Well, after the recent wintry weather in the Midwest, this column of Pat's from February 2008 seems quite appropriate:
Scant doubts linger as to the rhetorical resolve of the save-the-polar-bears acolytes. The rage is getting pollution “down to zero,” proclaims climatechallenge.org, whose logo is a new-age Iwo Jima memorial of earthies courageously raising a wind turbine.
Why, anyone over 30 might ask, is the target “down to zero,” and not, say, happy flapper-era levels? As someone under 30, I’d suggest it is due to the feisty catchiness of the Captain Planet jingle circa ’91 – he’s our hero, gonna put pollution down to zero! – scrubbed into the inchoate neuro pathways of today’s twenty somethings.
Now, if I had the audacity to call myself an “environmentalist” for the mere fact that I wanted the government to control how people use energy in accordance with my Armageddon predictions, I should find Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” a more versatile rouser (though perhaps less forth-right). Acid rain’s a-gonna fall, my blue-eyed son. Rain’s a-gonna fall in winter instead of snow, my darling young one. “I’ll stand in the ocean until I start sinkin,” in17 eustatic inches of ocean water by 2100. Woe is “the poet who died in the gutter,” unable to escape the acidic reservoir.
But more woeful is the environmental left, which, its poets having died, must make do with a terribly stodgy campaign of meaningless catchphrases. Be “green” and “fight” “global warming” by reducing your “carbon foot-print.” Greenland is not green, thanks to an insufficiently warm globe. But Greenlanders are presumably “greener” than Americans. US soldiers do real fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq daily, but as a freshman environmentalist told the Washington Post last year, “I’m fighting for my future.” Someone make sure he gets a PTSD debriefing before it’s over.
Luther College appointed its “first sustainability intern” last month to “promote campus sustainability initiatives and monitor college operations from an environmental perspective.” What does environmental sustainability mean? Sustain what? Sustain the incredibly complex and unpredictable weather patterns and life cycles of the earth? OK, sign me up, and ring a cowbell when the intern has successfully sustained the earth as it ought to be.
I’ve lobbied adamantly for an “Islamic Radicalism” course at Luther, only to be jeered by professors and student leaders for unrealistic requests. “But changing the very heavens!” as Mark Steyn frames the enviro-jihad, “that we can do!”
What are sure to change if this frivolous crusade persists are our priorities. I endured unmolested the Captain Planet charade because the bad guys were the “eco-villains.” Today we’re all eco-villains. If carbon is a pollutant, so are humans. This is why a British woman had an abortion last December: “a baby would pollute the planet,” she said.
My childhood fear was the fat kid with the Joe Pesci insecurity complex that stole candy. Yet, “For many children and young adults,” the Washington Post reports with feigned regret, “global warming is the atomic bomb of today.” Forget the real atomic bombs, with which megalomaniacal caliphate-building Islamists threaten to kill Americans. Your life-perpetuating carbon usage summoned deadly tornadoes in Tennessee (says John Kerry), wildfires in California (says Harry Reid), and drought-induced genocide in Sudan (says Ban Ki-Moon).
Hopefully government checks the pesky facts before it trades free-enterprise for masochistic “sustainability”. California’s legislators propose remotely controlling homeowners’ thermostats. And last month the insipidly titled Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Panel recommended lower speed limits, mandatory light bulbs, and restrictions on where people can live and how many miles they can drive. But what’s the pretext? China is having its worst winter in 50 years and Buenos Aires just had its first snowfall in 89 years. Wind-chills reached 60 below in Minnesota this month. The number of violent (F3-F5) tornadoes has fallen each year from 1950-2006. The IPCC reneged on its apocalyptic predictions last February, as did NASA last April on its hottest years to date. Perhaps if a butterfly’s flutter can cause a typhoon continents away, the role of solar radiation and the maunder minimum in the negative feedback loop merit examination.
If I were an investor and I heard this “green” razzmatazz about putting pollution “down to zero,” I might avoid the oil industry…and the car, housing, construction, and business-in-general industries. Our economy’s sickness certainly wouldn’t perplex me.
The enviro-clerisy’s double-talk is shamelessly cheap, but its effects will be disastrously expensive.
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3 comments:
Truly a Misty Classic.
Here was the sustainablity intern's rebuttal. The $$ line is the last line:
Sustainability is important
February 28, 2008
By: Caleb Mattison
Letter to the Editor
“No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”
I would like to present a response to the column “The Right Stuff: Putting frivolity ‘down to zero!’” (Chips Vol. 130, No. 13) by Pat Knapp. I appreciate Knapp expressing his opinion, although I feel it is fundamentally distracted and troublesome for our future.
I am Luther’s sustainability intern, whom Knapp referred to in his column. Sustainability can be defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” There are three components of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. Sustainability doesn’t disregard the need for economic vitality and posterity — au contraire — it is one of its principles. But on the other hand, how can we sustain ourselves economically if we don’t have any natural resources left from which to create our economy?
Ultimately, however, talk of a vulnerable economy that we need to protect utterly pales in comparison to talk of a vulnerable planet that needs our attention.
Knapp observes that “if carbon is a pollutant, so are humans,” as if humans and carbon are inseparable. In fact, humans in the present world are tremendous polluters, which is a change from our ancestors, who lived in communion with the earth. The lifestyles we have developed, along with the machines and modern technology that we use, are literally changing the face of the earth. “Natural Capitalism” by Paul Hawkins observes that in the past 50 years, one fourth of the topsoil in the world has disappeared into the oceans. One third of all the forests in the world is gone, and more are vanishing (which produce the oxygen we breathe). In the last 30 years, we have consumed one third of the planet’s resources. Today, one half of all the land on the planet has been altered by humans. With a world population that will double within the century, what can we expect will happen to these figures? We are polluting our water, air and soil and dismantling ecosystems that our lives ultimately depend upon. The “Armageddon predictions” that Knapp flippantly invokes are prophecies of our inevitable future. It is undeniable that our current pace of life cannot continue on this planet indefinitely.
I disagree that if environmentalists have their way our economy will suffer. Just as we’ve built up our economy on fossil fuels and practices that degrade the natural world, we can shift our economy toward renewable fuels and practices. These fuels are more expensive now, but with government support and research, prices will quickly become comparable. Besides that, through efficiency and conservation, two tenets of environmental thought, we will end up saving money, not wasting it.
More importantly, when talking about money and the economy, we need to understand that up until now, we’ve been leaving out the true cost of products. There are environmental costs associated with the manufacture and disposal of products. Those costs are astronomical and will eventually have to be paid for, probably not by us, and they are left out of current costs. When they are included, the “green” alternatives become comparable in cost, if not cheaper.
I propose that we stop thinking of the environment as a separate entity from ourselves — as something that needs our help. I ask that we again start to think as our ancestors. The reality is that we are not different from the environment. We are another species of this planet that has achieved a more advanced way of life. Unfortunately, that way of life is undermining our source of life. Go outside, smell the air, touch the trees and come to be familiar again with the only planet we know of that supports life.
Caleb Mattison
Campus Sustainability Intern
By the way, his point about how the economy won't suffer is one of the most unforgiveable lies about the environmental movement. At least with the Iraq War no one can hide from the cost: we count the bodies, we total the expenditures.
If global warming is so catastrophic, admit that it will cost us now to prevent a greater cost later.
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