The story of environmentalism is generally portrayed as one of citizens triumphing over evil corporate polluters, of public awareness, science, and affluence working together to solve pressing problems. There is no problem so huge or so abstract that we cannot solve it if we put our minds to it And solving these problems yields all sorts of positive side-effects and no drawbacks.
While that may be the perception, it is far from the fact. Public awareness is easily swayed by media campaigns that are little more than propaganda and supported by a press that would rather take sides than present balanced reports. Science is largely bought and paid for by politicians who control the agenda and the outcome. And our affluence, or what is left of it, is viewed as an inexhaustible source of revenue for whatever fantastic ideas the political class can dream up. Negative consequences of such folly are viewed as so impossible as to be unworthy of discussion. Gordon J. Fulks, SPPI
Reminds me of PJ O’Rourke’s witticism:
“The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”
Mr. Fulks is quite correct: From the DDT demonization by Rachal Carson who make $4 million from her book, but killed 100 million, mostly children, with Malaria, Molina and Rowland who ruined the finest industrial chemical ever made with a “reaction” that has never been observed in nature or accomplished in the lab. (Molina has a post today at MIT with the single objective of making it work.) They sold out for a $60,000 grant, a Nobel Prize and the cash prize, then $600,000. James Hansen got several billion Dollars for his GISS institute, but George Soros recently cut him a check for $700,000 personally. His “forcing” concept requires tiny pilots on molecules, Divine or Satanic intervention to work. And, he would be considerably helped if gases would learn to form surfaces, which will never happen.