.S. banned DDT and other nations followed suit. If there was a comparable pesticide available today, the U.S. would not be suffering a biblical plague of bed bugs.

A bone fide environmentalist, David Owen, has written a book that quite literally filets environmentalism, “The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse.” ($14.00, Riverhead Press, softcover).

Owen, who has authored 14 previous books, examines the way environmentalism frequently makes no sense at all. This is not to be confused with conservation, the earlier movement that led to the preservation of some of the nation’s natural wonders.

To live an environmentally acceptable way of life is the same as striving to be a saint, avoiding “sin” in order to secure a place in heaven. It is not only virtually impossible, but to be human is to consume what Nature provides. If you think about, all of Earth's creatures are consumers, depending on where they are on the food chain.

For example, when environmentalists convinced Congress to reduce the amount of water in toilet tanks, the only thing they accomplished was to require that the newer, smaller tanks had be flushed twice to rid he toilet of feces and urine, i.e., more use of water, not less. The EPA has just issued a ruling they claim is necessary to reduce mercury emissions despite the fact that your average volcanic eruption puts more into the atmosphere than any human imposed restrictions could ever achieve. Congress, however, passed a law banning 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, thus requiring people to purchase mercury-filled ones that, if broken, require a hazmat team to clean up after.

Environmentalism is essentially irrational.

It believes that humans actually have anything to do with “saving the Earth” when the natural forces of the Earth are so far beyond any “control” that it routinely reminds us of this fact. We have zero impact on the climate and, as for carbon dioxide, the villain of all “global warming” claims, humans exhale about six pounds of it every day. And there are seven billion of us. Even so, it constitutes barely 0.033 percent of the atmosphere.

Owen begins by posing the question, “How do we truly begin to think about less—less fossil fuel, less carbon, less water, less waste, less habitat destruction, less population stress—when our sense of economic, cultural, and personal well-being is based on more?”

The real question at the heart of all environmentalism is what do we do when there are seven billion humans using the resources of the Earth and the real answer for environmentalists is how do we reduce the Earth’s population and how do they grow rich in the process? That is what lies at the heart of all the “solutions” put forth by the United Nations environmental program; an enemy of the human race if there ever was one.

What environmentalists want is “a vast, unprecedented transformation of human behavior in our relationship with energy and consumption.” The next time you hear anyone call for a “transformation” know also that they are a charlatan seeking control over your life.

The environmental assumption is that the Earth is running out of the sources of energy and that consumption is bad. Both are equally wrong because the Earth is not running out of the sources of energy and consumption is what humans and all other species on Earth do every day.

Owen believes that humans are “the world’s main emitter of manmade greenhouse gases” and this is utterly false. The so-called greenhouse gases are the ones in the atmosphere that not only keep the Sun from turning the Earth into a desiccated version of Mars or the Moon, but in the case of carbon dioxide, it is responsible for every single element of vegetation upon which all life depends.

Owen and many environmentalists would prefer that all of humanity live packed side-by-side in crowded cities, using mass transit or bicycling to work to save the Earth, but anyone who gives two thoughts to the amount of energy consumed to maintain a city knows this too is yet another idiotic environmental conceit.

Indeed, Owen notes that “There are many downsides to density, including the fact that squeezing people and their destinations close together makes diseases, wars, and natural disasters more efficient, too.”

That, says Owen, is a conundrum. Indeed, his book is filled with environmental conundrums that he tries to resolve while overtly and inadvertently exposing the idiocy of environmentalism.

Simply put, farmers are the world’s natural environmentalists, relying on the weather—which they cannot control—and the stewardship of their land to feed themselves and others. They must, however, have a means to move their crops to places where other humans can acquire them and that requires a massive system of transportation which, in turn, requires the affordable use of energy.

Environmentalism’s goals, clean air and water, are laudable, but a massive governmental bureaucracy to require that people use less energy and consume less is not.

Time and time again we see examples of environmentalism that only manage to kill people, whether it is the banning of beneficial chemicals or the use of the least efficient forms of electrical power, wind and solar energy.

The least reported story out of Europe these days is the extreme cold that is literally killing people because it puts the lie to all the environmental “solutions” advanced since the 1960s. Environmentalism has been decried as a religion and, for those who want to deny a greater power, Nature or God, it remains their holy grail.

© Alan Caruba, 2012.
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

Earth Day or Good Friday. Which Will It Be?

Earth Day or Good Friday.  Which Will It Be?

Paganism and Christianity Forever At Odds

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Today is Good Friday.  Traditionally the Day Christ was crucified.  Today is also Earth Day.  It is a date set aside to worship the earth (paganism).  Today is also the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, (April 22^nd 1870).  Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, author, lawyer, economic theorist, and political philosopher among other things.   Lenin created the Soviet Communist Party.

We agree with the folks at “TheBlogProf” who say:  “It is no coincidence that Earth Day, April 22, was chosen to coincide with the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. A day that celebrates communism as the gold standard of human civilization. Never mind that it has never worked as advertised, creating disorder rather than order. Environmentalism, the religion du jour of the 21st century, has very similar ends of government control under the guise of being good stewards of the planet.”  (We recommend you read the entire article HERE.)

Please note how the writer at TheBlogProf refers to environmentalism:

“Environmentalism, the religion du jour of the 21st century … ”

In our opinion, the writer is dead on.  Environmentalism has become a full-fledged religion.

As I have said before: we have a hodge-podge of religions is America.  Having said that, we have to admit that some are uplifting while others are, well, just plain goofy.

I learned early on in my education that one of the most interesting discoveries, made by anthropologists, is that the human animal will, somehow, create a religion – or religions.  Scientists tell us the human animal must have belief in something that gives meaning to his, or her, existence.  We human animals long for a power greater than our own.  It seems to come in our wiring. I happen to believe that is true.

If I may be allowed to explain:  If one believes in the divine creator, as I do, then one believes the human animal was created by that divine creator referred to simply as God.  Just as a child will long for his parents I believe humans long for their parent – God.  Seems to me, that is an explanation for the longing man has for a divine being and leads him to create an “idol” of practically anything that will provide him a focus point for that parent he instinctively knows is there -- yet remains unseen. 

I am not a theologian.  But, I must tell you I think my explanation for man’s endeavor to close the gap between man an God, existent since the Garden of Eden, is as good as any.  Christians will tell you that Christ, God’s Son, came to this earth and closed that gap 2,000 years ago.  He was perceived by the corrupt government of his day as a threat and, as a result, he was executed.  Christians believe that three days later he rose from the dead and returned home but not before promising to return and clean up the mess we have made.

That was around 2,000 years ago.  Things have changed for the worst. In this century, and the last, so many have turned from the worship of a supreme being, we call God, to what we used to call “paganism”… the worship of nature, or the environment, or… more specifically… Environmentalism.

Yes, Environmentalism HAS become a religion.  Well, actually, it always was, it has just come back into favor in the past 100 years, or so.

One thing I want to set straight before continuing, nature is not God. It is my belief that GOD created nature.  Now, we can continue.

Michael Crichton, in his “Environmentalism as Religion” remarks made before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2003, summed it all up rather nicely, I think:

“The believers in environmentalism believe and preach that we should live in unity with nature, or the environment.  They believe that in the beginning we did. They believe that we are now living in sin because we have polluted the earth.  We will be visited with a judgment day and the judgment will be death, for the whole planet, unless we repent, (which means to turn around and go the other way) and make our way back to sustainability. You see, in the environmentalism religion, sustainability IS salvation.””   …    Michael Crichton.  See Crichton’s remarks here: HERE.

The environmental religionists are calling for us to repent.  We are doomed, they say, as a result of pollution, global warming, running out of oil, the whole list of tribulations the environmentalist faithful are so sure are coming.

They believe that man and nature should co-exist in one accord. Humans have never done that.  Why …  because it is impossible.  Man has always been at nature’s mercy. Nature is unforgiving.  Nature will kill you in a split second!  The evidence is all around me as I sit here writing in North Carolina where we were ravaged just last weekend by an assault force of tornadoes killing scores and damaging property that will take decades to repair, if ever. 

Today, we have all the preachers of the Church of Environmentalism, preaching at us non-stop.  They preach fear.  They preach gloom and doom. They preach forsaking progress and returning to the days when man lived in harmony with nature, even though no such period ever existed in the history of mankind.

Many feel that inside that outer shell of green, the environmentalists so proudly wear, is the red of communism.  Like a watermelon, on the outside it is green.  Conversely, on the inside it is red.  And therein lies the connection with Earth Day’s observance on the birthday of Vladimir Lenin one of the founders of communism.

The environmental movement is in direct conflict with the Christian religion and, in our opinion; Christians should stir clear of any involvement with the greenies, the “useful idiots” of the Marxists and communists, intent on the destruction of all those rights granted to man by God.

Earth Day is a pagan celebration, and I want no part in it.

J. D. Longstreet 

What Greens Really Believe ... Alan Caruba

 

What Greens Really Believe

By Alan Caruba

Earth Day was established in 1970 and millions of Americans and others around the world have been steadily brainwashed to embrace the impression that environmentalism is about protecting the Earth, but when Greens talk among themselves, it is a very different story and a frightening one at that.

The massive propaganda program that supports the Green agenda is impressive in its scope. Its locus is the United Nations whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was revealed in 2009 to be a complete hoax based on the manipulation of computer models to predict a warming due to excess carbon dioxide. There never was any threat from CO2. It is a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. It represents a very minor, even miniscule, part of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Nothing, however, deters the Green agenda and, since the first Earth Day, it has penetrated the nation’s schools and, of course, its politics, deliberately deterring and thwarting access to the nation’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the greatest such reserves in the world! It is a drag on business development. It is the ultimate nanny state seeking to alter people's lifestyles through coercion, legislation, and persuasion.

What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.

Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept, was quoted by William Tuck in “Progress and Privilege”, 1982, as saying “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals, but absolutely limited by the state.” Lamont Cole, an ecologist, has said, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."

Stewart Brand, writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote, “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”

I doubt most people are wishing for a disaster and, when they occur such as the earthquakes in Haiti and in Japan, the first instinct of decent people worldwide is to mobilize to help those affected. This is a very human reaction, but it is not a Green one.

Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists characterized capitalism, saying “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…Capitalism is destroying the earth.”

It is no coincidence that Earth Day is also the birthday of Vladimir Illich Lenin, the founder of the former Soviet Union and devotee of Karl Marx, the creator of Communism. The Communist revolution worldwide led to the murder of an estimated one hundred million throughout the last century.

At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.

David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land.”

Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil.

Major environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to name just two, oppose the use of coal, oil, and natural gas to provide energy.

So much of what environmentalism preaches and claims in its propaganda is utterly false, but telling lies is part and parcel of the Green message.

Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator (D-CO) said, “What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Virtually everything being advocated by the Obama administration represents this willingness to take action and tell lies about the nation’s need for energy, with the exception of the worst ways of producing it, wind, solar, and biofuels. Even before gasoline prices climbed to new highs, negatively affecting all aspects of life in America, Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, was advocating higher prices.

The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.

A deluge of environmental propaganda will precede Earth Day, April 22, 2011. It should be seen as a warning to all who believe in the Creator and all who wish to advance a world at peace, one in which humanity benefits from trade, prosperity, and modern technology worldwide.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Turning Off the (Incandescent) Light of Liberty ... Alan Caruba

Turning Off the (Incandescent) Light of Liberty
By Alan Caruba

What if the government banned air conditioning? What if flat-screen televisions were determined to use too much electricity and were ordered phased out of production? What if the use of all plastic grocery bags were banned? What if the incandescent light bulb, one of the greatest inventions of Thomas Edison in the 1870s was banned? Oh wait, it has been banned!

In a nation where the Medicare “reform” requires Americans to purchase health insurance they may not want and may not be able to afford, was rammed through Congress, what can stop the government from dictating just about any choice you have regarding any purchase you make? The answer? Nothing.

Only it would no longer be a Constitutional government, a nation of laws that reflect anything resembling the truth. The ban on incandescent light bulbs turns off the light of liberty throughout America.

Here are some truths to keep in mind. (1) Carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other “greenhouse gas emissions” does not cause global warming. (2) There is no global warming. (3) The Earth has gone through known warming and cooling cycles for millions of years. (4) The Earth is in a cooling cycle.

(5) Beginning January 1, 2012, government rules will make it impossible to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb. After that, in time, all such light bulbs will be phased out leaving Americans with only dim, over-priced, mercury-filled light bulbs. And (6) they will be made overseas, primarily in China.

By 2012, by order of the government, Americans will no longer be able to purchase any incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because Congress banned them, citing the need to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” to reduce global warming that isn’t happening.

It’s the same Congress that had already determined how much water your toilet can use to flush. It’s the same Congress that determined “cafe” rules that determine how many miles per gallon your automobile must achieve. It’s the same government that requires ethanol be added to gasoline, thus reducing the mileage a gallon of adulterated gasoline can produce, while also driving up the cost of gasoline as well as of corn, a food product, used to produce ethanol.

It’s the same Congress that has blessed a Renewable Electricity Standard that requires utilities to use electricity produced by wind and solar power even though both sources also require 24/7 backup by traditional coal-fired, natural gas, or nuclear plants because they cannot be relied upon to generate electricity in a predictable fashion or during periods of peak capacity.

It’s the same Congress that initiated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government entities” that purchased the sub-prime mortgage loans that banks and mortgage loan firms were required to make to people who clearly could not afford to repay them. The result is the financial crisis that occurred when those “bundled” mortgages turned out to be “toxic”, worthless paper sold to investment firms and banks as assets.

In early September, The Washington Post, published an article, “Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas.” It reported that “The last major General Electric factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month…the remaining 200 workers at the plant here (Winchester, Virginia) will lose their jobs.”

In June, The Washington Times reported that the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month (released) 91 pages of regulations that will force manufacturers to revise their packaging and make costly compact fluorescent bulbs appear more appealing to consumers,” that they have refused to willingly purchase them. “Congress wants to force the pale, cold fluorescent curlicue fixtures on everyone because it makes members feel that they are doing their part to ‘save the planet’.”

While the ban was initiated in 2007 before the Obama administration took power, it has not gone unnoticed that the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, “sits on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.” And recovery is no where in sight while GE closes its factory making incandescent light bulbs.

There’s more. GE was the recipient of bailout funds and, according to an article on FrontPagemag.com, “stands to benefit from current and future contracts with the U.S. government.” Connect the dots. GE owns MSNBC, a cable news channel famous for its adulation of Obama before and since his election.

The issue, however, is far less about GE than it is about the vast global warming fraud, the equally vast matrix of U.S. laws and regulations that is based on it, and most importantly, the way they are being used to undermine and destroy the U.S. economy along with the freedoms that Americans take for granted.

One of the many tasks facing a Congress in which Republicans are expected to regain control in November is to repeal the ban on incandescent light bulbs. After that, the mountain of other laws and regulations strangling consumer freedom and even threatening the health of Americans must also be repealed.

All nations must evolve, but America is moving toward less freedom of choice; more control over the choices that a free market requires. It is rejecting its founding principles and it is doing so based on environmental lies.

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.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Destroying biodiversity ... Paul Driessen

Destroying biodiversity
The greatest threat to species is not modern technology -- but environmentalists
Paul Driessen

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The Soviet Union’s demise helped usher in manmade catastrophic global warming as the new “central organizing principle of civilization.” Now, global warming is giving way to a growing recognition that: climate change is primarily natural, cyclical and moderate; China, India and other countries will not sacrifice CO2-generating economic growth to prevent speculative climate crises; and carbon taxes strangle competitiveness, destroy jobs and send families into fuel poverty.

Thus, while not recanting predictions of disastrous climate change, environmental activists and the United Nations are already launching a new campaign. The real threat to the planet, they now assert, is the impact of modern energy technologies and civilization on biodiversity. The case for saving species, they insist, is even “more powerful” than the need to address climate change.
They seek to preserve biodiversity by controlling people’s energy use, economic activities and population – through new regulations and taxes under the auspices of the United Nations and global treaties. These efforts, they claim, will generate benefits “worth $4-5 trillion per year” (based on questionable studies and computer models that underscore the intrinsic value of species and biodiversity).

To accept these claims, one would have to ignore the sordid history of Climategate and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and believe a larger, more powerful United Nations will somehow ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability for misfeasance, misrepresentation, intimidation, and adverse impacts on people and economic growth. One would also have to ignore a growing body of evidence that:

The greatest threats to the world’s species are misguided environmental and anti-technology policies.

Among the policies adversely impacting biodiversity are the following.

* Intense opposition to coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric plants for generating the electricity that two billion people worldwide so desperately need. Not only does this force people to rely on open fires for heating and cooking – perpetuating poverty, lung disease and premature death. It also destroys mountain gorilla and other wildlife habitats, as people cut trees for fires and charcoal.

China and India are self-financing hundreds of power projects, to avoid conditions placed by wealthy countries on World Bank and other international loans. But poor countries must still rely on such loans – and thus must run gauntlets laid down by regulators and environmental activists who oppose critically needed power plants and the economic growth and middle class living standards the plants generate.

* Steadfast promotion of expensive, unreliable wind and solar power. Wind turbines slice up birds and collapse bat lungs. Turbines and solar arrays would have to cover millions of acres to provide power for cities. They require ultra-long transmission lines and backup gas generators, and consume millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, polymers and rare earth (lanthanide) minerals – all of which have to extracted from the Earth and processed into finished products, burning fossil fuels and generating mining wastes and air and water pollution.

Con Ed had to generate some 13,500 megawatts to meet New York City’s air conditioning and other electricity needs during the recent July heat wave. The 600-turbine Roscoe wind farm blankets 100,000 Texas acres to generate 780 MW at full capacity. That means NYC would need a wind farm 1.6 times the size of Connecticut (5 million acres or 2 million hectares), if the turbines are running at an average 30% of capacity. But during the heat wave, there’s barely a breeze.
Now multiply that habitat demand times the world’s biggest cities, and calculate the biodiversity impact. No wonder the wind industry wants exemptions from endangered species rules and environmental impact studies that hyper-regulate fossil fuel and nuclear companies. No wonder Senator Diane Feinstein has introduced legislation to prohibit solar panel installations in the super-sunny Mojave Desert.

* Equally passionate advocacy for biofuels, especially ethanol. Every 7 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol requires crops grown on an area the size of Indiana (23 million acres) – and Congress now wants the USA to produce 20 billion gallons of EtOH annually by 2020. In addition to expropriating vast crop land and wildlife habitat, ethanol production requires billions of gallons of water, millions of tons of fertilizer and insecticides, and enormous quantities of natural gas and diesel fuel to power tractors, tanker trucks and conversion plants – to distill a fuel that gets 20% fewer mpg than gasoline.

And yet, President Obama told a Ghanaian audience in July 2009 that malnourished Africa should forego even gas-fired electricity generators in favor of wind, solar and biofuel power. The continent and its arid, nutrient-depleted soils already cannot feed their populations adequately, and the President wants them to divert cropland and wildlife habitats to biofuels. Meanwhile, environmental activists continue to …

* Oppose biotechnology, genetically engineered crops and even hybrid seeds. These specialized crops survive better during droughts, increase farm family incomes, improve nutrition, and reduce the need for insecticides. They offer the best hope for growing more biofuel crops on less acreage.

The New York Times says we can ill afford “not to make the best use of genetic engineering.” If we “allow propaganda to trump science, then the potential for global agriculture to be productive, diverse and sustainable will go unfulfilled.” The late Dr. Norman Borlaug warned that forcing the world to rely on organic and traditional farming to feed even current populations would require plowing under nearly every remaining acre of forest and grassland habitat. That’s without factoring in biofuels.

And yet, environmentalists and EU bureaucrats threaten African nations with punitive boycotts if they plant biotech crops. Radical greens want Third World farmers to rely on “traditional” seeds and agricultural methods, and oppose the use of seeds that have been “touched by corporations.”

* Environmentalists also oppose timber cutting and even tree thinning and mechanized fire suppression on vast acreage of US national forests. Too often the result is fiery conflagrations that incinerate trees, wildlife, soil and streams, causing extensive erosion and long-term habitat loss.

* Topping it off, the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent endangerment decision, low-carbon fuel standards, and power plant emission rules will force even greater expansion of wind, solar and biofuel use, further impacting habitats and biodiversity.

It is bad enough that “biodiversity stabilization” is a reprise of past government-environmentalist eco-scares. Like its predecessors, the new program offers horrifying predictions of a dying planet – backed by little more than dubious theories, assumptions, assertions and statistics, fed into fancy computer models that generate ominous scenarios and graphics. It also proposes the same tired “solutions” – more taxes, regulations, and government control over lives, energy development and economic growth.

The far greater problem is that the UN, EPA, “mainstream media” and political establishment are ignoring the real threats to habitats, species and biodiversity: the anti-energy, anti-technology, anti-people agenda of radical green ideology.

We now have an opportunity to make Earth a better place for people and the natural world. We need to reject this agenda, demand sound science and solid evidence that a treat exists, and recognize that modern technology actually offers the best hope for protecting the diversity of species.

Paul Driessen
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.