Young, Dumb, and Scared: Big Green and the Existential Protection Racket
The Washington Examiner is publishing a five-part special report in association with PJ Media on “Big Green”: the alliance of the Democratic Party, environmental groups, and activists in the progressive movement. It’s not just a band of flannel-shirted environmentalists any longer; it’s become a big-money, major player in Washington power politics and American elections.
In part four of a five-part series, we ask: What keeps the environmental activism industry in business? Fear. And their method? Get them young, keep them dumb, and scare the hell out of them.
The summer between when I graduated from sixth grade and began junior high school in seventh grade — which makes it after the invention of the wheel, fire, and the telephone, but while telephones still needed wires — I started hearing stories about what junior high school would be like: older kids demanding lunch money, and sometimes just beating younger kids up because they could.
I was terrified. Then I went to school on the first day and discovered the worst part was learning my locker combination; the stories I’d been hearing were just that, stories, told by people for their own purposes.
Now, fast forward to high school — I was a sophomore, and much wiser in the ways of the world, I was sure. But there were terrible problems confronting us: Paul Ehrlich told us that by the 1980s, the “population bomb” would lead to famines throughout the world and mass die-offs due to starvation in India and China. Dick Lamm, then a Colorado state representative, predicted that by the 1980s single-family homes and multiple-child families would be illegal. Time and Newsweek predicted the coming ice age would end civilization as we knew it.
I was terrified. I went to school, and made signs, and marched in the first Earth Day demonstrations. And in the meantime, Ehrlich got rich on The Population Bomb, Dick Lamm rode a successful environmental campaign to drive the Olympics out of Colorado to become governor in 1972, and dozens of newborn and existing environmental and conservation groups were on their way to becoming the immensely wealthy and powerful environmental activism industry. Any counter-arguments were dismissed, or — this being the days of complete mainstream media dominance — simply not reported at all.
The environmental activism industry had learned a lesson: get them young, get them dumb and keep them dumb, and scare the hell out of them.
In today’s installment of the “Big Green” series at the Washington Examiner, Mark Hemingway and Ron Arnold show us how well the environmental activism industry has learned their lesson.
Start with The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute “documentary” targeted to children (“get them young”) using questionable statistics that most kids wouldn’t have the resources to check (“get them dumb”). Continue with the “documentary” Gasland, which makes a number of claims about hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for natural gas production that, well, turn out not to be verifiable (“get them dumb”) or even turn out to be flat out made up, illustrated with video of flaming water faucets (“scare the hell out of them”) that turn out to be “gassy” wells that our great-grandparents here in the West were complaining about a hundred years ago.
As a method, of course, it works wonderfullyGet young kids, and present anything you like in an authoritative voice with a teacher behind it, and they’ll believe it. With some technical subject, like well-fracturing, their teachers probably don’t know much more than what’s in the movie, and only rare parents will know any better.
The result is that the environmental activism industry picks up some new foot-soldiers — by far the majority of the demonstrators at environmental demonstrations are in their late teens or early twenties — and lots of publicity that pushes the grants, that fund the lawsuits, that pay for the political actions, that lead to more grants.
Underneath it all, of course, it’s really a protection racket. “Nice little planet you have here. Be a shame if something happened to it. And, oh, did you hope to have children and grow old? Forget it unless you do what we tell you.”
It worked on a particular 15 year old in Colorado in 1970. It was some years before I realized there wasn’t any mass famine, that copper and iron and coal seemed to still be available, and that the oil crisis had been political, not an actual shortage of oil.
“Get them young, keep them dumb, and scare the hell out of them” — and ride it to fame, wealth, and power.
Environmentalism has become a bit of an extortion racket and its biggest shareholders are Big Media and Big Law/Government. The oligopoly of Big Oil would not need to advertise but for the bad publicity it would receive if it didn’t advertise. The most ingenius aspects of the environmental movement is that it wears the mantle of a benign and noble cause and that in turn attracts a surfeit of true believing free labor that mans the protest pickets, fills the voting booths, and stacks the juries. Environmentalism has yielded some benefits such as clean air and water, and low levels of litter. On the down side, enviromentalism almost destroyed us with the Global Warming Hoax and may yet destroy us with the Cap and Trade Bill and EPA gangsterism.
We don’t and didn’t need environmental wackos to tell us to clean our air and water. Seattle is a case in point. Lake Washington, a huge lake bordering the east side of Seattle was badly polluted. In the 1950′s, well before the modern enviro movment, the people of Seattle taxed themselves to clean the lake and it has remained clean since.
Think of it as punishment from God for sacrificing children on the altar of Gaia rather than Baal.
Charlie Martin accuses the environment movement(industry?) of “fear mongering”…..
“What keeps the environmental activism industry in business? Fear. And their method? Get them young, keep them dumb, and scare the hell out of them.”
Yet that is precisely the method of the Anti-Environmental Industry’s tactics: Fear. Scare the hell out of folks. Any consideration of the results of unfettered pollution is disregarded as an additional cost for consumers to bear, while not mentioning the added costs of pollution on society. Costs that tax payers end up forking over in added health costs, and in replacing and repairing damaged infrastructure to name a few. Keep up the good work for David Koch, Mr. Martin. I am sure you are well compensated for carrying Koch’s water.
David, you are a damned fool or an illiterate. All through this series I’ve mentioned and linked to the very real good things that have come out of the environmental movement.
Charlie,
I’d be a “damned fool or an illiterate” if I didn’t see your attack on the “green movement”. I’d also be a damned fool if I didn’t see that you are a hack. Who’s yor daddy, David Koch?
Sir, the issue is not pollute vs. not pollute. It is whether the pollution is serious enough to be corrected for the cost. This is the calculation reasonable adults make and wacko environmentalists don’t.
You raise a good point there about costs relative to benefits. The problem with the particular brand of zealots the environmental movement has within its ranks is their adoption of this notion that ANY pollution is a sin and not a cost of living on earth and making things. Consequently, they are unable to get their minds around any sort cost/benefit analysis. To them, releasing ANY amount of pollutants is evil, and of course such evil must be rooted out and stopped without regard to cost.
Richard,
You started out fine:
“…..It is whether the pollution is serious enough to be corrected for the cost. This is the calculation reasonable adults make……”
Sure, it is reasonable to calculate the real costs of pollution. I understand that. But at the end, you sound foolish:
“……and wacko environmentalists don’t.”
-The wacko’s get it Richard. It costs society MORE to allow industry the unfettered use of our atmosphere and water for their private waste repository.When pollution is dumped in the public sewers of our air and water, we tax payers ALL bear the cost.
David,
While I seldom agree with your take on things, I respect your going to bat for them and your ability to at least consider the other side of a question.
That being said, you are blowing this one big time. If you read the series of posts based on the Examiner article, there is no attempt being made to claim that the early environmental movement has not left us better off. Nor is anyone, in the Examiner article or in Mr Martin’s treatment of it in his series of posts, arguing on the side of ‘unfettered pollution’. The indictment is for the excesses of the modern, institutionalized environmental movement. Mr Martin pointed this out to you immediately after your first post. You should have then gone back and both read and considered the content of the Examiner article and the first 3 parts of this series, and perhaps saved yourself some embarrassment.
Just Passing Through,
“If you read the series of posts based on the Examiner article, there is no attempt being made to claim that the early environmental movement has not left us better off. Nor is anyone, in the Examiner article or in Mr Martin’s treatment of it in his series of posts, arguing on the side of ‘unfettered pollution’.”
Judging by the responses to this article I am vindicated in pointing out that Charlie Martin is using a sleight of hand maneuver to paint the environmental movement guilty of fear mongering. By using this method, he can attack the “the modern, institutionalized environmental movement” without alienating those who feel like they are environmentalists at heart, which I’m sure is a large segment of the “right’s” demographics.
Patrick of Atlantis illustrates this well with his comment:
“Environmentalism has yielded some benefits such as clean air and water, and low levels of litter. On the down side, environmentalism almost destroyed us with the Global Warming Hoax and may yet destroy us with the Cap and Trade Bill and EPA gangsterism.”
This demonstrates well Mr. Martin’s ruse to smear today’s environmental movement without antagonizing those who may eco-minded. It is a useful propaganda technique to feign support for an organization or a concept so certain elements of your readership won’t be alienated. He is then free to smear the environmental movement without upsetting those who may have a proclivity to regard it’s aims favorably. Thanks for your concern, but there is no embarrassment here.
I’m not sure that the gassy wells is a good example to pick. Have you heard the story of the guy who drilled wells for a living, and then had his own land endlessly gassed. Are you trying to assert that there is no problem there? Apparently there is; how big a problem will be determined by the money in reparations and damages which eventually changes hands.
You need enviros and an EPA to keep an eye on this stuff.
BUT
I also agree that the enviros have gone off the deep end in many areas. I got a fund-raising letter from some green organization of which I have been a member, and the rhetoric regarding saving the wolves was egregiously melodramatic. It was as bad as the language with which the NRA warns me about gun-grabbers or people here spew forth on Obama commies. Two-thirds of the conversation on both sides is caricature and bloviation and the damned greens are taking a back seat to no one. They see WMD’s everywhere, and like GWB are “obligated” to err on the side of safety…and pay their own salaries at the same time.
Gee D-White, looks like everyone is bad. Except, of course, those straddling a barbed wire fence. Must be a nice view from Stratus. Got leather pants? Or is that your inner monk being revealed?
And “gassy wells” and “caricature and bloviation”? Where’s “Blathering”? Is the wind blowing outside? Wait for a calm to come. Get the hose and make a puddle and take look-see.
Lather was thirty years old today…
“Gee D-White, looks like everyone is bad. Except, of course, those straddling a barbed wire fence.”
Now that is just not true; my first impression of you after your first post…and every subsequent one was/is, “Now there is a really good guy!!” Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the self-esteem boost D-White. But save it for Mr. President. Isn’t that what teachers do these days?
What did you see in the puddle this time?
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do…
“Gassy Wells” isn’t a pollution problem, it’s a problem with the water table interacting with a natural gas pool. The problem with the modern environmental activists is that they go far beyond what is reasonable, or even safe, into Gaea worship. Listening to these people, humans (including themselves) are a plague – no matter what the numbers – and there is no reasonable compromise. It’s one thing to clean up Lake Washington or Lake Erie; it’s another to kill off the farming industry in central California (see the postings by Victor Davis Hanson) to supposedly protect a smelt that, it turns out, doesn’t really need protecting.
The most effective “propaganda” put out by the NRA (a bunch of wimps, IMO) has been direct quotes from the opposition. The NRA cannot afford to lie, considering the extent of bias shown by the media up until recently. Any lie or exageration would be seized upon and publicized, endlessly. The gun control crowd, on the other hand, lies freely and repeatedly, and the press gives them a pass. No, your “both sides do it” is a flat out lie. Your “appeal to reason” is false.
I grew up in the 80′s and our thing was drugs and nukes. The people who want power trick thoes young people who know nothing of lie into thinking they always need a savior. either govt or a special group to protect them. Because its a power play and nothing more thy are never given the opportunity to learn. just either surrender all control to the govt or risk oblivion at the hands of some enemy real or imagined. noone states that protecting the enviroment and making the most of resources is bad. infact its the very heart of conservatism(conserve) but it takes people and freedom, not a govt beurocracy!
Your article shows the benefits of having a healthy skeptical attitude, particularly when it comes to politics. Many people aren’t even aware that they are having their emotions manipulated.
When you’re presented with something that makes you react, you become very succeptable to suggestion. Emotion props open the door of your mind to allow anything in. And the manipulators know this, which makes them sub-human in my book, especially if their target is children, as is the case with the lie-filled “Story of Stuff”. Parents, if this is being shown to your kids, demand that it be stopped. If you haven’t seen it, please do so – it’s nothing more than leftist propaganda designed to program your child. The same can be said for most of the “information” coming from the radical environmental groups.
Charlie, this is a great series. Good job of peeling back the layers of the rotten onion of the Big Green movement. And no high school senior ever tried to sell you a pool pass on your first day? Amateurs…
And no high school senior ever tried to sell you a pool pass on your first day? Amateurs…
No pool.
Thanks for the kind words.
No pool? Shouldn’t preclude pool passes ‘sold’ by upperclassmen. A favorite back in my high school days was to try to direct the new kids to rooms (and the school’s pool) on the 2nd floor, usually with detailed instructions on how to find the stairs, which were invariably on the far side of the school from the student.
Naturally, the school was a one-story building.
(In the defense of those who fell for the ruse, the high-roofed gym and auditorium in the front of the school made its single-story nature hidden if only entered from the main door. It was only obvious if one rounded the front and used the side entrances.)
No pool? Shouldn’t preclude pool passes ’sold’ by upperclassmen.
Good point. Now, I did fall for the “board stretcher” one in wood shop.
‘Existential Protection Racket’ is pure genius. This should become the way we refer to all this nonsense in the future. Thanks for your brilliant insights and three simple words that sum it all up.
I think most knew about the tactics of the Enviro Wacko’s thus it really didn’t need to be repeated again here but instead the Author should have focused on other issues such as how much land mass is needed for a Solar Farm which takes away form the Environment & all the wild life that lives & breathes on these parcels of land. Or how inconvenient those pesky Wind Farms are that in many peoples opinions are ugly to look at, distorts the mind literally from the sound waves they emit and how they interrupt the electrical gird coming into the home, same for those GFC bulbs that interrupt the electrical grid inside your homes, the light source that is emitted distorts a persons eye’s causing serious medical & health problems from all these sources but your never going to hear about them until it’s too late.
The Story of Stuff was put out already by Media thru many websites infact when it became common knowledge among most in the blogosphere I immediately shot a e-mail off to my Daughters teacher asking her if she plans to air the “Story of Stuff” and also told her that if she did that she was to notify me prior to doing so, so I could then keep my daughter home form school. Her reply was she doesn’t plan on nor did she ever intend on showing such hypocrisy to her students, I was very much relieved by her answer !!!
This story doesn’t tell us anything new and there’s nothing that no one already knew when it comes to the Enviro Wacko’s of how they were getting into the minds of our young children, it’s nothing different than our Teachers indoctrination using our children’s young minds hoping that a good majority of them help there cause later in there young lives knowing there not going to persuade all but some is better than nothing right ??
Dan, if you’ll drop a note to the editors I’m sure they’ll be happy to refund you the price of today’s issue.
Obviously you didn’t understand what I was saying in my response !!! What the Author said is not anything new or I suppose your going to say you didn’t know what he mentions in his story if thats the case who’s the one with there head in the sand ??
If it is all information that we know, why has this monopoly been allowed to grow into the monster that it is? People like you acknowledge the problem, them dismiss it as a harmless cartoon like Shrek. Well, let me tell you, buddy, there is another big green monster that is barreling down on freedom, rights and mass control. Now, if your OK with being herded like a lemming, whatever! Then keep your mouth shut and don’t hollar for a parachute when they drive you off the cliff.
This is what happens when people are “dumbed down.” What are you gonna tell your kids? “Eh, sorry, but, let me tell you how cool it was when we used to interact with nature, in the olden days.”….DUMBASS!
Listen, I know more than you’ll probably ever claim to know in the political stratosphere, so if you really think it’s ignorance by people like me or you or anyone else your exactly right, it’s all our faults that the EPA was ever allowed to become as big as they are today so don’t go and exclude yourself as if your the emperor whose been fighting the BIG Green MAchine all your living life so get over yourself already !!! The EPA has been allowed to expand its authority because for the last 25 yrs+we can blame ourselves, our parents of which we continued to vote the same people back to Congress who have allowed the EPA to garner the massive power that they have accumulated which has been granted to them of which in the last several years the EPA has had the ability to grant themselves more power over our lives !!! So I’ll remind you to make sure in your future remarks you include your self righteous self when you make a smart a@# comment remarks to fellow posters because your not sterile from the tripe the EPA, Congress has bestowed upon us and if you think that then maybe you should run for Congress or better yet run in 2012 for President !!!
You are right Dan, that is the purpose of these type of articles, though. Just because you know everything doesn’t mean everybody else does. How do you solve ignorance?
You should have a friend read your post and give you an objective report as to the tone in it. My reaction to it is at face value. I have read your other comments and you appear to have some savvy. My involvement is in California, where we are in a huge battle against the corporate non-profits hiding under the guise of environmentalism and literally taking over. I have been fighting this for a short time, compared to others. But, my mentors have over fifty years of this and I am taking lessons learned to apply them. I’m not a me, I’m a we.
I will accept a misunderstanding and ask you to join us…
Jeff Crumley/ Facebook profile, Ocean1 The Public Ocean Access Network/ FB page,
or you can email me at jeff@jeffcrumley.com,
Education and dissemination are no good unless we take action with the results. That is what has not been done. That was my argument with you.
Thanks Dan, waiting to hear from you…Jeff
Fight nice guys. The problem is as Dan describes.
Many spokesmen and workers represent themselves as scientists or are actual scientists with a mission. Dwight D. Eisenhower is more remembered for his “military-industrial complex speech in 1961, but here is what he said about scientists and government, in the same speech:
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present, and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Where are these statesmen? They are in Congress, and like Dan says, no one is holding them accountable. Environmentalism has become an industry of sorts. According to a past Forbes report, the 11 largest environmental groups have combined annual revenues of about $1.8 billion and own billions of dollars of assets. The green movement has lots of cash to spread around. And our Congressmen have their hands out.
Someone tell Fat Albert…
Britain’s Leading Scientific Institution Softens Position On Global Warming
It’s not a “protection racket”, Charlie. (In fact, the “protection racket” itself was never about “protection”).
This is part and parcel of the “REDistribution racket”. Green is the new red. It was a way for the revolution to be hidden in plain view.
The preferred methodology of the “don’t scare ‘em, make them feel comfortable, give them something soft, squishy, non-threatening…then rob them blind” crowd.
The reason that this crowd hates the eye bulging, spittle-flecked fury of the “professional left”…is that the unhinged rage blurts out the truth. The cold, calculating, dispassionate patience of the former…want to “punch hippies” who are letting the cat out of the bag.
Global warming became climate change became weather disruptions or some such thing. The notorious “broad fraud” of redistribution through the enviro arm of global leftism does it’s best work undercover, not pounding, marching, screaming, through the nutjobbery loony bin.
The Alinsky devotee’s get really dismayed at the loudmouths who don’t know how to “talk to the white people” in a calm, reassuring, non-threatening voice. (most certainly not in the shrill and hysterical shrieking of the Village Voice)
The former want to work in the shadows, move slowly, with stealth…and be provided cover by their minions and lackeys in their owned and controlled media. Bury stories, create fictions, …call people racist when all else fails. Not just greedy…but racist.
Where they can, the get the owned and controlled media to plant stories discrediting ANY and ALL evidence, and try to get a kangaroo court of “experts” to say the matter is “settled”, and anyone disagreeing is “one of those, out there on the fringes”.
Neat trick. The cottage industries that make money on this…are merely bagmen being paid for their dirty work. They are NOT the scheme. Drill down deeper. The scheme is the worldwide leftist REDistribution. They seek to control …well,…everything on the planet.
First, they had to garner near complete control over the way people get their facts and information. Ergo…the complete collapse of the free press. Old media is an insider, a co-conspirator. Alternative media is the information underground railroad. The resistance.
While the bulge and spittle crowd are clearly the most annoying and almost invariably completely untethered to rational thought…the Hippie Unhinged are the greatest danger to the Global REDistribution. They …more than anyone on the side of the resistance…are most likely to wake up the slumbering…and let them know that there are dangerous criminals already past the gates and inside the house.
Here Here, Well said !!!
Shhhhhhhhh – Be vewwwwy, vewwwwy, quiet…. I’m hunting enviwo-wakos… I think I just hewd one coming in my back do-wa. Or was that the wind? Shhhhhhh.
As was pointed out by a notorious tee vee host yesterday in a clip from The Story of Stuff, the film presents the idea that third world countries (e.g. in Africa) have been completely plundered and despoiled by developed “colonial” powers.
So the anticolonialist idea is woven into the propaganda.
Anticolonialism was tied to Barack Obama and all those Dreams he claims to have received from his father.
I have engineered a score of nukes, two score fossil power plants, and have a hand full of degrees and PE licenses. I read this article, Mr. D. W. Walters’ rebuttal, and many others, and see critical distinctions. Environmentalists are universally anti corporation, anti big industry, and pro government. One is perceived the villain, the other the solution. From my experience, this is wrong. There are brilliant technical people of the highest integrity in the government and private industry, but neither is free from drunks and scoundrels. In the decision making process, authority, not technical and economical reasonableness, have ruled in the last two generations. It makes no difference whether Enron steals a billion dollars, or the government wastes a billion dollars; we are ripped a billion dollars.
The solution is not more government regulation, overviewing. After every disaster, the responsible government overviewer retires with full benefits. The solution is to back the lowly employee, who knows what he is doing, in confronting his management,e.g. You, BP big shot boss, may not place a broken valve, critical to the environment, one mile deep.
Currently, we form post action committees, comprised of out of work environmentalists to talk about why the gulf was destroyed by big business. They never discuss the retirement plan of government workers, who also failed their basic duty.
Government dictated technical standards will never work in a free society. It morphs into a dictatorship of the elite. Coupled with our abysmal math and science education, our elite are technical idiots. Ergo the decisions are made, not by engineers, but by scientists and lawyers. The difference is that one is trained in cost effective technology.
If you want $10/ gallon gas, if you want your kids to be poor, vote for environmentalists. This movement destroyed America’s smoke stack, heavy industry, and millions of jobs, while creating thousands of lawyers, and government funded scientists. It is unsustainable.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Engineers deal in solutions. Scientists and Bureaucrats generally deal in theory, or ‘policy’, sometimes divorced from reality. Arguing with management usually gets you nowhere however…they just dig in (unfortunately)…just like politicians. The fracking thing is a big deal in NY especially downstate. NYPIRG reps are constantly canvassing, so the Gaslands doc didn’t do any favors for the pro-drilling effort.
Whale oil is a renewable resource.
And Standard Oil saved more whales than Greenpeace could ever hope to save.
I call it the politics of fear and panic. The UK Government have been at it a long time and not jut with Big Green, Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Oil and many other generous contributors to political parties have benefitted too.
What will continue to worry me, until my anxieties are proven to be unjustified, is that our tax dollars will be wasted on hare-brained “greenie” projects, instead of on projects which will be worthwhile and beneficial. It’s my pereception that there is a symbiotic or quid pro quo or incestuous relationship between environmentalists and Democratic politicians. Whenever I hear about exenditures on “greenie” projects, I’m reminded of wasteful expenditures on overpriced toilet seats, etc., for government offices.
The ‘greenies” remind me, also, of the conspicuous Communist agitators of the ’60′s, who comprised a segment of that era’s anti-war and civil rights movements. There is just something about them that irks me. They remind me of ditzy, irresponsible Hippies, but with a cunning, nefarious agenda.
Or it could be that “greenies” are Communist con artists, who have discovered capitalism, and who are now greedily enriching themselves with new scams – not even slick, hare-brained schemes which appeal only to ditzy liberals and/or to ditzy 52%ers. Just ruminating here.
Charlie
I’m unsure what’s being driven at here. Are there excesses? Of course; this is always a part of the human condition. However, all that this series is doing is demonising green tech completely, which frankly is rather stupid. All it does is whip up the partisan rabble and further obfuscate.
For example, there are good reasons why green-think isn’t bad. This describes one such —
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/09/the-us-militarys-two-pronged-renewable-energy-initiative
What the GOP needs to do is advocate green itself, but doing so in a way that is a counter to the left’s idiotic persistence on government subsidised windmills and other nonsense that doesn’t work. Examples: advocating the building of say 200 to 500 nuclear facilities; advocating the research and funding of the Bussard/EmC2 polywell fusion system; funding small-scale reactors; pushing NASA and the DOE to seriously plan/build solar power satellites (which we can do.) All of these are green. Will there be excesses? Sadly, yes. Deal.
Instead, the right craps on green in the partisan haste to find any reason at all to crap on the left. “Left = Green, after all, so let’s take a dump on the left’s favourite science advocacy. While we’re at it, let’s surrender any usable and clever high ground. We *could* advocate smart green and indicate to the average voter that yes, the GOP is paying attention and not merely reactionary. But we’re not going to do that.” Dumb dumb dumb. But hey, don’t let me interject any common sense here, just continue to whip PJM’s thumpers and other technology-challenged partisan hacks into a frenzy. Never let an excess of one’s political adversary go to waste…
GL, apologies I haven’t been able to get back and reply more thoroughly to your comments — I have been really run ragged this week.
Good point, GL, although many in the GOP have proposed nuclear as the way to go. Which is one reason nuclear power has such a gad reputation – it’s supported by the GOP. The problem with nuclear is that government regulations, because of the deliberate intent of the greens, make building a power plant prohibitively expensive. And the roadblocks by the greens are enormous and not easily overcome. Very similar to what’s going on with refineries in this country. I think we only have six. If we try to build more to improve fuel distribution economies and reduce fuel cost, the greens will put a stop to it.
Some of your other ideas may have some merit. Recently the Obama administration passed a bill requiring a 35 or 38 miles per gallon average fuel economy on cars by a certain year (I don’t remember what year). The GOP is always afraid to go that route because they don’t want to be accused of passing legislation that will drive up the cost of automobiles, which this will do. They are therefore always being perceived as pro big (meaning bad) business.
The protection racket is a good description from the point of view of organizing principle: a way of manipulating people’s behavior to take their money.
But where is the payout for the Greenpeace foot soldier? I don’t think it is found in augmented sense of security, but in guilt relief.
Environmentalism as religion–directed guilt tripping– describes the affective irrational grip the “green” ethic exercises on people. They need to feel better about themselves and can by means of cheap public ritual, without ever confronting their personal flaws and sins (the true-though repressed- causes of their guilt).
To deconstruct why environmentalism succeeds one needs to illumine the irrationality of green rhetoric as grounded in the irrational and perennial human need for moral justification.
Chuck,
Keep up the good work- you are the tip of the sword in what is sure to be one of the largest push back movements in American history- if we let the massive NGO’s such as Packard and Pew dictate our laws, fill our heads with propaganda and use the government to steal our tax dollars to fund their opressive, non scientific based vision if utopia-then I am afraid we have lost our identity as Americans-we will in essence become nothing more that voting serfs who have no real way make our leaders accountable for their actions- Big Green must be exposed and we must take efforts to organize and win back the hearts and minds of our young people and pass laws that balances the powers of all NGO’s.
Long live a free and sustainable ocean!
Here is the latest fear mongering:
Warning: gross.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/30/o-m-g-video-explodes-skeptical-kids-in-bloodbath/
Charlie martin, I will give you credit and high marks for being involved in the responses. It does go a small way toward mitigating your other serious flaws…..