Global Warming and National Suicide

By Rael Jean Isaac

Beginning in 1856, the Xhosa tribe in today’s South Africa destroyed its own economy. They killed an estimated half-million of their own cattle (which they ordinarily treated with great care and respect), ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. By the end of 1857, between thirty and fifty thousand Xhosa had starved to death — a third to a half of the population. The British herded survivors of the once-powerful tribe into labor camps, and white settlers took much of their land, as reported by Richard Landes in Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience.

The Xhosa had acted on the prophecy of a fifteen-year-old girl who promised that if they destroyed all they had and purified themselves of “witchcraft” (including evil inclinations and selfishness), the world before the white invaders came would be restored. The British oppressors would flee, and the Xhosa ancestors would return, bringing with them an even greater abundance of cattle and grain.

Do you feel a mixture of pity and contempt for these strange people who ruined themselves on the basis of an outlandish vision? If so, the feeling is misplaced. Just as the basis for the Xhosa economy was cattle, the lifeblood of our economy is energy. And we are strangling our own energy supply on the basis of an apocalyptic prophecy that has no more validity than the one that sent the Xhosa into self-immolation.

The apocalyptic vision to which we subscribe has a superficial scientific gloss — “climate change” — but at bottom, both visions prescribe economic suicide, and both promise that self-sacrifice will bring about a golden age. In the case of the Xhosa, that golden age was the time before the British invaded. In our own, to quote famed environmentalist David Brower (director of the Sierra Club and then of Friends of the Earth), it’s “back there about a century when, at the start of the Industrial Revolution we began applying energy in vast amounts to tools with which we began tearing the environment apart.”

Landes describes those who initiate and build support for these movements as roosters, for they crow an exciting new message, and their opponents as owls, those counseling caution and skepticism. To drown out the warning owls, roosters must rally elites to their cause. That is how the global warming movement made its inroads: with governments and a small cadre of activists taking the lead. Once the authorities pronounce themselves in favor of the prophecy and it “pays” to believe, many more ordinary people will join in. In the case of the Xhosa, the initial rooster was a simple orphan girl. The key to the triumph of her vision was her uncle, a well-known preacher and diviner who preached her message and convinced the chiefs — including the chief of chiefs, named Sarhili.

Apocalyptic movements are urgent. It’s now or never. If action is not taken quickly, it will be too late. Xhosa believers set about destroying their cattle and grain immediately. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (the global warming apocalypse owes more to the U.N. than to any other single institution) told the Global Environmental Forum in 2009, “We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.” More generously, Prince Charles in March 2009 gave us “100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change and the unimaginable horror that this would bring.”

However, as Landes points out, just because the apocalypse is wrong does not mean that its effects are not profound. In the case of the Xhosa, the beneficiaries of the false apocalypse were the British — the very people the Xhosa thought they were expelling through their sacrifice took over the lands the Xhosa could no longer cultivate. China, which is heavily investing in the energy we spurn, is the most probable beneficiary of our folly.

How ironic it will be if, despite our pride in bringing down the Soviet Union without a shot, the twenty-first century, thanks to our self-destructive pursuit of an apocalyptic fantasy, belongs to a Communist dictatorship.

Rael Jean Isaac is a sociologist who has written extensively about social movements in the United States. Her latest book is Roosters of the Apocalypse, from which this article is excerpted.

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Global Warming and National Suicide

By Rael Jean Isaac

Beginning in 1856, the Xhosa tribe in today’s South Africa destroyed its own economy. They killed an estimated half-million of their own cattle (which they ordinarily treated with great care and respect), ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. By the end of 1857, between thirty and fifty thousand Xhosa had starved to death — a third to a half of the population. The British herded survivors of the once-powerful tribe into labor camps, and white settlers took much of their land, as reported by Richard Landes in Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience.

The Xhosa had acted on the prophecy of a fifteen-year-old girl who promised that if they destroyed all they had and purified themselves of “witchcraft” (including evil inclinations and selfishness), the world before the white invaders came would be restored. The British oppressors would flee, and the Xhosa ancestors would return, bringing with them an even greater abundance of cattle and grain.

Do you feel a mixture of pity and contempt for these strange people who ruined themselves on the basis of an outlandish vision? If so, the feeling is misplaced. Just as the basis for the Xhosa economy was cattle, the lifeblood of our economy is energy. And we are strangling our own energy supply on the basis of an apocalyptic prophecy that has no more validity than the one that sent the Xhosa into self-immolation.

The apocalyptic vision to which we subscribe has a superficial scientific gloss — “climate change” — but at bottom, both visions prescribe economic suicide, and both promise that self-sacrifice will bring about a golden age. In the case of the Xhosa, that golden age was the time before the British invaded. In our own, to quote famed environmentalist David Brower (director of the Sierra Club and then of Friends of the Earth), it’s “back there about a century when, at the start of the Industrial Revolution we began applying energy in vast amounts to tools with which we began tearing the environment apart.”

Landes describes those who initiate and build support for these movements as roosters, for they crow an exciting new message, and their opponents as owls, those counseling caution and skepticism. To drown out the warning owls, roosters must rally elites to their cause. That is how the global warming movement made its inroads: with governments and a small cadre of activists taking the lead. Once the authorities pronounce themselves in favor of the prophecy and it “pays” to believe, many more ordinary people will join in. In the case of the Xhosa, the initial rooster was a simple orphan girl. The key to the triumph of her vision was her uncle, a well-known preacher and diviner who preached her message and convinced the chiefs — including the chief of chiefs, named Sarhili.

Apocalyptic movements are urgent. It’s now or never. If action is not taken quickly, it will be too late. Xhosa believers set about destroying their cattle and grain immediately. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (the global warming apocalypse owes more to the U.N. than to any other single institution) told the Global Environmental Forum in 2009, “We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.” More generously, Prince Charles in March 2009 gave us “100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change and the unimaginable horror that this would bring.”

However, as Landes points out, just because the apocalypse is wrong does not mean that its effects are not profound. In the case of the Xhosa, the beneficiaries of the false apocalypse were the British — the very people the Xhosa thought they were expelling through their sacrifice took over the lands the Xhosa could no longer cultivate. China, which is heavily investing in the energy we spurn, is the most probable beneficiary of our folly.

How ironic it will be if, despite our pride in bringing down the Soviet Union without a shot, the twenty-first century, thanks to our self-destructive pursuit of an apocalyptic fantasy, belongs to a Communist dictatorship.

Rael Jean Isaac is a sociologist who has written extensively about social movements in the United States. Her latest book is Roosters of the Apocalypse, from which this article is excerpted.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/global_warming_and_national_suicide.html#ixzz1tGUvOPh1

‘Star Wars’ director surrenders to eco-tyrants

Sussman tells of relentless fight against George Lucas’ property rights

After 25 years of battling environmentalists, “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas has retreated from plans to construct a beautiful mission-style moviemaking mansion on thousands of acres of land he owns in Marin County, Calif., 20 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The people of Marin are proud of their liberalism and adherence to the green agenda. The community is extremely upscale and home to many rock stars and Hollywood-types. One would think the inhabitants of this hippie and yuppie paradise would be thrilled to have George Lucas’ business located in their backyard, but not so. His purposes, they contend, would disturb nature, and that’s a clear no-no in Marin.

Since 1995, a gaggle of rabid eco-interests have relentlessly attacked the billionaire film magnate, whose productions ushered in the digital arts age, over his plans for a production complex that would house Lucasfilm, Industrial Light and Magic, and LucasArts, all beneath one roof.

Initially Lucas wanted to build a 450,000 square foot facility, discreetly tucked away within the privacy of thousands of acres of his personal property. However, the greens immediately began holding him as an eco-hostage. In return for allowing his proposal to move forward, Lucas would have to agree to restore creeks on his land and set aside 2,500 acres of open space (over the years Lucas has been pressured to preserve more than 5,000 acres of property in the region). Lucas generously agreed, and the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved his project.

They demonize capitalism and freedom … and it’s working! Read Sussman’s new book, “Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America”

However, the penance the environmentalists wanted Lucas to pay was simply a green ruse. What they really desired was for the entire plan to be hurled into another galaxy far, far away.

At this point, Lucas cut a deal with San Francisco to use the former Presidio military base, overlooking the Golden Gate, to establish his world-renowned production facilities. He’s been there ever since, but in the meantime, continued to work on building a state-of-the-art campus on his land in Marin.

Finally, two weeks ago, the county supervisors gave the “Star Wars” creator the thumbs up to build his dream complex, though its size was to be reduced by nearly half and another green deed would have to be carried out by Lucas: fund a county-wide climate change action agenda. Lucas was ready to close the deal when officials moved to provide the opposition one last opportunity to state their case as to why the project should not be allowed.

When the eco-warriors showed up at the County Hall with lawyers and reams of paperwork last week, George Lucas decided to finally surrender.

Click here to read more about Brian Sussman’s new book.

“We have several opportunities to build the production stages in communities that see us as a creative asset, not as an evil empire,” stated a letter from George Lucas’ property company. “The residents [surrounding the property] have fought this project for 25 years, and enough is enough. Marin is a bedroom community and is committed to building subdivisions, not business.”

However, before withdrawing, Lucas unfurled his light saber one last time, shocking everyone into reality; the letter continued, “The land will revert back to its original use for residential housing. We hope we will be able to find a developer who will be interested in low-income housing since it is scarce in Marin.”

Touché.

Lucas’ story illustrates an important fact: The environmentalists are incredibly long-suffering when it comes to undermining personal property rights, which – like Marx and Engels – is the No. 1 goal of their agenda. Once they have selected a target, they will unrelentingly wear out those involved through, protests, lawsuits and green blackmail schemes. Their plans and purposes are not in keeping with liberty, but instead, with eco-tyranny. George Lucas is their latest victim.

The Ideology of Catastrophe

These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we refuse to listen to them.

By PASCAL BRUCKNER

As an asteroid hurtles toward Earth, terrified citizens pour into the streets of Brussels to stare at the mammoth object growing before their eyes. Soon, it will pass harmlessly by—but first, a strange old man, Professor Philippulus, dressed in a white sheet and wearing a long beard, appears, beating a gong and crying: “This is a punishment; repent, for the world is ending!”

We smile at the silliness of this scene from the Tintin comic strip “L’Étoile Mystérieuse,” published in Belgium in 1941. Yet it is also familiar, since so many people in both Europe and the United States have recently convinced themselves that the End is nigh. Professor Philippulus has managed to achieve power in governments, the media and high places generally. Constantly, he spreads fear: of progress, science, demographics, global warming, technology, food. In five years or in 10 years, temperatures will rise, Earth will be uninhabitable, natural disasters will multiply, the climate will bring us to war, and nuclear plants will explode.

Man has committed the sin of pride; he has destroyed his habitat and ravaged the planet; he must atone.

My point is not to minimize our dangers. Rather, it is to understand why apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists and intellectuals, who insist on reasoning and arguing as though they were following the scripts of mediocre Hollywood disaster movies.

Over the last half-century, leftist intellectuals have identified two great scapegoats for the world’s woes. First, Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. Second, “Third World” ideology, disappointed by the bourgeois indulgences of the working class, targeted the West, supposedly the inventor of slavery, colonialism and imperialism.

The guilty party that environmentalism now accuses—mankind itself, in its will to dominate the planet—is essentially a composite of the previous two, a capitalism invented by a West that oppresses peoples and destroys the Earth.

Environmentalism sees itself as the fulfillment of all earlier critiques. “There are only two solutions,” Bolivian president Evo Morales declared in 2009. “Either capitalism dies, or Mother Earth dies.”

“Our house is burning, but we are not paying attention,” said Jacques Chirac, then president of France, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. “Nature, mutilated, overexploited, cannot recover, and we refuse to admit it.”

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Sir Martin Rees, a British astrophysicist and former president of the Royal Society, gives humanity a 50% chance of surviving beyond the 21st century. Oncologists and toxicologists predict that the end of mankind should arrive even earlier, around 2060, thanks to a general sterilization of sperm.

One could cite such quotations forever, given the spread of apocalyptic literature. Authors, journalists, politicians and scientists compete in their portrayal of abomination and claim for themselves a hyperlucidity: They alone see the future clearly while others vegetate in the darkness.

The fear that these intellectuals spread is like a gluttonous enzyme that swallows up an anxiety, feeds on it, and then leaves it behind for new ones. When the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down after the enormous earthquake in Japan in March 2011, it only confirmed an existing anxiety that was looking for some content. In six months, some new concern will grip us: a pandemic, bird flu, the food supply, melting ice caps, cell-phone radiation.

The fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as though it were a surprise, that young people are haunted by the very concerns about global warming that the media continually broadcast. As in an echo chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated by the media.

We are inoculated against anxiety by the repetition of the same themes, which become a narcotic we can’t do without.

A time-honored strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering amount of horrifying news and then—at the end—tempering it with a slim ray of hope.

First you break down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience. Thus the advertising copy for the Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” reads: “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced—a catastrophe of our own making.”

Here are the means that the former vice president, like most environmentalists, proposes to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions: using low-energy light bulbs; driving less; checking your tire pressure; recycling; rejecting unnecessary packaging; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; and turning off electrical appliances. Since we find ourselves at a loss before planetary threats, we will convert our powerlessness into propitiatory gestures, which will give us the illusion of action. First the ideology of catastrophe terrorizes us; then it appeases us by proposing the little rituals of a post-technological animism.

But let’s be clear: A cosmic calamity is not averted by checking tire pressure or sorting garbage.

Another contradiction in apocalyptic discourse is that, though it tries desperately to awaken us, to convince us of planetary chaos, it eventually deadens us, making our eventual disappearance part of our everyday routine. At first, yes, the kind of doom that we hear about—acidification of the oceans, pollution of the air—charges our calm existence with a strange excitement. But the certainty of the prophecies makes this effect short-lived.

We begin to suspect that the numberless Cassandras who prophesy all around us do not intend to warn us so much as to condemn us.

In classical Judaism, the prophet sought to give new life to God’s cause against kings and the powerful. In Christianity, millenarian movements embodied a hope for justice against a church wallowing in luxury and vice. But in a secular society, a prophet has no function other than indignation. So it happens that he becomes intoxicated with his own words and claims a legitimacy with no basis, calling down the destruction that he pretends to warn against.

You’ll get what you’ve got coming! That is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to bitterness, from prediction to anathema.

Another result of the doomsayers’ certainty is that their preaching, by inoculating us against the poison of terror, brings about petrification. The trembling that they want to inculcate falls flat. Anxiety has the last word. We were supposed to be alerted; instead, we are disarmed. This may even be the goal of the noisy panic: to dazzle us in order to make us docile. Instead of encouraging resistance, it propagates discouragement and despair. The ideology of catastrophe becomes an instrument of political and philosophical resignation.

Mr. Bruckner is a French writer and philosopher whose latest book is “The Paradox of Love” (Princeton University Press, 2012). This article, translated by Alexis Cornel, is excerpted from the Spring 2012 issue of City Journal.

A Heated Public Climate Change: Global Tempers Rising Over Costly CO2 Legislation

By Larry Bell,

World-wide populations and policymakers are becoming increasingly less sheepish about the existence of a human-caused climate warming crisis. More and more, they’re recognizing that they are being fleeced by wolves in green camouflage that have been pulling wool over their eyes.

Senator John Kerry recently vented frustration about this climate change and what he called “the flat-Earth caucus” of global warming skeptics when he said: “Even amid the ‘Tuesday Group’…a bi-partisan block of lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who are interested in energy issues… you can’t talk about climate now. People just turn off. It’s extraordinary. Only for national security and jobs will they open their minds.”

Democrat Kerry and Independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman had worked hard to push a global climate crisis-premised 2010 carbon cap-and-trade bill, only to see its prospects for passage swept away in a Republican House cleaning. Kerry then charged that opponents to the legislation “made up their own science. They made up their own arguments. The Republicans created this idea of [carbon credit] trading because it avoided command and control by the Federal Government. Then they just decided to pick up and brand this a negative.”

Egregious ClimateGate and related Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scandals have prompted many to rethink which side of the climate/energy issue “has made up their own science and arguments”. Observable contradictions between actual climate trends and those predicted based upon highly speculative IPCC models support further doubt that economy-ravaging carbon regulation schemes are warranted. Despite elevated atmospheric CO2 levels and alarmist IPCC projections, there hasn’t been any significant warming over the past one and one-half decades. What’s more, many distinguished scientists expect that Earth may be entering a protracted cooling phase influenced by solar and ocean conditions.

As for Al Gore’s dire warnings about climate change causing extreme U.S. weather, there is no evidence to support this either. December 4 of last year set a record for the number of days between landfall hurricanes of category 3 or higher (2,232 days). The previous streak began on September 8, 1900 when the Great Galveston Hurricane hit and ended on October 19, 1906.

Even the IPCC in Chapter 4 of its recent Special Report dealing with disasters and climate change admits that there is no reliable evidence to support alarm. Posing a question to readers “Is the Climate Becoming More Extreme?”, it states “[…] None of the above instruments has yet been developed sufficiently as to allow us to confidently answer the question posed here. Thus we are restricted to questions about whether specific extremes are becoming more or less common, and our confidence in the answers to such questions, including the direction and magnitude of changes in specific extremes, depends on the type of extreme, as well as on the region and season, linked with the level of understanding of the underlying processes and the reliability of their simulation in models.”

In other words, they are uncertain about those things they don’t know, most particularly regarding extreme circumstances of unknowing……or something like that. Not being a real climate scientist, I may be missing something in this interpretation.

In any case, uncertainty regarding the magnitude or likely consequences of human climate change influence (either for better or worse), is spreading globally, even in European carbon-capping capitals where two decades of global warming mania are finally cooling.

Poland, together with southern and eastern European allies, is seeking to block efforts of environment ministers and non-governmental organizations to introduce any new, unilateral CO2 policies. They argue that since no global climate agreement is even envisioned until 2015, it would be “premature” to decide on Europe’s future climate policy now. In 2008, member states had agreed to cut carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The European Commission had drafted a proposal to slash emissions 80% by 2050, essentially prohibiting use of fossil fuels for electrical power generation.

The European Commission’s current draft report on its “Energy Roadmap 2050” warns that “if coordinated action on climate among the main players fails to strengthen in the next few years, the question arises how far the E.U. should continue with an energy system transition oriented to decarbonisation.” It has become quite clear that not even Germany and France are willing to go it alone, and many countries will refuse to go beyond a 20% emission target.

Painful awareness that anti-carbon strategies are hampering the E.U.’s economic recovery and future competitiveness are causing its green agenda to become increasingly unpopular. With growing numbers of voters and energy-intensive industries protesting climate policies that are inflating energy bills and heating costs, hardly any European government is clamoring for “green leadership”.

While British Prime Minister David Cameron’s administration committed to be “the greenest government ever”, it now appears that economic costs attached to anti-carbon policies aimed at combating global warming are giving top government officials cold feet. U.K. Chancellor George Osborne recently cited budgetary reasons to review and possibly overhaul the government’s carbon reduction commitment. One week later, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced she would delay a decision on whether to require companies to report quantities of their greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, she will miss a deadline that has been in place for the past four years.

Highly displeased with a new carbon tax established by the Australian government, Queensland’s Premier Campbell Newman has ordered former Premier Anna Bligh’s husband, Greg Withers who heads the Office of Climate Change (OCC), to begin dismantling the green energy programs he helped to create. The OCC’s annual $430 million fund which provides $30 million for climate change initiatives will be closed, along with a $50 million Renewable Energy Fund which supports a Geothermal Centre of Excellence.

Australia’s green showpiece, a $1.5 billion Solar Flagship Program, is now in jeopardy, and Queensland’s Liberal National Party government already pulled the power plug in March on $75 million in state funding pledged for a $1.32 billion Solar Dawn solar thermal project west of Brisbane. Newman also declared intentions to axe seven other green schemes because: “We now have a federal government that is imposing a big carbon tax on us and the rest of the country that is meant to solve all these [environmental] problems.” Referring to Withers, he said:” We want him to unravel those programs ‘cause he’s the bloke who set them up.”

The Queensland LNP isn’t alone in its contempt for the federal government’s carbon tax. A June 2011 poll conducted by the “News Limited” media firm revealed that nearly 60% of Australians opposed it when the plan was proposed, with just 28% in favor. About 75% believed it would leave them less well off financially, while offering no environmental benefit. The poll showed that most voters thought the extra energy costs would send jobs abroad, and weigh heaviest upon the poorest citizens. These and other opponents contended that the tax was premised upon global warming “save the planet” theories which are a hoax.

Many are now especially enraged because Prime Minister Julia Guillard of the Democratic Socialist Labor Party had promised before the elections not to push the scheme. Then after assuming power she betrayed voters and, in her own words, became “determined” to impose it on the population.

Is there any wonder why lots of American citizens are disgruntled about our federal government’s policies as well? Like Europe and Australia, they are witnessing many billions of dollars being squandered on “renewable energy” fiascos premised upon climate alarmism along with empty promises of environmental, employment, and energy security benefits. They are watching green energy subsidies, domestic fossil development impediments, and runaway EPA regulatory policies drive up fuel and electricity costs, food prices, federal debt, and monetary inflation.

And yes, like others throughout the world, many Americans are finally realizing that they really don’t like what they are seeing happen to their country and lives. Politicians are well-advised to heed this heated climate change as a true global warning.

Do you know why Earth Day is April 22?

School children, businesses, clergy, politicians and even the United States military soon will honor the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union.

Of course, they will call it Earth Day.

Brian Sussman points out in his explosive new book, “Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda will Dismantle America,” that the first nationwide Earth Day was held April 22, 1970, the 100th anniversary of the birth of the communist Bolshevik leader.

The “nationwide teach in” was spearheaded by Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and college professor Paul Ehrlich.

Ehrlich had just written the “Population Bomb” in 1968, which famously – and falsely – predicted, “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Building on the idea, Ehrlich went on to advocate “brutal and heartless decisions” to solve the “problem” of overpopulation.

Comparing humanity to a cancer, he stated, “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. … We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”

Ehrlich went on to add, “We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.”

Inspired by the book, Nelson met with Ehrlich and came up with the idea of the “nationwide teach in” with the purpose of tapping the “environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause.”

Nelson selected campus anti-war and left-wing activist Denis Hayes to coordinate efforts for the first “Earth Day.” Hayes later would brag to the New York Times how he fled overseas because “he had to get away from America” and refused to print bumper stickers for the event because “they go on automobiles.”

Organized by radical student activists, built on the model of left-wing “teach-ins” at American universities, and created with the objective of furthering progressive activism, Sussman notes that the movement for Earth Day took to heart Lenin’s adage, “Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”

However, Sussman exposes in “Eco-Tyranny” that the Bolshevik influence goes beyond tactics. After implementing his tyrannical rule over Russia in the October Revolution, Lenin issued a Decree on Land within his first year as Communist Party chairman. The decree declared that all forests, waters and minerals were property of the state.

Lenin also issued the decree “On Hunting Seasons and the Right to Possess Hunting Weapons,” which banned hunting moose and wild goats and ended open seasons for a variety of other animals.

Another resolution adopted by the Soviet government titled “On the Protection of Nature, Gardens, and Parks” established zapovedniki, or human-free nature preserves.

Despite the poverty of the people under Soviet rule, Lenin decided that it better served the national interest to place the rich natural resources of the area beyond human reach.

Sussman summarizes, “During Lenin’s reign, Russia initiated the most audacious nature conservancy program in the twentieth century. Starting with a vision created by Marx 50 years prior, Lenin had successfully implemented version one of the green agenda. His accomplishments would eventually … [be] celebrated the world over each April.”

Today, Earth Day is the most widely celebrated secular holiday in the world, with almost every major American institution paying it some sort of recognition in spite of its extreme origins. Despite the mainstreaming of Lenin’s anniversary celebration, left-wing activists honor the true history of the holiday by attacking property rights and human economic activity.

For example, as part of “Earth Week direct action,” Occupy DC protesters have been storming private businesses and trade associations such as the American Natural Gas Association.

However, this is only an echo of the plans the Obama administration has to restrict land ownership, American energy production and economic activity.

As Sussman reveals in Eco-Tyranny, the Obama administration has been pushing aggressively to seize hundreds of thousands of acres, as documented by secret memos from within the administration.

Sussman also shows how wealthy progressive activists and Democratic politicians are pushing to create American versions of the zapovedniki by creating human-free “wildlife corridors,” while Americans are forced to settle into highly regulated, heavily populated “megaregions.”

Sussman states in “Eco-Tyranny” that “socialism’s green flag [has achieved] great success with [its] devious agenda … even in America.” On April 22, the entire country will join in socialism’s celebration.

Ira Einhorn, who claims to have been on stage to host the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, currently is serving prison time for the beating death of his ex-girlfriend, Holly Maddux.

He fled to Europe after her body was discovered in a trunk in a closet in his apartment. He spent years there and was convicted in absentia before being extradited to the U.S. in 2001 after an extended court battle.

In a statement from Earth Day organizers, they denied Einhorn’s claims to have founded the event, saying, “He is a fraud.”

Downfall

By Fraser Nelson

It did not take long. Last month, Matt Ridley argued in a Spectator cover story that the wind farm agenda is in effect dead, having collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. The only question is when our ministers would realise. In an interview with the Sunday Times (£), climate change minister Greg Barker admits that his department has adopted an ‘unbalanced’ approach to wind farms and will now look at other options. ‘Far from wanting thousands more, actually for most of the wind we need… they are either being built, being developed or in planning. The notion that there’s some new wave of wind [farms] is somewhat exaggerated.’

Indeed, the phrase ‘somewhat exaggerated’ applies to the case for wind farms itself. There are a staggering 3,500 wind turbines in Britain, what to do with them all? Ridley had this suggestion:

‘It would be a shame for them all to be dismantled. The biggest one should remain, like a crane on an abandoned quay, for future generations to marvel at. They will never be an efficient way to generate power. But there can be no better monument to the folly of mankind.’

To Ridley, this was – at root – an intellectual error. An example of how the establishment, and entire government machine, can sponsor something that makes no economic or environmental sense – but no one dares point this out, because the cause is seen as noble. He has generously sponsored the £8,500 Ridley Award for essays that expose similar environmental fallacies and entries close on 30 June. We’ve had plenty of brilliant entries so far – but keep them coming. Click here to find out more.

In their own words – the truth about their real motivations

David Evans, who consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) 1999-2005 and 1998-2010, and was a believer in AGW until the evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself in 1998 to 2006, when he became a skeptic.

“The AGW scam involves a “regulating class” of believers, consisting of the UN, western governments, major banks and finance houses, NGOs and greenies, totalitarian leftists, government-funded scientists, academia, renewables corporations and the mainstream news media. Against them are the doubters: independently-funded scientists, private-sector middle class, and amateurs. The regulating class does not try to hide its belief that it is cleverer and morally superior. Their solution is regulation of the whole world’s economy by themselves, which was the object at the failed Copenhagen climate conference. On climate change, the regulating class has won over the leadership of most professional and business organizations by lobbying and pressure.”

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Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation

“The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded. Yet in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. “

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Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, visited Australia in July 2011. In referring to the ideological orientations of those individuals and organisations who have significant financial and other vested interests in propagating the ‘Doctrine’ of anthropogenic induced climate change, President Klaus said: “They want to change us, to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences, they want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. What is endangered is freedom, the climate is okay.”

After noting that today’s human-induced climate change alarmists are the ideological descendents of the zero and negative population growth advocates of the 1970s who erroneously forecast that human population pressures would lead to increases in global poverty and growing shortages in resources, President Klaus went on to add: “They hate us, the humans, they consider us selfish and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world — called communism — and I know that it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”

SEEN IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

• Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General who chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse….isn’t it our job to bring that about”]

•”In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention….and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself….believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose.“ Quote by the Club of Rome.

• Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, seconded Strong’s statement: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

• Richard Benedick, a deputy assistant secretary of state who headed policy divisions of the U.S. State Department, stated: “A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”

• “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” -Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

• “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” -Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University

• “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace“

• Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC

• “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” -Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

• IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer in November 2010 admitted “one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” Instead, climate change policy is about how “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”

• “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

• “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
– Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

• “Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King

• “The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” – Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview

• “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

• “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

• “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

• “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

• “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
-Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

• “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
– Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit

• “All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

• “Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.”
– Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society

• “Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia

• “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

• “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
– Prof. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb

• “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”
– United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment

• “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor

• “… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind

• “One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
– Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier

• “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund

• “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

• “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
– Christopher Manes, Earth First!

• “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
– David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

• “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

• “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
– Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC

• “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

• “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

• “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
-Christine Stewart, fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment

• The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin

• “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.”
– David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager

• “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send out entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.”
– Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

• “By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia

• “Climate Change will result in a catastrophic, global seal level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.”
– Greenpeace International (It has risen less than 7 inches in 100 years and is decelerating)

• “We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

• “In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

• “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
– UN Commission on Global Governance report

• “The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human species has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.”
– Rene Dubos, board member Planetary Citizens

• “A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

• “Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

• “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
– UN Agenda 21

• “Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution

• “In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.”
– Dr. Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General

• “Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.”
– Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute

Farewell Bob Brown; Farewell Greens

By Geoff Brown

The influence of the Greens is declining and Bob Brown has jumped from a sinking Titanic albeit a tiny titanic (official oxymoron).

In a column from the Sunday Telegraph Miranda Devine wrote a piece entitled, in my printed copy of the paper “A woodchip off the old block” and on-line “Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

On a rural slanted social website, Christine Milne opened up a group page to try to woo the people from the bush. However she underestimated us and she couldn’t stand the heat and left the grounds. Now she is trying to whoop up country credentials again.

Milne, 58, made a pitch to rural and regional voters, claiming “the Greens and the bush” simply misunderstood each other. “I’m going out there as a country person to say to other country people it is time that the Greens and country people worked together.”

Miranda reports the Green’s failures:

Good luck with that, considering greenies are the chief cause of grief to the bush.

Let us count the ways.

Forestry towns destroyed by irrational green tree worship.
Uncontrollable bushfires caused, not by global warming, but by green opposition to hazard reduction.
National parks left to feral animals which rampage through neighbouring farms.
Dams never built thanks to greenie protests.
Wind turbines plonked all over bucolic hillsides.
A live cattle industry brought to its knees.
The Wild Rivers assault on the ability of entrepreneurial Cape York Aborigines to earn a living from their land.
Dangerous highways which kill country people in disproportionate numbers, because green tape blocks road upgrades.
Bans on rodeos and coal mining.
Sky rocketing energy prices, thanks to the Greens-mandated carbon tax and clean energy follies.
Full-frontal attacks on farming by greenies arrogant enough to presume they know better than a family who has earned a living off land they have cultivated for generations.

Greenies are as much the enemy of country people as locusts or droughts. The difference is that natural disasters come and go.

Greens never stop. And like an old fashioned protection racket, they wreck the joint and now they want to talk.
Miranda writes:

(Milne’s) whimsical gardening blog, with its talk of gooseberry pie and luscious pictures of home-grown passionfruit is as unthreatening and cosy as politicians get.

Perhaps she thought that her foray into the rural slanted social website would be “as unthreatening and cosy as politicians get.” Unfortunately, us “rubes” on the rural slanted social website were a little more sophisticated than she expected.

For the sake of the future of the country, let’s hope and pray we are seeing the end of the destructive, watermelon greens.

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/farewell-bob-brown-farewell-greens.html

Study: Hybrid car owners unlikely to buy another

By Bailey Johnson

CBS) – Hybrid cars have gained praise, derision and driven technological advancement since their introduction. Sales have surged on the back of higher gas prices, inspiring many automakers to focus on turning out gas-electric vehicles.

But the one thing hybrid cars may not be able to inspire is loyalty. A recent study shows that nearly two-thirds of hybrid owners decide not to purchase another hybrid vehicle when it’s time to trade in.

R.L. Polk, an automotive marketing research company, released a study this week showing that only 35-percent of hybrid owners purchased another gas-electric vehicle when trading in during 2011. Repurchase rates vary across hybrid models, with the highest percentage of hybrid loyalty going to the Toyota Prius. Removing that car from the model shows a repurchase rate under 25-percent.

“Having a hybrid in the product lineup can certainly give a brand a competitive ege when it comes to attracting new customers,” says Brad Smith, director of Polk’s Loyalty Management Practice. “The repurchase rates of hybrid vehicles are an indication that consumers are continuing to seek alternative solutions to high fuel prices.”

Fuel prices and hybrid loyalty seem to go hand in hand. When gas prices were stable during the third quarter of 2011, only 31-percent of hybrid owners decided to repurchase. That number jumped to 40-percent in the fourth quarter when gas prices spiked.

Hybrid vehicles represent 2.4-percent of the new car market in the U.S., according to Polk, down from a high of 2.9-percent in 2008.

The study also revealed that hybrid loyalty was not significantly higher in “eco-friendly” markets like Los Angeles and Seattle than the rest of the country. The Polk study shows that the highest hybrid loyalty rates are in Florida, which had three of the top-five repurchase rates.