“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
”There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
”Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.”
To read the reports from the UN and in the public press, one would think that the existence of global warming is a proven fact, and that human activity as its root cause is widely accepted in the scientific community.
One would also think that the only scientifically valid remedy for this grim situation is for the US and other nations to urgently adopt the Kyoto Accords, which call for draconian reductions in fossil full usage and, if implemented, would certainly create tremendous economic dislocation for our people and for those living in other countries.
Al Gore himself, whom many in the US believe should have been our president, made the following statement about global warming in New York City on the January 15, 2004 – the coldest day in the city’s history since 1957.
I am particularly concerned because the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm. The international community – including the United States – began a massive effort several years ago to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment of the growing evidence that the earth’s environment is sustaining severe and potentially irreparable damage from the unprecedented accumulation of pollution in the global atmosphere. In essence, these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future.
And yet, only three months earlier, on November 4, 2003 the Canadian National Post reported the following:
The growing number of scientists who dispute the [Kyoto] treaty's scientific foundation have become increasingly vocal, regularly pushing their case in the media as groundbreaking studies continue to be published that pull the rug out from under Kyoto's shaky edifice.
Of these, none may have the long-term impact of the paper published yesterday in the prestigious British journal Energy and Environment, which explains how one of the fundamental scientific pillars of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and a biased selection of climate records.
The paper's authors, Toronto-based analyst Steve McIntyre and University of Guelph economics professor Ross McKitrick, obtained the original data used by Michael Mann of the University of Virginia to support the notion that the 20th-century temperature rise was unprecedented in the past millennium. A detailed audit revealed numerous errors in the data. After correcting these and updating the source records they showed that based on Mann's own methodologies, his original conclusion was flawed. Mann's original version resulted in the famous "hockey stick" graph that purported to show 900 years of relative temperature stability (the shaft of the hockey stick) followed by a sharp increase (the blade) in the 20th century.
The corrected version of the last thousand years actually contradicts the view promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and removes the foundation for claims of 20th-century uniqueness.
So who’s right? Is global warming a real threat caused by human activity, or isn’t it? Obviously, there is vigorous debate on both sides of the question, and the science is far from settled.
But it is clear to anyone who will look closely that there are an awful lot social engineers in our own nation, in governments around the world and at the UN who have a vested interest in human-induced global warming being true.
An urgent need to save the planet from catastrophic environmental disaster would be just the thing to justify UN control of every square inch or cubic centimeter of the world’s land, air and water.
Imagine the power you would have if you were in a position – by virtue of your authority to save the world’s environment – to decide which human activities were environmentally permissible and which were not
You could tell people where to live. You could impose so-called “smart development” and stuff people into densely populated urban areas in order to save open space, an often stated pillar of the environmentalist agenda. (As it happens, there is so much unoccupied space in the continental US that every person in the country could be given a half acre plot and still fit entirely within the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the country entirely unpopulated. I know. I’ve done the math.)
If you were named Environmental Czar, your could tell people what they could do with their land and regulate their housing. You could tell them how much water they could have in their toilets, and how much heat, air conditioning and electricity they could use. You could control the amount of television they watch by rationing of electrical power. You could tell them what they were allowed to drive, and how much gas they could use. You could force them out of their cars and into public transportation (See Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore). You could impose manufacturing production quotas and regulate the world’s industries to the point where you would essentially own them. You could even tell people how many children they are allowed to have.
You would, in fact, rule the world and all the people in it.
Now wanting to rule the world is nothing new. People have been trying to do that since the first humans pressed beyond their own local habitat and realized that there were other people living in the next valley. In the 20th century, the drive to rule the world achieved its greatest expression with rise of socialism and the Communist empire. Back then, the social engineers believed that they could achieve ultimate Power Over Others by commanding every aspect of the economy. But of course, that didn’t work. Draconian government control of the economy proved unsustainable, to borrow the environmentalists’ favorite word. Thus Communism collapsed, leaving over 100 million murder victims in its wake, and with it went the dreams of millions of social engineers around the world who looked to it as a model for humanity and their ticket to power.
The environmentalist movement has given these people a new home, and a new theory for seizing power. The Kyoto Accords would have gone a long way towards imposing on the world’s most productive nations the kind of control that had vanished for the social engineers when communism and its weak sister socialism finally ended up in the ash heap of history.
And to anyone who won’t get with the program, all that is needed is to scream: “You want to destroy the environment!”
So perhaps it is not surprising that when confronted with a very reasonable caution about imposing the far-reaching, burdensome and society-changing Kyoto Accords in the face of conflicting scientific evidence about global warming, we have people like John Kerry publicly attacking George Bush’s motives in deciding to abandon the treaty once and for all. (It had previously been rejected by a 95-0 vote in the US Senate during Bill Clinton’s administration and was politically dead anyway.)
According to Mr. Kerry, in his February 9, 2003 speech at the Kennedy School of Government in Boston: “Nowhere is there a more determined, more dangerous, more concerted frontal and stealth assault on our values and our future than the Bush Administration's disregard for the environment.”
Well my own position is that when it comes to concerted frontal and stealth assaults on the core values and future of the American people, people like John Kerry and his social engineering colleagues in the environmentalist movement are right up there with the best of them.
Imagine the power you would have if you were in a position – by virtue of your authority to save the world’s environment – to decide which human activities were environmentally permissible and which were notYou could tell people where to live. You could impose so-called “smart development” and stuff people into densely populated urban areas in order to save open space, an often stated pillar of the environmentalist agenda. (As it happens, there is so much unoccupied space in the continental US that every person in the country could be given a half acre plot and still fit entirely within the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the country entirely unpopulated. I know. I’ve done the math.)
If you were named Environmental Czar, your could tell people what they could do with their land and regulate their housing. You could tell them how much water they could have in their toilets, and how much heat, air conditioning and electricity they could use. You could control the amount of television they watch by rationing of electrical power. You could tell them what they were allowed to drive, and how much gas they could use. You could force them out of their cars and into public transportation (See Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore). You could impose manufacturing production quotas and regulate the world’s industries to the point where you would essentially own them. You could even tell people how many children they are allowed to have.
That's what they have in mind, you're right.