Environmental Talk

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The following op-ed is from The Objective Standard, a publication that stands out for its rationality and clear thinking on a variety of topics.
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by Craig Biddle

Because Earth Day is intended to further the cause of environmentalism—and because environmentalism is an anti-human ideology—on April 22, those who care about human life should not celebrate Earth Day; they should celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day.

As I wrote for The Objective Standard’s “Exploit the Earth or Die” campaign:

Either man takes the Earth’s raw materials—such as trees, petroleum, aluminum, and atoms—and transforms them into the requirements of his life, or he dies. To live, man must produce the goods on which his life depends; he must produce homes, automobiles, computers, electricity, and the like; he must seize nature and use it to his advantage. There is no escaping this fact. Even the allegedly “noble” savage must pick or perish. Indeed, even if a person produces nothing, insofar as he remains alive he indirectly exploits the Earth by parasitically surviving off the exploitive efforts of others.

Exploiting the Earth—using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes—is a basic requirement of human life. According to environmentalism, however, man should not use nature for his needs; he should keep his hands off “the goods”; he should leave nature alone, come what may.

Environmentalism is not concerned with human health and well-being—neither ours nor that of generations to come. If it were, it would advocate the one social system that ensures that the Earth and its elements are used in the most productive, life-serving manner possible: capitalism.

Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes and protects each individual’s right to act in accordance with his basic means of living: the judgment of his mind. Environmentalism, of course, does not and cannot advocate capitalism, because if people are free to act on their judgment, they will strive to produce and prosper; they will transform the raw materials of nature onto the requirements of human life; they will exploit the Earth and live.

Environmentalism rejects the basic moral premise of capitalism—the idea that people should be free to act on their judgment—because it rejects a more fundamental idea on which capitalism rests: the idea that the requirements of human life constitute the standard of moral value. While the standard of value underlying capitalism is human life (meaning, that which is necessary for human beings to live and prosper), the standard of value underlying environmentalism is nature untouched by man.

The basic principle of environmentalism is that nature (i.e., “the environment”) has intrinsic value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of the requirements of human life—and that this value must be protected from its only adversary: man. Rivers must be left free to flow unimpeded by human dams, which divert natural flows, alter natural landscapes, and disrupt wildlife habitats. Glaciers must be left free to grow or shrink according to natural causes, but any human activity that might affect their size must be prohibited. Naturally generated carbon dioxide (such as that emitted by oceans and volcanoes) and naturally generated methane (such as that emitted by swamps and termites) may contribute to the greenhouse effect, but such gasses must not be produced by man. The globe may warm or cool naturally (e.g., via increases or decreases in sunspot activity), but man must not do anything to affect its temperature. And so on.

In short, according to environmentalism, if nature affects nature, the effect is good; if man affects nature, the effect is evil.

Stating the essence of environmentalism in such stark terms raises some illuminating questions: If the good is nature untouched by man, how is man to live? What is he to eat? What is he to wear? Where is he to reside? How can man do anything his life requires without altering, harming, or destroying some aspect of nature? In order to nourish himself, man must consume meats, vegetables, fruits, and the like. In order to make clothing, he must skin animals, pick cotton, manufacture polyester, and the like. In order to build a house—or even a hut—he must cut down trees, dig up clay, make fires, bake bricks, and so forth. Each and every action man takes to support or sustain his life entails the exploitation of nature. Thus, on the premise of environmentalism, man has no right to exist.

It comes down to this: Each of us has a choice to make. Will I recognize that man’s life is the standard of moral value—that the good is that which sustains and furthers human life—and thus that people have a moral right to use the Earth and its elements for their life-serving needs? Or will I accept the notion that nature has “intrinsic” value—value in and of itself, value apart from and irrespective of human needs—and thus that people have no right to exist?

There is no middle ground here. Either human life is the standard of moral value, or it is not. Either nature has intrinsic value, or it does not.

On April 22, let the world know where you stand. Don’t celebrate Earth Day; celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day—and let your friends, family, and associates know why.

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Craig Biddle is the editor and publisher of The Objective Standard and the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It.

Copyright © 2008 by The Objective Standard. All rights reserved.

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The hair-raising story of a tortoise…

Researchers announced today they had discovered a rare soft-shell turtle that had previously been thought to be extinct. The turtle was discovered in northern Vietnam and was believed to have been planted by the C.I.A. in early 1975, only a few months before the fall of Saigon.

The turtle showed no visible signs of torture but researchers said it was too early to say what type of impact living on the run crawl has had on the turtle’s mental condition.

Scientists found the turtle, unshaven and wearing a headband, in its traditional habitat near the banks of Vietnamese lake.

The main question researchers are being asked is, “How could anyone be mistaken about a giant turtle being extinct?”

It’s giant and it’s a turtle. It’s big and incredibly slow-moving. Theoretically, this should make it easier to count when you’re taking an inventory of species in a particular area.

The fact that the turtle was found by a lake — pretty much right where you’d expect to find it — further adds to the mystery of why anyone thought the turtle was extinct in the first place.

The turtle was quoted as saying, “All anyone had to do was call. I can be a little shy but, as I get older, I’m really starting to come out of my shell.”

Scientists noted that the discovery “carries great scientific and cultural significance” because of the relative rarity of the turtle, it’s status in local folklore and because it makes an awesome soup.

The discovery is also expected to push local calls for the return of the Hanoi State Fair since, as the local mayor explained, “If we can find a couple more of these suckers, we’ll be able to put on a full-fledged turtle race.”

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You celebrate your way, I’ll celebrate mine….

Dear Planet,

Please excuse Mark Jabo from Earth Hour this year. While he understands this is a great excuse for a party, he is a big basketball fan and is not willing to miss part of the UCLA-Xavier game based on the dubious goal of calling attention to climate change.

Mark is well aware that the climate has been changing for the past few billion years and fully agrees that it will continue to do so.

While the official Earth Hour policy is to urge people to replace standard bulbs with CFL bulbs, Mark would like to point out the dubious merits of taking a step against a projected climate threat and replacing it with the more immediate and proven danger of mercury contamination.

Mark is also a little ticked off at Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes for not laughing Al Gore off the program when he suggested that anyone who doubts climate change is man-made is akin to someone who still believes the Earth is flat.

Mark would suggest the more accurate analogy would be to compare the Church’s opposition to the science-based thinking of Galileo to the cult-like devotion of a politician who continues to cling to a rigid dogma and ignore all evidence that contradicts “what he knows in his heart to be true.”

Mark is somewhat amused that a guy who managed to pull gentleman’s Cs in college has become the evangelical spokesperson for a point of view that is challenged by hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists with advanced degrees in the topic.

Please accept this note as an excuse for future Earth Hour and Earth Day celebrations and also any Earth Nanoseconds or Earth Bicentennials planned in the future.

If there is a permission slip for the field trip to the rain forest, please be advised I will be happy to sign it because Mark thinks it would be really cool to see an anaconda.

Sincerely,

Mark’s Brain

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“Hey, gang! Next year let’s have a bad climate model party….”

Someone got me a subscription to E Magazine for Christmas. E Magazine is a lot like Parade Magazine except it features issues about the environment instead of ads for collectible hand-painted Garfield figurines.

The cover story of the first issue I ever received was “Losing Winter: As Climate Change Takes Hold, Our Coldest Season is the First Casualty.”

There were gloomy predictions of shortened snowboarding seasons and snowmobile makers going out of business. On the plus side, at least they were talking about people rather than worrying about polar bears.

Still, its hard to manufacture a crisis when the worst thing you can say about climate change is that it could limit your choice of leisure time activities.

The E Magazine article was full of people taking matters into their own hands. “Marshall Heaven of Greenwich, Connecticut got tired of waiting for the snow to fall, so he bought two Backyard Blizzard snowmakers and can now promise 15-foot drifts as early as late November.”

I guess it might be fun to confuse the crap out of the local squirrel population, but other than that it’s hard for me to fathom why someone would go to these kind of lengths to try to insure that every one of his winters always followed the same pattern.

What we’re finding out in the great global warming rhubarb is that all climate is local. While we’re lamenting lack of rain in Georgia, the Pacific Northwest is getting inundated with precipitation. While Artic ice is melting, ice in Antarctica is setting records for growth and coverage.

So, it’s probably not surprising that E Magazine went to great lengths to trumpet the fact we’re “Losing Winter,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came out with the following facts this week:

- The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001

- During January alone, 170 inches of snow fell at the Alta ski area near Salt Lake City, Utah, more than twice the normal amount for the month, eclipsing the previous record of 168 inches that fell in 1967

- Mountain snowpack exceeded 150 percent of average in large parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon at the end of February. Spring run-off from the above average snowpack in the West is expected to be beneficial in drought plagued areas

As the first buds of spring start to pop out here in the Northeast, many people will decide it’s a good time to put their sweaters in a plastic bin to be put in storage for another year.

If there’s room, you may want to throw some climate models and a couple of back issues of E Magazine in there, too.

Despite their repeated ability to forecast anything other than embarrassment for their designers, the models and the gloomy headlines are sure to be unpacked again next year.

Searching for truth…

As anyone who owns a dog knows, those plastic bags you get at the store are great for picking up behind your dog.

As it turns out, plastic bags are pretty good at picking up bullshit, too.

Remember how you’ve been hearing how plastic bags kill 100,000 marine mammals and over one million seabirds a year? Turns out these oft-quoted statistics have no basis in fact.

What they do offer is insight into the kind of misinformation and deliberate distortions that characterize the global warming debate.

It seems there was a study done in Canada which was published in 1987 that over a three-year period between 1981-1984 more than 100,000 marine mammals and birds were killed by discarded nets.

Fast forward to 2002. The Australian government commissioned a study on the effects of plastic bags. The authors of that study quoted the Canadian study as saying that plastic bags were responsible for the deaths.

Somehow discarded fishing nets became plastic bags, 100,000 animal deaths over three years became 100,000 marine mammal and 1,000,000 birds a year.

I don’t claim to be an expert on recruiting scientists for government studies but I would think that, at a minimum, you might want to hire a couple of guys who know enough math to know that adding an extra comma and three zeroes changes the meaning of 100,000.

You might even want consider hiring people who, when confronted with evidence, might be willing to admit their mistakes.

The authors of the Australian study left the “typo” uncorrected for four years and, when they finally did issue a correction, they corrected “plastic bags” to “plastic debris” and in a footnote, made mention the Canadian study referred to fishing nets.

Let me make one suggestion to any Australian government officials who are reading this. If you type in “fishing nets” into your computer and it comes out “plastic bags,” it may be time to get a new computer. Or some new researchers.

You know you’re on thin ice when Greenpeace is sprinting away from endorsing your study results. David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace, noted, “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite.”

The London Times article characterizes the results of the Australian study as “a misinterpretation.”

That famous Londoner, Winston Churchill once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Six years after this little “misinterpretation,” the truth is still looking for its jeans.

There goes the neighborhood…

The Berkeley Daily Planet website features a commentary by Edna Spector. I’ve been a little out of touch recently, so I must have missed the news that humans are no longer going to be at the top of the food chain.

Or part of the food chain at all, for that matter.

I think there’s a term for the result of anyone who buys into this line of reasoning. I think it’s called Darwinism in action.

If you were kind of on the fence about whether the it was proper to combine “wacky” and “global warming” in the same sentence, the following diatribe might help to convince you which way you should be leaning.

Ladies and gentlemen … Edna Spector:

Friends! The hour of judgment is at hand for our planet. Doom is knocking on our door in the form of catastrophic climate change. Global warming not only threatens our so-called way of life, it threatens the very existence of the planet itself! Here in Berkeley, we must do more than our fair share to offset this crisis. Why more than our fair share? Quite simply because other communities cannot be relied on to do even their meager fair share in cutting back on carbon emissions. We must make up for what others fail to do on a global scale through our own heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot afford to wait until 2050 to meet our modest carbon emission reduction goals. Many of us who passed this measure will not even be alive then to implement it. By 2050 it will have been too late for this planet I fear, possibly far too late for all of the extinct species whose blood will be on our hands. This is no time for buying absolution through carbon credits or for half-assed symbolic measures which mostly have a feel good significance.

No, the time for bolder self-sacrifice has arrived. The only real, long term hope for the eco-sphere is a massive human population collapse, hopefully leading to the voluntary extinction of the human race. Already, a new urgency and groundswell of support is building for the idea that humans are a type of super toxin which the planet cannot sustain or support in the longterm. Cogent support for the voluntary extinction of the human race is well-articulated in all its ramifications and implications here : www.vhemt.org.

The city and residents of Berkeley should be on the leading vanguard of the voluntary extinction of the human race. First of all, if China can implement a very sensible one child policy in urban centers, Berkeley voters should approve an advisory No Child policy for residents of our city. It could be our answer to the Bush regime’s No Child Left Behind Act! Next, on the state level we need to rally support for a ballot initiative which allows us to die with dignity when we choose to. When this option is legally enacted, Berkeley should be the first city in California to open a euthanasia clinic. Hopefully, if we are true to our principles, our city’s residents will be lined up for many blocks waiting for their turn to be recycled into the earth!

Even before that time, younger readers of the Planet in particular should refrain from having children. Every person less makes a huge difference; a far bigger difference than using rapid transit, riding your bike or recycling bottles once you are born. Readers of the Planet who are already parents and grandparents should actively discourage further destructive procreation by their relatives. If pets need to be neutered and spayed by law, so should humans for many of the same reasons!

Imagine if Berkeley has the honor of becoming the first human ghost town on earth to revert to a primal state of nature! The oaks old and new will flourish along the streams in which trout and salmon teem! Mountain lions will boldly roam the plains and not confine themselves to Wildcat Road in Tilden Park any longer. Perhaps bears from other regions of the state will finally return to what we call “Grizzly Peak Blvd.” The grasslands will return to the slopes of the hills after forest fires clear them off and the air will blow pure and sweet over the bubbling creeks just as it once did when the ancestors of Running Wolf roamed the Bayshore in peace and harmony with all nature.

Yikes. The last time someone tried this there was a stampede for film permits in Guyana.

To her credit, it’s not like Edna is trying to sneak anything by you. She pretty much advocates the exaltation of wild nature over human life and isn’t too shy about proposing just how to go about it.

She does kind of miss the fact that it wasn’t a grizzly bear who came up with the printing press or the Internet or a thousand other inventions that allow her to spew this kind of nonsense from the comfort of her sustainable living room.

But, then again, it sounds like Edna doesn’t think she would miss any of those things if they were gone.

There’s also the question of who would feel “honored” about Berkeley becoming a ghost town if there were only mountain lions left.

I wasn’t a science major, but I’m pretty sure the only time a mountain lion feels honored about anything is when he’s gnawing the throat out of a rabbit.

You know, as part of that idyllic Thoreau-like future Edna envisions.

California’s new high school science textbook….

Politicians attempting to influence school curriculum is not new. So, it’s no surprise that some politician in California finally got around to submitting a proposal to make it mandatory to teach global warming in schools.

State Senator Joe Simitian wants to make sure that only textbooks that preach climate change be allowed in California public schools.

“You can’t have a science curriculum that is relevant and current if it doesn’t deal with the science behind climate change,” said Simitian. “This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon.”

Scientists don’t even understand the science behind climate change, but somehow we’re going to teach it to fourth-graders.

If “relevant” and “current” are the standards by which science education is judged, as opposed to … oh, I don’t know, incidental things like “evidence” and “scientific method,” then we might as well start teaching the “science” behind how you can look years younger with “better than Botox” skin care products.

You don’t have to look any further than the last two years’ hurricane predictions to know that we’re still a little fuzzy on the whole cause-and-effect behind climate change.

If you’re going to insist that your science curriculum presents climate change science as established fact you might as well use Parade Magazine for your text book.

Last time I checked, the U.S. was just above Mexico and solidly behind Poland in the world science rankings. Substituting junk science for fundamentals isn’t going to help improve that ranking anytime soon.

global warming, climate change, junk science, better than Botox, Parade Magazine

Somewhere in Holland, Johannes Vermeer rolled over in his grave….

I am a big believer in the idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I’m also a big believer in the idea that if your opinion is wacky, the rest of us are entitled to laugh at it. Not with it, at it.

While they may not be quite as funny as skateboarding dudes taking a nutshot on a railing or chimps dressed as people, “artists” who try to preach through their art are right up there.

If you suspect an article about artists who’ve “banded together” to respond to climate change would prove fertile ground when trolling for things to poke fun at, you can be pretty sure you won’t be disappointed.

Why is it that artists are always “banding together?” They don’t form groups, congregate or incorporate. They band together like Boy Scouts who got lost on a camping trip. The results are about the same, too. They just kind of stumble around until someone with more experience comes to rescue them.

If we’re all concerned about an obesity epidemic in this country, I think we should be at least as concerned about an irony outbreak as long as artists continue to pontificate about global warming while painting pictures with oil-based paints.

Almost as much fun as seeing wacky artists in the wild is to listen to the explanations of their projects. As the Boston Globe describes it, “Clara Wainwright walked along Harvard Avenue near her art studio while wearing cotton robes displaying endangered species, including the brown bear and African elephant. The Brookline artist hopes to generate conversations about climate change through her “Eco-Shaman Walkabout Project,” by drawing people to her workshops. There, she asks visitors to try on her robes and ponder the declining number of endangered species across the planet.”

Walking around in endangered species robes is more likely to generate conversations about the status of mental health care in this country. Among the endangered species Clara might want to ponder are people who wear suits and pay taxes so the Boston Center for the Arts can put on goofy exhibitions like this.

Also among the exhibitors at “Greed, Guilt and Grappling: Six Artists Respond to Climate Change” is Jay Critchley, who traveled up and down the East Coast filming people yawning and, presumably, planting trees to offset the carbon footprint of traveling up and down the East Coast.

Critchley was fascinated “when he discovered research indicating that yawning helps to cool the brain, and was inspired to draw an artistic connection between cooling one’s body and cooling the planet.” If we could just get the whole planet to go to this exhibit, we might have enough yawns to knock us back into an Ice Age.

The exhibition is running now through March 30, 2008 at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts.

It’s a good reason to take the family to New York.

global warming, climate change, wacky artists, eco-shamans, and bears, oh my, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the “Arts”

Another day, another project….

The Greek philosopher Plato once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Or maybe it was Clint Eastwood.

Either way, it’s sound advice I almost never follow. I have, perhaps the worst combination of personality traits possible for being a homeowner on the cusp of a green revolution.

I am enamored with almost every project I read about or see on television. I have an over-abundance of curiosity about new things, a totally unjustified optimism about my ability to do what looks so easy when I see it on HGTV and enough of an ego to believe if a guy with a high school education can build a new porch, well, so can I.

I should also add that the last time I took an aptitude test, I graded out in the lower two percentile of the country in mechanical ability and spatial reasoning.

Basically, if there’s a contest to build a piece of Ikea furniture between me and a dude with cerebral palsy, you should put your money on the guy wearing the protective helmet.

Which is why the whole trend toward natural and sustainable living scares the daylights out of me.

I’m accustomed to relying on the service economy to take out my garbage, pack my groceries and heat my house. The thought that I might be forced to have to rely on primitive survival skills that vanished with the Cro-Magnon Jabos is very disconcerting.

Which is why, when I come across an article entitled THE AMAZING $500 WOOD-BURNING STOVE…THAT YOU CAN BUILD FOR $35 (OR LESS!), I figure I better read up and learn how to construct a stove out of a discarded water heater that is not only functional but also will “look classy enough to put on display right in the living room.”

There were two things that struck me right off about the article. First, it was (as of this writing) the most popular article on the Mother Earth News website. Secondly, it was written in January 1978.

Talk about a magazine committed to turning back the clock and recycling!

In 1978, people were still eating beef jerky for dinner and I’m pretty sure Colorado wasn’t even a state yet.

Hot stove league …

Not to bore you with the details, but after reading the three page article about how to build the stove, the only thing I came away with was that I would have to spend at least one afternoon trolling through a junkyard.

The dude in the article built his stove from materials he scavenged from a variety of places and suggested that all his stove cost him was a day’s worth of labor.

By my conservative estimates, that means I would complete the project when the next Clinton got elected. I’m talking about Chelsea, of course.

So, for now, I’ll continue to read and, perchance to dream about building my own stove. And hope that nuclear power is the next workable energy-saving technology.

That way my symbiotic relationship with the service economy will remain intact.

global warming, climate change, Mother Earth, wood stove, nuclear power, beef jerky, Colorado

Garbage police….

Is it even possible anymore for people to have some sort of choice in life without some knucklehead calling for a law to force them into compliance with an opposing view?

The editorial page of any local newspaper has become my new favorite source for comedy. It’s way funnier the Family Circle or Peanuts comic strips.

Here’s an editorial from someone who wants to make the world a nicer place … by forcing you to recycle.

(January 25, 2008) — View recycling as your civic duty

Want to make our Earth a nicer place? Eliminate the bottle law and make it illegal to not recycle. Impose a fine on those who don’t recycle. I am an avid recycler, recycling all containers, papers, cereal boxes and everything that can be recycled. Recycling through trash service is the answer, not punishing businesses by making them carry the burden of people who don’t recycle. Should we all get paid a nickel every time we recycle our newspaper? Can you imagine if every company had the burden of paying for recycling? Where does this philosophy behind the bottle law end? Additionally, advertise about how important it is to recycle. Remember all the advertising that was done in the 1970s to not litter? Are we paid not to litter? I don’t think we should be paid to recycle.
LINDA RATLIFF
PITTSFORD

I think it’s great Linda is “an avid recycler.” I’ll admit it sounds a little funny to me to be “avid” about recycling, the same way other people are avid baseball fans. Do you keep stats on your recycling? Do you collect the autographs of your favorite recyclers?

Wait, don’t tell me, you love recycling so much you’re even in a fantasy recycling league at work. Now, every Monday I’m going to have to listen to how you had Coke bottles in last week’s recycling match-up but got beat out by the dude who went with Deer Park bottled water as his first pick.

It’s hard to believe everyone isn’t as excited about recycling as Linda. I distinctly remember society promising me if I slept through four years of college and got a degree, that would guarantee I wouldn’t have to sort through garbage to make money.

But now Linda wants to call the cops on anyone who doesn’t share her passion.

What do you suppose would happen if everyone wanted to criminalize behavior that didn’t fit with their passion?

What if you were an avid masturbator? Let’s run with that idea and suggest it would be a good idea to impose a fine on everyone who doesn’t get themselves off at least twice a day.

It may not stop global warming, but I guarantee you the world will be a nicer place ….

global warming, climate change, recycling, college, garbage men, masturbation, making the world a nicer place

Dennis Miller once said, “A developer is someone who owns a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods.”

To expand on that … an ex-environmentalist is a reporter who is doing a segment on a local bird infestation.

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We may want to think twice about that whole biodiversity thing ….

global warming, climate change, birds, news reporter, biodiversity

It’s a metaphor…..

Climate change crazies have long stopped being embarrassed by any inconsistencies in their positions or conflicts in their data, so it’s no surprise that a scheduled global warming protest in Maryland took place this week on a day where snow swirled around the protesters.

Judging by the picture, it was a less-than-stellar turnout and a terrible waste of an African tribal drum.

This is downright humiliating. This kind of poorly-attended, badly-timed rally makes Larry Craig’s public relations efforts look good by comparison.

To paraphrase Vince Vaughn’s character in Dodgeball, “Too bad Hallmark doesn’t make a ‘Sorry your protest got killed by two inches of irony’ card.”

I particularly enjoy the sign that says, “Help Stop Climate Change.” And what? Have it snow every day in Maryland?

You might as well have a sign that says “Help End Cats and Dogs Fighting” or “Let’s Stamp Out Gravity.”

Climate’s been changing for a couple of billion years. Do we really want to go charging off and spend trillions of dollars to keep the climate exactly as it is now?

Let’s see if we can’t handle something a little simpler first like bringing peace to the Middle East or going two weeks without seeing Britney Spears’ kitty all over the Internet.

Do we really need another quixotic quest in this country that will serve as a sinkhole of time, money and an excuse for politicians to raise taxes and retire early?

Let’s let individuals decide how much energy they want to con or whether or not to wear bamboo underwear.

But let’s not bring progress to a halt in the name of trying to regulate either citizens or nature.

global warming, climate change, Dodgeball, Britney Spears,

Heeeere’s the California Energy Commission…

I know it’s easy to agree when people say we need to conserve energy. Why wouldn’t you? It will save you money and it’s socially beneficial.

You could make the same argument about marriage. Why wouldn’t you get married? You’ll get a break when you file taxes and it’s generally agreed that it’s good for the social fabric.

Problems arise, however, when you couch either of these personal decisions in terms of “morality” because at that point, most politicians then feel it is their “duty” to make you do the “moral” thing.

The big problem with politicians is that you have to keep an eye on them all the time.

Unencumbered by anything other than their own certitude they know what’s better for you than you do, they generally feel entitled to use any means possible to get their way. One of the favorite ways of politicians to sneak stuff past us, is to bury it in the back of some time-sensitive bill or in some mundane legislative regulation.

So, it’s not surprising that California officials thought no one would really notice when they inserted some additional language into revisions to the Title 24 regs. Title 24 is the 236-page code that covers mandated energy efficiency rules in the state. Not guidelines or suggestions, mind you, but mandated rules.

You might think 236 pages on anything would provide enough government control to keep even the most power-hungry bureaucrat satisfied.

You would be wrong.

Revisions to the Title 24 regulations submitted to the California Energy Commission included an item that demands all newly constructed homes and buildings have Programmable Communicating Thermostats (PCTs) installed in them. PCTs permit the government and utilities to over-ride the owner’s decisions on the heating or air conditioning in their own homes or buildings.

So, if the government thinks your bedroom is too cool, they will have the ability to bump up the temperature to a level they consider more … what? Appropriate? Socially conscious? Moral?

Theoretically, the government would only be allowed to do this in the case of an “emergency event.” Of course, “emergency” isn’t defined and, perhaps of more concern, “the description does not provide any exception for health or safety concerns.”

What could possibly go wrong?

California residents have until January 30, 2008 to make their objections known to the Energy Commission or their legislators. As I understand it, the Commission makes the decision to alter the code so, ultimately, Californians may not have any real say at all in whether the change is enacted.

If you’re okay with the temperature of your house being controlled by the same folks who brought you FEMA and the war in Iraq, please don’t come crying to the rest of us when you have to drive past the well-lit houses of your elected officials and Energy Commission board members on the way to find a cousin in Nevada who still has power.

global warming, climate change, California Energy Commission, red rum, crazy people, The Shining, Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall

The key was figuring out the flux capacitator….

While politicians in the U.S. continue to bloviate about energy supplies, carbon credits and ethanol, the folks at Toshiba are quietly working on a practical alternative to fossil fuels.

As you might expect from a Japanese company, the new technology is better-designed and smaller than any current options.

It turns out that “Toshiba and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) are jointly developing a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that are designed to power large apartment buildings or small city sections.”

One public relations suggestion, though. If you’re involved in developing nuclear power, it’s probably not a good idea for the acronym for your government agency to sound like “creepy.”

There are a bunch of cool features about this new breed of nuclear reactor.

First, it’s only about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide which makes it larger than my first apartment in New York City. I’m guessing here … but I’ll bet it has fewer cockroaches, too.

But wait, won’t there be opposition to nuclear power from people who saw the China Syndrome and watch The Simpsons?

Probably.

But just like they did with cars, the Japanese have addressed those issues. According to early reports, the reactor “is engineered to be fail-safe [ooh, excellent] and totally automatic [Homer still has a job] and will not overheat.[suh-weet!] Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 30 years without refueling, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.”

Game, set and match to the new iNuke.

Now if they can make it in a bunch of hot colors other than industrial gray, this thing will really take off.

Learning to love nuclear power will, no doubt, be a stretch for some people. The size of the reactor means “even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs” could chip in and install one of these things in somebody’s garage and power the whole suburb.

How cool would that be? I’d pay good money just to see the town zoning board meeting when somebody says they want to put a nuclear reactor where their above ground pool used to be.

Being a real estate agent trying to sell one of the other homes on the cul-de-sac just got a little tougher, though.

The walk-through could end up being very quick…

Prospective homeowner: That’s kind of a big tool shed in the next yard, isn’t it?

Agent: Oh, that’s not a tool shed, that’s a nuclear reactor…. Uh, wait…don’t you want to see the finished basement…?

The commercialization of micro-nuclear technology is still a few years off (Toshiba is shooting for 2010), but it looks like there’s a lot of promise.

And, you have to admit, a “Hello, Kitty” nuclear reactor would be kinda cute…..

Cute as a nuclear button…

global warming, climate change, flux capacitator, nuclear power, Hello Kitty, Homer Simpson, town board meeting, Century 21

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

Every once in awhile, the naked hatred for humanity that characterizes hard-core global warming advocates pokes through all the pseudo-scientific nonsense and obfuscatory jargon to reveal itself in its unvarnished form.

Mayer Hillman is senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute. He’s a certified town planner who hates cars. He’s written a number of books, including the ever-so-humble How We Can Save The Planet.

According to the official Amazon.com review, the book illustrates why “government must take the lead” to impose a “radical rationing scheme.”

As you might expect, Mayer Hillman knows what’s best for you. Coming from a climate change doomsayer who believes in government solutions, that’s not particularly unusual.

What is unusual is that, in addition to the usual “climate change is the biggest problem ever to face humanity … blah, blah, blah …” and “we’re at a tipping point and must act now … blah, blah, blah …” rhetoric, Hillman seems to have skipped the part of the manual which says you’re not supposed to reveal the final goal of the climate change movement: the attempt to secure carte blanche political power under the guise of protecting “nature.”

According to one London paper, “Hillman says carbon rationing is the only [?!] way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. [double ?!] (Exclamations of incredulity are mine.)

Lest you think what Hillman was saying was misunderstood, here is the actual quote from the Man Who Would Be Carbon King:
“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it. This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

Just because it’s not 1984, doesn’t mean George Orwell wasn’t right.

global warming, climate change, Mayer Hillman knows what’s best for you, How To Save The Planet - A handbook for politicians and power-lusters, Policy Studies Institute,