Friday, November 28, 2008

The Relentless Greening of America

By Alan Caruba

The late comedian, George Carlin, did a riff on environmentalists in which he castigated them and everyone else who thinks humans should or can “save the planet.” He reminded the audience that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, that 95% of all the species that ever lived are extinct, and that the Industrial Revolution is barely two hundred years old. The notion that, somehow, humans are destroying planet Earth is absurd.

The planet is just fine and totally indifferent to anything humans do. Humans over the past 200,000 years have learned how to build shelters and raise food. With regularity, the Earth reminds them who’s really in charge by providing them with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic irruptions, floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards.

Anyone who has spent any time experiencing nature knows it can be inspiring, but also too wet, too cold, too warm, and comes with a full supply of bugs and other creatures that think you’re dinner.

If people only experience nature from films and television, they have a scant notion of the reality. When you add in a total lack of knowledge or understanding of the weather, the climate, the atmosphere, how the Sun functions, the role of the Moon, and a thousand other things that constitute our environment, the fact that they can be led to believe lies about the environment should come as no surprise.

Like the proverbial fish in water, most people are utterly clueless about how anything works. It makes them vulnerable.

Then, when you add in a fulltime, non-stop, massive and multifaceted propaganda campaign, the odds that people will believe that the Earth is running out of oil or that coal is “dirty” or that it’s wrong to raise livestock to feed people or wrong to eradicate the many insects or weed species that attack wheat, rice, apples, cotton and every other crop on which we depend. Fully 80 percent of infectious diseases that kill off humans are transmitted by insect and rodent species.

All this leads me to take note of “Hollywood Goes Green”, a summit meeting to be held December 8-9, that has the lofty goal of “Helping Hollywood increase profits and lower costs in today’s volatile economy through sustainable innovation and corporate responsibility.” Other than the reference to increasing profits and a volatile economy, this is gobbledygook and gibberish. The only responsibility a corporation has is to make a profit, pay its workers a fair wage, its investors a dividend, and produce products and services of value. Saving the planet is not a priority, but not despoiling it is.

The Hollywood summit conference brings together many elements of the communications and entertainment industries. Keynote speakers will include people from the Fox Broadcasting Company, General Motors, HP, and the Walt Disney Studios. Other speakers and panelists will represent more than 40 enterprises that include News Corp, Discovery Channel, MTV Networks, the Southern California Edison Company, and Twentieth Century Television, to name just a few.

This great group hug is sponsored by iHollywood Forum, an entity that exists to put these confabs together so dedicated Green advocates can rub shoulders with technology executives and others. It is a mix of proselytizing and the opportunity for corporate folks to demonstrate how Green they really are.

Little wonder there is virtually no evidence of “the other side of the story” when Americans wonder why, if global warming is real, the Earth is actually in a decade-old cooling cycle that is going to get colder and last easily to 2050 or beyond. When you’re being force-fed Green lies by representatives of Hollywood, the news media, and major manufacturers, it is just so hard to know what is true.

What is true is that General Motors is on its last legs unless it declares bankruptcy and restructures itself. If not, it will take a big chunk of the staggering U.S. economy down the toilet with it. What is true is that the Southern California Edison Company had better build some more power plants or its customers are going to soon experience brown-outs and black-outs on a regular basis. And I am not talking about solar panels and wind turbines. I am talking about coal and nuclear.

What is true, too, is that Americans looking for a bit of entertainment from the film and television industry will continue to find all manner of Green messages intended to introduce and reinforce both old and new lies. The news industry has long since abrogated any allegiance to the truth.

6 comments:

Rich Kozlovich said...

I keep hearing how we all have to become “one” with nature. How long do people think that we would live if we didn't have electricity, heat, roads, abundant inexpensive food and modern medicine? When society was "one" with nature starvation was a natural cyclical event in most parts of the world, including Europe. When society was one with nature sickness and infirmity was the order of the day. The world’s population was around 2 billion people in 1945. It took thousands of years to reach that number and yet in only 79 years we have over 6 billion people living longer, healthier, better fed lives than ever before in human history. All that we had to do was develop enough technology so that we could stop being “one” with nature.

Cheetah the chimpanzee, of the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, turned 75 in April of 2007, making him the longest lived chimpanzee in the world. How long does anyone really think he would have lived in the wild? Tarzan and Jane lived in one of the most heavily mosquito infested areas of the world, yet they never got sick. Jane would send Tarzan out swinging on a vine to get some wonderful jungle remedy for all sorts of ailments. The implied message was that modern civilization wasn’t needed. All that we need is to be “one” with nature. Just like Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, it was fiction. In the real world they would have contracted malaria many times and died.

Alan Caruba said...

So let me see if I have this right, Rich...you'd prefer to keep Nature outside of your heated home filled with the latest technologies, including the one to read and reply to this post?

Good thinking!

libertyforusa said...

Another great article Alan!
In addition to the media,Hollywood and the (suicidal) corporations our educators are indoctrinating the children that insures there will be long term confusion and misunderstanding of the subject.
With the government controlling the research purse strings that so many scientists absolutely depend on, the "official consensus" fraud will continue until our leaders decide otherwise.
With these "leaders" on both sides of the political spectrum pushing the idea of calamities caused by man himself, it leaves one wondering how cold it will be before we see a change in their attitude and position. The new EU leader to-be is already being smeared due to his stance against the "problem"!
To hear them(our leaders) tell it, it may be a 'cold day in hell' as the saying goes before they give up this scam!

Doug said...

Why can't Hollywood lead by example? I think they should add a $5 "Global Climate Change Tax" to each movie ticket sold. The proceeds would go directly to the government "to do something." Just about every poll shows that today's youngsters are buying into this bunk, so why not let them feel the pain associated with "reducing climate change" (as I read yesterday on Yahoo)? What the heck, it's only money, so let Hollywood experience government first hand. What do you say, Hollywood?

Alan Caruba said...

Given the price of a movie ticket, the Global Warming tax would empty out the theatres...but it is a clever idea.

My thanks to all those posting a comment.

Doug said...

Which, of course, was my point, Alan. Let Hollywood feel the pain of the courses of action that they advocate for all of us.