Environmental Talk

“I never thought it would end like this . . . “

I believe there are some people associated with the climate change movement who are motivated by a benevolent desire toward their fellow humans and sincerely feel they can make a difference by shrinking their carbon footprint or by recycling certain resources.

I have no quarrel with those people . . . as long as they leave me free to make my own choices.

Unfortunately, the broader movement and underlying philosophy of the global warming movement is about power and control.

This morning’s headline scan turned up three articles that, consciously or not, give us an insight into the climate change endgame.

The people at the Optimum Population Trust are the latest political opportunists to jump on the climate change bandwagon. Forget using CFL light bulbs, it’s your kids that are the real problem:

John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights … The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account.”

Apparently, we need to not have kids in order to save the environment for the kids we don’t have. Gotcha.

Professor Guillebaud adds that rich countries should be particularly concerned because the children in these countries will have a larger carbon footprint than those children in poorer countries.

Congratulations, Professor, you’ve just created the climate change equivalent of one of the most repulsive religious concepts ever invented - Original Sin.

In San Antonio, Al Gore spoke of a “spiritual crisis” (notice a theme developing here?) and urged the following “solutions” as noted in the San Antonio Express-News:

“Gore also called for a business pollution tax that would be used to offset or eliminate employment and payroll taxes and for the creation of a federal mortgage institution that would help offset the cost of building environmentally friendly homes.”

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a politician and power-luster (oops, sorry for the redundancy) a solution of taxes, some more taxes and another bureaucracy must seem like a reasonable solution.

Completing the day’s headline trifecta are the lunatic ravings of Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Reading Watson is enough to make you not open any packages you get in the mail for the next five years. Among his proposals and assertions:

“I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement … We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion … We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas … In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities.”

The naked hatred of humanity and the worship of nature for its own sake (cockroaches are entitled to go where they choose, humans aren’t) are two sides of the same coin.

If we are truly concerned for the world in which our children will grow up, we need to embrace the concept of individual rights and resist attempts by politicians and social engineers to impose their version of what’s “good” on the rest of us.

global warming, climate change, Al Gore, Sea Shepard Conservation Society, individual rights, Guillebaud, hatred of man, hatred of humanity, power, control