The Environment

We have no problem smoking out those Uncle Shams who wrap themselves in the US flag, barking at anyone who disagrees with them that “if you oppose me, you oppose the US, you’re ‘unpatriotic’”, etc.  South Park: “The children oppose Starbucks…are you against children….???”  So why can’t we do that with the similar screwups who tie themselves to trees, metaphorically, and make this claim about the environment?

 The number one offender for this is Al Gore.  Recently I read an illuminating book, The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You To Know About – Because They Helped Cause Them, by Iain Murray.  I strongly recommend this book to anyone, but for these purposes I’ll briefly summarize the major points.

 1.         Al Gore is a phony, a fraud and a hypocrite.  To the extent there is any scientific basis for global warming, he grossly misrepresents it and blows it way out of proportion.  Even under worst case scenarios, the seas are not going to rise and flood our coasts, nor is there an ice age on the way (“The Day After Tomorrow” was hogwash).  His carbon footprint is immense, yet he tries to weasel out of that by having a company he owns pay HIM carbon offsets as benefits – which he doesn’t even pay for.  This is the same clown who took credit for increasing funding for DARPA (the Federal agency which essentially created the Internet) but then denied claiming to have invented the Internet. 

 2.         DDT is extremely effective when used to wipe out the mosquitos which cause malaria.  The jury is definitely out as to whether it’s carcinogenic; Rachel Carson’s “science” was essentially bullshit.  But malaria is killing thousands in Africa because the econazis succeeded at banning the use of DDT.

 3.         The chemicals in birth control pills are causing all sorts of problems in the water supply (women on the pill urinate, the chemicals end up in the water).  But the liberals never squawk about that.

 4.         Ethanol.  This is another mess.  The problem is that growing enough corn to produce ethanol to replace gas, costs MORE than the gasoline it replaces.  Switchgrass is hopelessly inefficient.  And there is a zero-sum game with the land: land used to make corn for ethanol cannot be used for food, which means that food prices would skyrocket if we tried that.  We’re better off simply paying more for regular petroleum-based gasoline and keeping food prices reasonable; better to drive less than to starve. 

            I recently read a book about IG Farben, the cartel which helped the Nazis during WWII.  The cartel itself was formed in 1925, but its main companies, BASF and Bayer (as in aspirin, which they invented) date from the late 19^th century and started out making dyes and pharmaceuticals.  IG Farben’s major quest, like alchemists seeking to turn lead into gold, was synthetic gasoline.  It started off promising in the late 20s, but went into the toilet in the early 30s when oil was discovered first in Texas and then the Middle East, and the price of gas also went down the porcelain wastebasket.  In the late 30s, IG Farben started simply buying gasoline from Standard Oil so the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht would have enough to invade Poland and France.  The technology is THERE, it works, but it’s extremely inefficient and cost-ineffective so long as regular petroleum is available at a reasonable cost.  And just when the experts predict we’ll run out (as they did back in 1926) we find more!  In fact, we’re always finding more.

 5.         Fuel-efficient cars.  They’re usually smaller and less safe than larger cars.  Even Ralph Nader (!!!) had to admit that other things being equal, a larger car is safer than a smaller car.  But the econazis don’t give a rat’s ass if we live or die on the road, so long as the damn things don’t eat up too much gas.  Or you get clueless morons like Steven Seagal telling us to ride horses or bicycles instead of cars.  Stick with the martial arts movies no one watches anymore.

 6.         Wildfires in California are caused because the forest management practices we used to conduct in the past (clearing brush, lighting smaller fires, etc.) were abandoned by due to pressure from the econazis in favor of dangerous new “natural policies”. 

 7.         The Green Lobby is huge but refuses to reveal how its money is spent (transparency). To the extent anyone can tell, the top people pay themselves huge salaries and pay their employees “breadline, breadline or less.”  Hardly progressive employment policies – yet Michael Moore never interviews those firms.

 8.         The Burning Cuyahoga (river in Cleveland).  Mainly the problem here was that the Ohio state government gave the firms responsible for polluting the river a blank check (permits) and barred possible claimants from suing these firms under common law nuisance actions.  The idea here is that traditional capitalist remedies for pollution (nuisance) were artificially shut down by state action, so the EPA wasn’t so much cleaning up after bad companies, so much as correcting messes made by state governments.

 9.         The Endangered Species act is a huge mess.  They play fast and loose with defining species, some of which are not in danger at all – or they’re not taken off the list when the numbers go back up.  But mainly it’s a huge nightmare for any property owner who has the misfortune to find such an animal on his property: the law gives him an incentive to quickly kill and bury the animal before anyone knows it’s there.  The “commons” problem is discussed: poaching is a problem because no one “owns” the animals.  If there were property rights in the animals (capitalist solution) most animals would be bred and preserved rather than hunted to extinction.

 10.        The Aral Sea was turned into a vast desert by the Soviet Union’s “environmental policies”.  Again, the atrocious environmental track record of socialist and communist regimes is completely ignored by the econazis. 

 When you examine the impact of their policies on the environment – usually extremely adverse - and give the rhetoric and ideology a closer look, what you consistently find is that these people are really just communists trying to hide their Red agenda behind a cloak of Green respectability. 

 I don’t think ANYONE, no matter how Republican or Dick-Cheney they may be, wants to pollute the environment, or screw up the planet, etc.  At worst, some of us are noxiously indifferent.  Back when I was in school in the 70s in the US, I remember two things.  First was that famous ad with the crying American Indian (no, not the 7-11 Indian).  Telling us not to litter is certainly pertinent.  How hard is it to put trash where it belongs instead of just throwing it out the window?  This should be obvious to anyone, no matter how Red State or brain dead. 

 Another thing was recycling.  This too is fairly sensible: with a little effort we can make a difference.  The key is an aggregate of LITTLE THINGS each of us do, which all add up together. I unplug my cell phone charger when I leave for work, and turn off the A/C.  If there are “green alternatives” which cost the same and work as well, I’ll gladly use them; but if they’re hideously expensive or don’t work for shit, forget it.  We can make a difference.  And without ditching capitalism.