For decades now, pressure has been building for America to “go green.” From the Kyoto Protocol the Senate refused to ratify, to the moratoriums on domestic drilling, to the construction of thousands upon thousands of eyesores known as wind turbines that now blemish our landscape, environmentalists in high places have been intent on driving our capitalist economy off the proverbial cliff of eco-friendliness.
To date, it’s all been done under the guise of trying to halt man-made global warming, a scientific theory which has become a quasi-religion for treehuggers and America haters the world over.
Yet during the past few months, as Climategate has unfolded, the idea of trading in a nine-passenger Ford Excursion for a hybrid that seats three adults and a dog comfortably in order to save the planet has lost much of its luster. And now that Phil Jones, the mind behind the man-made global warming myth, has admitted he lost the data to back up his theory, it seems like a good time to ask why any sane capitalist should give even a thought to going green.
As recently as February 14, 2010, the UK’s Daily Mail revealed that in addition to admitting his lack of evidence for the theory of man-made global warming, Jones also “conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now.” This admission only bolsters the position of various skeptics who have consistently contended that climate change is cyclical rather than man-made.
Rush Limbaugh, one of the most recognized skeptics of such environmentalism, has spent years telling his listeners that the danger behind implementing legislation based on this faulty theory is that it is “anti-capitalist; it is anti-freedom; it is pro-big government; [and] it’s pro-total control over as much of life as these [environmentalists] can engineer.”
If we take what Limbaugh is saying and couple it with the fact that the whole theory of man-made global warming is a farce, it does beg the question be asked again: Why should we capitalists go green? To do so is simply to exchange our technological, industrial, and energy superiority for a lie.
How big is the lie? It’s so big that those telling it can’t remain consistent in their explanation for it. For example, although Democrats are telling us that the latest heavy snowfalls are proof of man-made global warming, just three years ago they were telling us that the lack of snowfall was proof of global warming as well. This is something like saying, “When I get shot it kills me and when I don’t get shot it kills me too.” It’s unintelligible.
Even California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a self-proclaimed greenie, has finally come to see this. In the face of recent “environmental obstacles that are blocking construction of alternative energy farms in the Mojave Desert,” Schwarzenegger said: “Environmentalists … are confused because they want to have renewable energy but then when it comes to the permitting process, creating that renewable energy and building the solar plants, they are … in the way.”
To put it another way, Schwarzenegger finally realizes that many of the same people protesting the acquisition of fossil fuels off the coast of California aren’t as interested in finding an alternative to those fuels as they are to making it difficult to find energy anywhere, in any form.
Capitalism is about progressing via the ingenuity and excellence of minds unfettered by government regulations and interference. But environmentalism based on the man-made global warming theory is about regressing from the advances that unfettered minds have made. It’s also about pushing the government to regulate and interfere at every step along the way.
With this understood, why should capitalists ever want to go green?
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