Nightmares of the Global Warmists (Part 2 of 3)

Part 2 of RightNetwork's analysis of the cult of Global Warming. Part 1 can be found HERE.

World Socialism

There are other reasons why AGW and the Global Warming hysterics are so well received. Consider Vice President Gore's recommendations for how to save us all before his ten-year deadline is up (in 5 years):

1.    Ban any increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and then start reducing emissions. Tax CO2 emissions (and simultaneously eliminate all payroll taxes) to encourage clean-coal technology and other greenhouse gas reducers.

2.   Change the U.S. auto industry to reduce the use of oil. Encourage GM and Ford to switch to flex-fuel, plug-in, hybrid vehicles. Gore says in the average gasoline-driven car today, 90 percent of the energy is wasted.

3.   Change U.S. factories, to penalize CO2 emissions, reward the capture and use of heat that now goes to waste, and encourage use of computerized energy-use monitors to save fuel.

4.   Encourage U.S. farms to produce more fuel, to plant more trees and to stop deforestation. In the timber industry, lengthen the harvest cycle, giving trees more time to make oxygen.

5.    Encourage retrofitting of U.S. homes for better fuel efficiency by making special low-interest mortgages available. Immediately require that architectural designs cut in half the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and make all new buildings “carbon neutral” by 2030.

6.   Encourage greater use of windmills and photovoltaic solar cells. Encourage more private buying and selling of U.S. electricity into the national grid. Increase ethanol and biodiesel production.

7.    Modestly increase use of nuclear power. Gore sees no significant increase in global electricity production from atomic power, first, because nuclear plants are expensive, and, second, because if nuclear power expands around the world, more nations will be tempted to use nuclear fuel for atomic weapons.

8.   Sign the US onto the Kyoto Treaty so we join the Carbon Credits trading (which, coincidentally, is a business that Al Gore owns).

Count, if you will, how many of these are government-mandated, top-down centrally planned ideas. Of the eight, six are government requirements involving an increase in federal government power over the states and the people.

This gives us a glimpse into how this appeals to many, particularly on the left. The solutions that the AGW prophets of doom offer almost always involve greater government control over the market, over businesses, and over individual behavior. There's a word for this, and it is called "socialism," the economic system in which the central government has direct control over business and the economy.

This idea is very popular on the left, who believe that centrally planned and regulated economies and businesses are fairer and better run than a free market economy. Other suggestions include a ban on cremation (all that CO2 released with fire!), changing Daylight Saving Time by a few weeks (no appreciable change in energy use), British efforts to control garbage by fines and limitations - including picking up the garbage half as often to encourage recycling, and so on. Luxury taxes are proposed for excessive carbon use - a sort of required carbon credit purchase - legislation to limit the number and type of cars that can be owned and made, requirements on reducing emissions on cars already on the road, and so on are all proposed.

The Kyoto Accords, a failure in every country except France, according to self-reporting from various countries requires a huge drop in several minor greenhouse gas emissions by the signatory countries. These reductions would require severe and extreme government regulation, slashing the economy and crippling business.

 AGW: Old Whine in New Bottles

 If there was any sort of reasonable basis for AGW as it was thought in the 1990's, all this might be something to consider. But since there is no scientific or rational basis for alarmist theories and the best, most recent science points away from humans, to deliberately cause a worldwide depression for no reason other than a desire to have governments control the economy and limit human activity is difficult to justify.

Particularly troubling is the idea that the UN or some intergovernmental panel would govern these changes, making the demands and recommendations that nations then would have to obey. So you can add loss of national sovereignty to the fun.

Even when the suggestions are not government mandates, they are extreme in many cases. One scientist demands reducing the population of the earth by 83% because humans are the "AIDS of the Earth," a thought echoed by Kate Templeton who calls having more than 2 children an "Eco-Crime," and Ms Behar on the View who called having many children "ecologically irresponsible" because they "snort up" all the oxygen.

This anti-human movement is nothing new. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb in which he examined global trends and food production, and declared catastrophe. We had too many people, he argued, and we've got to stop having babies. The world is overpopulated and we're doomed:

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..."

and...

"a minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century"

Ehrlich based his ideas on the number of people in the world, the land they worked, and the production of food at the time of his writing. He presumed no changes in food productivity and farming, he assumed technology in the field of agriculture was totally static, and that the world would not change. He also ignored the possibility of farming in areas not presently being used because they are more difficult to reach or less productive. He even presumed that food production might decrease.

Fear not, he had some answers - again, involving central government planning and control:

Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.... Luxury taxes could be placed on layettes, cribs, diapers, diaper services, [and] expensive toys...

When he suggested sterilizing all Indian males with three or more children, we should have applied pressure on the Indian government to go ahead with the plan.

These are all quotes from The Population Bomb. In a later book How to be a Survivor, Ehrlich expanded on these ideas:

However, those who claim that the government could never intrude into such a private matter as the number of children a couple produces may be due for an unpleasant surprise. There is no sacred legal "right" to have children. The argument that family size is God's affair and not the business of the government would undoubtedly be raised -- just as it was against outlawing polygamy. But the government tells you precisely how many husbands or wives you can have and claps you in jail if you exceed that number.

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies -- often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. 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. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival.

Wow. So why do we have an even larger world population now and even less starvation? Well, unlike Dr Ehrlich's predictions, agricultural technology got better, techniques improved, and the world produces more food than ever. We have more food per person than we did at the time he wrote this book. In any case, his arguments were ludicrous to begin with the world is nowhere near being overpopulated by any rational standard even now.

JUST A STEP TO THE RIGHT

If any of this looks familiar, it ought to. No matter how obvious the utter failure and laughable errors of Ehrlich's hysterical proclamations that doesn’t stop people from calling for us to cull the population today. The lyrics are the same, they've just changed their tune.

Instead of worrying about lack of food production, they cry climate change that destroys food production. The fact that even if their worst predictions are true simply means that we will produce food further north where it is now not feasible or possible doesn't matter, the goal is an old, old one; kill off “unproductive” or “polluting” human beings. And while you’re at it, return to the stone age.

Smash the State

In 1811 many people looked around themselves at the squalor, poverty, and misery the world presented in England at the time. They were living through the first true world war (the Napoleonic Wars) and could see things were just terrible. The solution, they believed, was that we'd gone too far with technology. The horrible weapons used in the war, the ghastly factories and the machines of the time were clearly an abomination. An entire movement rose up, the Luddites, who wanted to return to a simpler, more pastoral time. The Luddites engaged in wrecking machines and sabotaging technology at the time, and over a dozen were put to death.

Their legacy lives on. There are many, primarily in the more radical environmentalist movements, who believe the same way still. They reject the idea of technology bringing benefits, they believe that advancement brings misery, and that we are "meant" (by whom is usually not explained, although the vague generic earth goddess Gaia is sometimes brought up) to live a simpler life. To this end, they oppose all expansion, all new technology, any attempt to make life easier or build, and any efforts to harvest trees or energy.

The exact opposition is usually framed differently: don't build a highway here, the spotted wood louse is endangered. Don't build a dam here, the beauty of this unspoiled area will be destroyed. Don't build a nuke here, it will melt down and kill us all, etc. But the central and core goal is the same: oppose advancement and technology, become more simple; become more primitive.

Global Warming is a bandwagon that these groups have leaped on with joy. Here was a big "meta-narrative" that could hold all their efforts and beliefs at once. Global Warming could be the lever by which to push us back into the time they believe we ought to live, to make people live simpler lives.

Get rid of those cars, those cities, those factories, and we can live the simple life of the savages who lived in harmony with their land (not exactly accurate, but that's for another essay). Wars, greed, pollution, sickness, crime, all those evils are caused by our senseless misuse of our land and advancement beyond what we should be.

As a bonus, the path to reach this idyllic utopia is the greater power of the government, increased government control over everyone's lives and business. This is a dream come true to the radical leftist: their lifelong goals all visible on the horizon thanks to Global Warming. Who cares if it's not exactly accurate, the goals are noble, and that's what matters most.

[Monday: The conclusion of  Nightmares of the Global Warmists and what is to be done to counter them.]