Alan Caruba
April 10, 2008
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2602
As we approach the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet
Union.oops, I meant Earth Day.it's so easy to confuse the two because
they occur, quite by coincidence I'm sure, on the same day.
Anyway April 22 will bring forth an avalanche of the usual accusations
that America is a sinkhole of pollution, et cetera.
We are all supposed to feel guilty or angry or both for living in a
nation that we are told is the largest "consumer" of, well, everything
and, at the same time, a terrible steward of the land and such.
There are two things that environmentalists hate, one is consumption and
the other is the human beings doing it.
The only problem with these accusations is that they are, like virtually
everything environmentalists tell us, wrong.
The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the American Enterprise
Institute (AEI) just released the "2008 Index of Leading Environmental
Indicators", an annual re****t highlighting the significant environmental
developments and milestones in the United States and worldwide.
As Steven F. Howard, a co-author of the Index and a PRI senior fellow,
is pleased to note, "The U.S. remains the world's environmental leader
and will likely be so in the future."
For example, between 1997 and 2004, the last year in which comparative
data are available, emissions from Kyoto Protocol participants increased
21.1 percent.
The U.S. refused to sign this United Nations inspired idiocy, but its
emissions increased only 6.6 percent during the same time period,
considerably less than the participants.
The Protocol is based on the lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are
causing the Earth to warm, but the Earth is actually beginning to cool
and CO2 constitutes a minuscule 0.038 percent of the Earth's atmosphere.
The odds are that the United States is the only industrialized nation in
which a decrease occurred in 2006. Europe, which is always wailing away
about greenhouse gases (GHG) and is making progress toward eliminating
anything that generates electricity other than the occasional lightning
strike, has never been able to meet the Protocol's limits.
As the Index points out, the United States last emitted CO2 at this
level in 1910 when the population was only 92 million. All of which
suggests that we are doing one hell of a better job at limiting GHG
emissions than say, China or India. Oh, wait! They aren't even Kyoto
Protocol signatories. In fact, the Protocol exempts them. Which raises
the question, if two of the world's largest and fastest growing
industrializing nations don't have to limit GHG emissions, what's the
point of having a Protocol in the first place?
These days, crazed environmentals are calling for an 80 percent
reduction of GHG by 2050. What they don't tell you is that the only
nations with emissions levels that low are appallingly poor. Don't like
GHG emissions? Move to Haiti or Somalia.
So, come Earth Day, if you are a dedicated environmentalist, don't
forget to get out there and wave your red flag with the Hammer and
Sickle on it. I keep forgetting. I mean the green flag. Tell people that
you are trying to save the Earth from horrible consumers of stuff like,
ah, food.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
".it should not be surprising to see hordes of former Reds, or of those
who otherwise would have become Reds, turning from Marxism and becoming
the Greens of the ecology movement. It is the same fundamental
philosophy in a different guise, ready as ever to wage war on the
freedom and well-being of the individual." Dr. George Reisman's book
Capitalism
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