With "Friends" Like These

By Alan Caruba

In a recent letter to its members, Friends of the Earth, one of the larger environmental organizations, claimed that “warming means war.”

Like all the diehard Greens that have sought to foist a bogus “global warming” hoax on the nation and the world, FOE is growing more desperate to use this great lie to impose restrictions on the nation’s economic growth that are aimed at the development of our national energy reserves.

Claiming that “more oil drilling” and other energy sources, including coal, are an “addiction to dirty energy”, the FOE assert that their worldwide use, combined with “global warming” will “weaken failed states, cause famine and poverty, population shifts, water shortages, flooding and other unpredictable consequences.”

This is a direct contradiction of the fact that energy is the “master resource” that distinguishes advanced nations from those striving for greater development. It is no accident that China is building coal-fired plants to generate the electricity it needs or that India has embarked on an ambitious program to build nuclear facilities for the same reason. All around the world, the need for more energy, not less, is recognized as the key to improving people’s lives and nation’s economic growth.

In the name of “national security”, however, FOE demands that the United States “encourage conservation” as the “most rapid way to respond to climate change.” There is climate change, but it is not about warming. The Earth is getting cooler.

FOE goes on to call for the development of “a solar and wind energy-based economy and set a goal of carbon-free/nuclear free” energy. This borders on criminal stupidity and duplicity because solar and wind accounts for only 1% of the energy requirements of the United States. There is no way the nation could or should convert to these inefficient and impractical sources. Neither would even exist were it not for billions in taxpayer subsidies provided by the federal and state governments.

FOE goes on to call for national leadership on “climate change by committing to reduce emissions.” The greenhouse emissions to which they refer, primarily CO2, play no role whatever in climate change and most certainly the only warming that occurred since the last little ice age ended in 1850 was entirely natural.

Cloaking their global warming lies in the garb of national security and the threat of wars as the result of climate change is the worst kind of propaganda. It is intended to frighten people into accepting solutions to something that is not happening and to do so at a time when our ability to access our own national reserves is critical.

With “Friends” like these, there would be no coal to generate electricity to light our homes and businesses, no oil to fuel our cars, trucks, ships and planes, and no further development of nuclear energy either.

The proposals by Friends of the Earth amount to an attack on our nation every bit as devastating as a military one.