Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Slippery Green Words

By Alan Caruba

Every so often The New York Times slips up and lets some truth appear on its hallowed and vastly over-rated pages.

Such was the case on May 2nd when reporter John M. Broder wrote “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus.” As he put it in the first sentence, “The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is ‘global warming.’” This is a very real problem, especially when the word is getting out that the planet has been cooling for a decade.

The problem worsens for them as word leaks that the ice at the North Pole is a lot thicker than earlier suspected—something that does not happen if it’s supposed to be melting. And the same holds for the South Pole whose ice is growing, along with many of the world’s glaciers.

Having spent the past twenty years or so blaming “global warming” for everything happening on Earth, the public has grown tired of the endless blather about it. Since it has provided much of the funding that Green organizations have pulled in from the gullible, not to mention from millions in government grants to study something that is not happening, the time has come to “re-brand” global warming into something that will still generate the money these charlatans depend upon.

Broder had laid hands on a memorandum by ecoAmerica, “a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.” To rephrase that, ecoAmerica is no different from any Madison Avenue advertising or public relations firm whose job is to get you to buy or believe something.

When you have a lemon, make lemonade, and global warming is rapidly becoming a lemon. So the folks at ecoAmerica advise the Greens to avoid grim warnings about global warming and talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.”

This has been tried. Remember the Ozone Layer that was supposed to be disappearing? It didn’t. It hasn’t. It won’t. Meanwhile you and everyone else has lost access to Freon, the miracle chemical that was vital to refrigeration as well as one of the best fire extinguishers ever invented. Those holes? They tended to show up over active volcanoes!

The atmosphere is not deteriorating. It hasn’t deteriorated for more than 4.5 billion years, permitting Earth to be the only planet in our solar system capable of sustaining life.

EcoAmerica went on to recommend moving away from discussing carbon dioxide (CO2) in favor of telling lies about “the dirty fuels of the past.” Well, those “dirty fuels” are not in the past. They are responsible for all of the energy we use every day and, if you don’t like electricity and don’t want to drive or fuel anything, you better learn to like oil, natural gas, and coal.

Nuclear energy is nice too, but the Obama administration has just made it impossible to store nuclear waste in the multi-million dollar facility at Yukka Mountain in Nevada. Why? There is no good answer except to note this is the most anti-energy administration since the days of Jimmy Carter.

EcoAmerica doesn’t want to “confuse” the public about “cap and trade” legislation that would run up the cost of energy for everyone by thousands of dollars a year. Instead, they recommend that Greens talk about “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

Having apparently concluded that the Greens have been lying to them for years, all the polls and surveys reveal that “Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls.

Indeed, ecoAmerica suggests that Greens stop using the word “environment” and begin talking about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

The problem with that is that the air in America is as clean as humanly possible to achieve and the water is the safest on Earth to drink.

The truth means nothing to the Greens. Their game is all about power over everyone’s lives and the means to drain every dollar they can from the government and from gullible people who buy products whose prices have been jacked up by claiming it is environmentally friendly in some fashion.

They have spent several decades indoctrinating and frightening the newest generations of Americans in the nation’s schools and via the print and broadcast media.

These people are utterly contemptible.

14 comments:

Brian G Valentine said...

If they want to call "global warming" what it really is - what's the matter with "Communist Lie"?

I got shot down a long time ago when I told DOE outright that "ozone hole from freon is a fraud" - somebody called me a "crank"

Now I'm just a "denier"

The best one I've heard so far is, "the ozone hole has prevented Antarctica from melting - but this happy accident won't keep on forever"

If that's true we ought to be dumping freon into the atmosphere by the tank car load, shouldn't we?

These nitwits make me vomit all over the floor. Let's see - Stalin was responsible for about a million deaths.

Rachael Carson was responsible for

- how many?

Nice legacy. We celebrate Earth Day in her honor.

Alan Caruba said...

Come on, Brian, stop holding back. Tell us how you really feel! :-)

Brian G Valentine said...

About environmentalists?

Ok.

"Environmentalists" have improved the quality of my life every bit as much as dog sh- on my shoe has.

Now - don't go complaining, you asked me directly for this

Alan Caruba said...

I was making a joke.

You were, as always, VERY intense.

I think life is too short for that much anger. I don't care much for environmentalists either, especially those who lie a lot, but I believe one can combat them with a lot of truth-telling.

Brian G Valentine said...

A little truth?

Those people will railroad anything that doesn't stand up to them.

As you can see, I've had enough of that.

These people call mudpuddles "wetlands" and now they want to grab the whole atmosphere.

I've had it. I'm sixty years old and I'm not taking any more of it lying down.

I learned in Iraq that people don't run from bullies. CANNOT run from them.

Ayrdale said...

Bravo, bravo...I have excerpted and will link to your posting.

The greens that aren't despicable liars seem to be gullible fools.

This gamble they have undertaken to convince the world that our energy consumption is killing the planet is a very desperate move from them, and looks like a losing hand.

The scientists who continue to make excuses for the planet's reluctance to behave as the climate modellers suggest are compromising themselves and us. Truth will win.

libertyforusa said...

http://thenma.org/blogs//index.php/libertyforusa/2009/05/12/the-ongoing-and-unauthorized-american-ya

Science "made to order" allows one to sell "solutions made to order" to the gullible.

- Cap and Trade Taxes-aka "investing in our planet before western man destroys us"!

Rich Kozlovich said...

While Alan knows that no one holds the greenies in any more contempt than I do, we must remember that the green movement was not always what they are now. I think that some of the comments made here requires some thoughtful reflection.

John Muir and many of the original greenies were just as misanthropic as the current crop. However, during the 50’s 60’s and 70’s there was a large contingent of honest environmentalists, such as Paul Driessen, Patrick Moore (original co-founder of Greenpeace), J.G. Edwards (who spoke out strongly against Rachel Carson) and many others, who did good work and modern ones such as Bjorn Lomborg.

The environmental movement really was instrumental in getting the air, rivers and lakes cleaned up in this country and to be honest brokers of opinion, we must acknowledge that. I can remember the sulphur creeks of Pennsylvania and the millions of dead fish on the shores of Lake Erie, so they actually have impacted our lives positively.

Those early successes gave the movement power, prestige and most of all……money…. And that drove the most radical contingent of the green movement into leadership positions. As a result the above mentioned people abandoned the environmental movement and spoke out publically against their irrational and misanthropic message. The movement was no longer about protecting the environment as a benefit to mankind, it turned into a movement that placed the environment over mankind and was prepared to expunge mankind from the environment.

The rest of us must keep in mind the whole story. Everything the environmental movement did wasn’t irrational and misanthropic and we must be able to distinguish the differences in order to strengthen our arguments and respond to the challenges to our views.

While I agree that it is true that the environmental movement is responsible to more deaths than the mass murderers of the 20th century, we must recognize their entire history. If we refuse to acknowledge their accomplishments, we place our arguments in peril because we become irrational also. The history of events is what they are and we must be true to them if our views are to be taken seriously about anthropogenic climate change or whatever next scare they promote.

Karl said...

Rich:

Well thought-out comment. Environmental awareness has brought us clean air and water. Unfortunately the movement has gone to the other extreme to the point where "Gaia worshippers" would like to see the human population reduced by 4/5ths.

Karl said...

Rich:

Well thought-out comment. Environmental awareness has brought us clean air and water. Unfortunately the movement has gone to the other extreme to the point where "Gaia worshippers" would like to see the human population reduced by 4/5ths.

Lucy Stern said...

Right ON!

Ayrdale said...

Rich, that's a valid point. But we have to look at the green movement as it exists right now, not let some 40 year old halo cloud our vision.

We must be quite clear, the greens are now an extreme left wing political movement, who subvert the quite natural wish to avoid waste and clean up after us into something quite anti-human.

Socialism too, may have good intentions, but as they say, the road to hell...

Rich Kozlovich said...

Ayrdale,

This is going to be somewhat long, so I ask your indulgence.

You are quite right that we have to see them as they are now, which is irrational and misanthropic, and I thought I made that point, including the point about good intentions.

Socialism has never had good intentions, it was about getting and holding onto power, which is what environmentalism are about today….at the upper levels. At the lower levels….they are true believers and when we can’t acknowledge their accomplishments they will throw them up to us.

It is important to differentiate the time periods and people involved, because that gives our arguments credibility. It shows that we are knowledgeable. It shows depth of understanding. It demonstrates our reasonableness. It makes those who don’t know the real story more amenable to our arguments. The activists are the ones who are always rude, crude and stupid….we must not give that impression. They dig their own graves by their hatred of all that we are.

Here is a quote that will be appearing in my weekly newsletter that demonstrates why the greenies can be defeated with rational arguments and gentlemanly behavior.

"Why is it now everyone’s on board for planet saving, nobody wants to vote for the green saviors? Nobody likes politicians, but apparently we like green politicians even less. We don’t like eco-spokesmen; we don’t want to vote for them, listen to them, have dinner with them, sleep with them or use them as domestic servants. With so many pressing environmental problems, how come there is no popular environmental evangelist?

The truth is, environmentalists are just not attractive. They’re not winning, engaging, amusing or empathetic. They are ranty, repetitive, patronizing, demanding, deaf, weirdly bonkers and smelly. But that’s not their real impediment. The real killer thing is the “schadenfreude”: the naked, transparent, hand-rubbing glee with which they pass on every shame, sadness and terror. No disaster is too appalling or imminent that the green movement can’t caper and keen with a messianic glee.

They sift through the minute details of demise, like a jolly self-congratulatory Scrooge. This is a real problem. Or, rather, it’s a serious blockage on the road to solving the real problem. Eco-advocates are viscerally unconscionable people. The enormous, vicarious pleasure they get from frightening folk makes them repellent, and then, they get all hurt when we don’t thank them for it.
Nobody wants to trust a future to a bunch of malcontents who plainly have so much of their self-worth and cachet invested in it all going to hell in a recycled handcart. This isn’t merely a question of presentation, or marketing, or tone, or spin, this is a serious cultural blindness and childish arrogance."

Best wishes,
Rich

Alan Caruba said...

For those who want to enjoy Rich's writings first hand, you can click on this blog's link to "Paradigns and Demographics", his excellent website.