Month: May 2009

Propagreenda: Cap and trade not central planning

Desperate greens really will say anything to advance their agenda (i.e., totalitarianism-via-global-warming-regulation).

Rhapsodizing about der wunder of cap-and-trade in a May 31 letter to the Washington Post, Nathaniel Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund Sturmabteilung wrote that,

History has not been kind to central planners. The way to solve global warming is to harness the power of the market rather than let the government pick the winners. It’s time to unleash America’s entrepreneurs and inventors to solve this critical challenge.

Keohane sets up his deception by seeming to acknowledge that  central planning was debunked by the 20th century — insincerity at its very best since every solution the greens offer to every environmental problem (whether real or imaginary) is central planning.

Keohane then tries to position cap-and-trade as some sort of market-based/free-market mechanism — it’s not.

First, the current iteration of cap-and-trade as embodied in the Waxman-Markey bill is nothing less than the government picking winners (every special interest group that would get free carbon allowances, tax credits and subsidies, not to mention the greens who would acquire unrivaled political power) and losers (the rest, and vast majority of us).

Next, there’s little market-like about cap-and-trade since the government will arbitrarily determine the supply of, and arbitrarily create the demand for the central commodity to be traded (permits to emit CO2).

Cap-and-trade is more akin to musical chairs than a free market. Every year there will be fewer and fewer emissions allowances available. When the music stops — at government whim — businesses that can’t obtain or can’t afford allowances will lose.

Underscoring Keohane’s disingenuosness and the economic threat posed by cap-and-trade is, surprisingly, Bill McKibben, an all-pro green propagandist who, as co-founder of 350.org, agitates to return the planet to its supposed halcyon days — pre-1990, when the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide was less than 350 parts per million.

Writing about the choppy water ahead for the Waxman-Markey climate bill in The New York Review of Books, McKibben wrote that,

“… it could be a messy fight…”

because

“[the] country [is] still suspicious of big government, and currently fearful of depression.”

Yes, Bill, and why shouldn’t clear-thinking people be suspicious of the central planning that is big government and that has been so disastrous to so many?

As one lefty talking to other lefties in the NYRB, I guess McKibben felt comfortable being honest about cap-and-trade. Keohane, in contrast, tells the public in a major daily newspaper that totalitarianism is really just markets-plus-ingenuity.

It’s all rather reminiscent of that old “Arbeit macht frei” ruse.

Nancy Pelosi: Haute-ing up the planet

Thanks, Nancy Pelosi. In one fell swoop, you’ve single-handedly validated Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell.

While preaching green to a Chinese audience, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said,

“Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory … of how we are taking responsibility.”

It’s eerily similar to the Introduction to Green Hell:

The central concept of this book is that there is hardly any area that the greens consider off-limits to intrusion. There is almost no personal behavior of yours that they consider too trivial or too sacrosanct to regulate.

So let’s “inventory” Nancy Pelosi’s life:

She treats the U.S. Air Force as her own personal airline, according to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch. Air travel, after all, has a disproportionately large impact on the climate systen, according to the greens.

Pelosi has five children and seven grandchildren — each one a planetary burden, according to John Holdren, Barack Obama’s top science advisor and long-time population-control freak.

According to Holdren’s environmental impact equation Human Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology (I=PAT), Pelosi’s offspring, $25 million-plus net worth from her husband’s commercial real estate and other investments, and her penchant for jet and limo travel, there can be no doubt that Nancy Pelosi’s personal impact on the environment is quite high.

Generously assuming that the average American family of four has a net worth of $100,000, then the impact on the planet of Nancy Pelosi and her family would be at least 437 times greater, according to I+PAT — and that does not take into account her family’s energy use which is undoubtedly much greater than that of the average American family.

It might make you wonder what size shoe Pelosi wears — she favors Manolo Blahnik Kidskin Slingbacks which retail at a pricey $575 — to fit her immense carbon footprint.

I wonder if her baby goat-skin shoes come in our favorite color — hypocritical green, anyone?

Must-see Anti-green TV: ABC’s ‘Goode Family’

Don’t miss the premier of the first anti-green, animated TV series, the “Goode Family,” tonight on ABC at 9:00pm. Here’s what the Miami Herald‘s Glenn Garvin has to say about the show:

Life’s not easy if you’re an organic-eating, tree-hugging, SUV-eschewing, carbon-footprintless, gender-identity-indifferent, diversity-celebrating, nonjudgmental (well, except for those damn U.S. flag pins) vegan pacifist. Just ask Gerald and Helen Goode, the First Couple of PC America.

They forget to check a box when adopting an African baby, and when little Ubuntu arrives, he’s a white South African. They cart home free elephant dung from Barnum & Bailey for their organic garden, then remember that the circus exploits animals. They’ve raised their dog Che to be a vegan, but the neighborhood sure has a lot of missing squirrels. Even their hybrid car’s bumper sticker is a blend of uneasy compromises: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS . . . AND THEIR OPPONENTS.

Welcome to The Goode Family, a scathingly funny report from the front lines of America’s culture wars. This new ABC adult cartoon, produced by Beavis and Butt-Head mastermind Mike Judge and his King of the Hill buddies John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, will do for PC what 30 Rock does for corporate capitalism or Lost for commercial air travel: Leave it in ruins…

Click here for the full review…

Let’s hope “Goode Family” is what Garvin’s review promises!

goode_family_poster

Sonia Sotomayor: Environmental extremist?

Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor represents a potential threat to U.S. consumers and to the economy in terms of energy and the environment.

In her 2007 Second Circuit decision in Riverkeeper, Inc. v. EPA 475 F. 3d 83, Judge Sotomayor sided with extreme green groups who had sued the U.S. EPA because the agency permitted cost-benefit analysis to be used in the determination of environmental protection technology for power plant cooling water intake structures.

Fortunately, Judge Sotomayor’s decision was recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fittingly on April 1, 2009 (Entergy v. Riverkeeper, No. 07-588).

Had the EPA been required to abide by Judge Sotomayor’s decision, American consumers would have been forced to pay billions of dollars more in energy costs every year as power plants producing more than one-half of the nation’s electricity would have had to undertake expensive retrofits.

President Obama said this weekend in an interview that,

“What I want is not just ivory tower learning. I want somebody who has the intellectual firepower but also a little bit of a common touch and a practical sense of how the world works.”

But Sotomayor didn’t have too much of a “common touch” and “practical sense” when it came to the cost-benefit analysis.

Senators should probe whether Judge Sotomayor lacks the common-sense realization that the benefits of environmental regulation ought to outweigh its costs — a worldview with ominous implications given the nation’s present rush toward cap-and-tax global warming regulation and other green mindlessness.

A dead child every 30 sec vs. ????????

WHO wouldn’t want to save this child?

ChildMalaria

For right now, we’ll just leave that as a question.

The WHO summary document concerning its program to rollback the use of DDT states that,

Malaria is one of the greatest public health challenges facing the developing world. World Health Organization (WHO) data indicate that malaria causes over 1 million deaths per year, with
over 90% of those deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria causes over 300 million cases of acute illness each year. Children account for over three-quarters of these cases, and malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds. Beyond the immediate disease burden, malaria incurs devastating costs on local economies, both direct costs of treatment and prevention and indirect costs of lost productivity. This burden is especially great in the tropical developing
world where malaria most often occurs.

So it sounds like you’d want an effective tool for combating a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds, right? The WHO document says that,

Spraying indoor surfaces with DDT has been highly effective in interrupting malarial transmission in many developing countries.

So why, then, does the WHO want to phase out DDT? The WHO says,

Because of its chemical stability, it is slowly metabolized, it accumulates in the environment through food chains and in tissues of exposed organisms and is potentially harmful to wildlife and to humans.

So the WHO wants to phase-out the “highly effective” DDT because it is “potentially” harmful. But what does “potentially” harmful mean and does it offset a-dead-child-every-30-seconds?

Next, the WHO says,

DDT and its residues build up in the food chain, and it is potentially harmful to wildlife and to humans, if not applied in accordance with WHO guidelines and recommendations.

So the WHO wants to phase-out DDT because some applicators don’t use it properly? Isn’t it worth ensuring that DDT is used properly (whatever that actually means) given that a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria?

The WHO continues,

Chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides such as DDT, which became widely used in the 1940s, are slowly metabolized, accumulate in living tissue, and can affect the health of humans and wildlife. There is now considerable debate and increased suspicion regarding the ability of DDT and other pesticides to disrupt the endocrine systems of mammals.

Debate? Are you kidding me? Who is debating what? There seems to be no debate that a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria. How many children need to die while unknown people allegedly debate who-knows-what?

Finally, the WHO says,

New evidence is being published about links between low-level DDT exposure and adverse health effects, in particular related to childhood neurodevelopment, breast cancer in
women, male reproductive health (reduced sperm counts and quality) and to diabetes.

Even if these claims were true — and they’re not (see e.g., sperm count and breast cancer claims debunked) — since when does any of this outweigh the tragedy of a-dead-child-every-30-seconds?

So there’s no more question — the WHO wouldn’t want to save this child.

African child with malaria (VOANews)
African child with malaria

Protest Green Genocide: Get a DDT T-Shirt

The UN wants to rollback the use of DDT. But DDT is a “weapon of mass survival” — a weapon against green genocide. Get a DDT T-shirt and tell the world!

Get your DDT Tee at the JunkScience.com store while supplies last…

DDTee

Check out this photo of Ugandan health officials surrounded by public health workers.

DDTTeesAfrica

Greens re-boot African genocide: WHO reverses on DDT

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world’s poor will suffer as a result.

The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim “is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner,” said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6…

“Sadly, WHO’s about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists,” says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. “Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don’t benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes.”

The 14th century witnessed the “Black Death.” We’ll witness “Green Death.”

Carbon-labeling amendment approved

The House Energy and Commerce last night approved an amendment introduced by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) to the Waxman-Markey bill that would require the EPA to explore establishing a national program for labeling products with their “carbon content” — that is, labeling products to show much CO2 was emitted in their manufacture and the warming impact of that CO2.

Click here for Rep. Baldwin’s carbon labeling amendment.

The goal of this amendment is to stigmatize the use of energy at a consumer product level and would undoubtedly lead to a host of dubious-to-fraudulent marketing claims about the climate-friendliness of consumer products.

News from the front: Utility, greens file briefs in battle over Northeast cap-and-trade scheme

We reported in March about the New York utility Indeck filing suit to declare the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) unconstitutional.

Briefs have since been filed — they’ll make great holiday weekend reading!

Carbon Control News reports that the next hearing in the case is scheduled for June 12.

Kudos to Indeck for having the courage to stand against the oppression of green government.