So Wilson is only half as crazy as the UN’s Agenda 21. Continue reading Harvard green E.O. Wilson wants 50% of Earth set aside as permanent preserve
Category: Rationing People, Energy & Land
Republicans green with Democrat envy: GOP activists pursue a liberal eco-agenda
By Steve Milloy
September 28, 2010, The Washington Times
Just who are the Republicans against environmental protection? That’s the intriguing question posed by the activist group that calls itself Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP).
At first glance, REP violates in spades former California state Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson’s Eleventh Commandment, later adopted by Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” REP implicitly and sanctimoniously defames all Republicans – or at least the vast majority who haven’t signed on to its dubious agenda.
REP formed in 1995 when a network of anti-development, nominally Republican activists gelled to fight the new Republican-controlled Congress’ effort at regulatory reform, including the oft-abused Endangered Species Act (ESA).
So as Contract With America Republicans tried to get a meaningful grip on the alphabet soup of laws and regulations empowering federal agencies to be impervious to sound science, cost-benefit-analysis and even common sense, REP was helping Clinton administration EPA chief Carol M. Browner portray the newly empowered congressional Republicans as pillagers of the Earth and threats to the public health.
In that landmark battle of the 104th Congress, REP actions were indistinguishable from those of any radical environmental group. The consequences can be seen today in the greens’ use of the ESA-protected snail darter to block much-needed water from farmers in California’s Central Valley.
Fast-forward to the current 111th Congress, and the REP is again working against the interests of Republicans and America.
REP supported the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, which squeaked by in the House, 219-212. Eight REP-applauded Republicans helped Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pass the bill, including REP honorary board members Reps. Michael N. Castle of Delaware and Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois. And what did REP say about Republicans who opposed Waxman-Markey?
Reps. Joe Barton of Texas, John Shimkus of Illinois and Fred Upton of Michigan were given “environmental harm demerits” for their supposed “failure to engage constructively in the committee debate about climate legislation.” No word from REP on the “constructiveness” of Mrs. Pelosi inserting a 300-page amendment in the bill at 3 a.m. the day of the final vote.
REP slammed Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and John A. Boehner of Ohio “for their efforts to poison and polarize the debate on energy and climate legislation.” REP doesn’t just speak ill of fellow Republicans – it demonizes them.
On the Senate side, REP slammed South Carolina’s Jim DeMint for the audacity of trying to bar the Department of the Interior from reducing water allocations to the aforementioned California farmers. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was hit for blocking efforts to regulate carbon dioxide because of polar bears. Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn got a demerit for opposing a 2009 Obama administration land grab.
Though Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine earned “environmental leadership credits” for supporting carbon caps, one can only imagine the insults they will get from REP because Mr. Graham single-handedly torpedoed the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill by withdrawing his co-sponsorship, and Mrs. Collins voted to block EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases. REP honorary board member Sen. John McCain may very well be defrocked for vocally opposing efforts to ram through cap-and-trade.
So it appears that any Republican who dares to oppose the radical environmentalist agenda of total government control over energy use and property is a Republican Against the Environment.
Though REP members probably aren’t the same sort of hard-core Marxist-socialists who make up the radical environmental movement, they appear at the very least to be severely misguided highbrows (honorary board member Theodore Roosevelt IV comes to mind) who think the government ought to protect the natural world from the plundering plebeians – and no taxpayer/consumer expense is too great to bear and no individual freedom or constitutional principle is too sacred to sacrifice in that cause.
Giving REP the benefit of the doubt about Marxist-socialism, perhaps it would consider re-forming as Democrats for Freedom and Capitalism. That would solve several very obvious problemsimmediately, including this one: Because environmental protection is essentially a luxury affordable only by wealthy nations, as the Obamacrats impoverish America with high taxes, outlandish spending and more economy-killing regulations, they also will wind up, ironically, hurting the very environment about which they claim to care so much.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery, 2009).
NY Times: Less water for less development in Wyoming
The New York Times editorialized today in favor of depriving westerners of water in order to reduce development. From its editorial entitled “De-Watering Wyoming,” the Times wrote:
A developer named Aaron Million has proposed to build a private, 560-mile-long, 10-foot-high pipeline from Wyoming’s Green River Basin, along Interstate 80, and then south along Colorado’s Front Range to Denver and Colorado Springs. The pipeline is meant to carry water — more than 80 billion gallons a year. Last week, the Army Corps of Engineers presented the proposal in the town of Green River, Wyo., where it was met with outrage…
The path to sustainability for the Front Range is less development, not more.
Beware of environmentalists uttering “sustainability”; it’s green-speak for “no development.”
Extreme greens: No 2nd child
From today’s highly recommended Washington Post article entitled “D.C. Area Families Take Green to the Extreme,”
For Iklé-Khalsa’s wife, his push for green living has affected a much bigger decision.
“I’m 40, so my clock is going boom! Boom! Boom! Sometimes, I just roll my eyes and go, ‘Come on, honey, think about who our child could be!’ ” said Mimi Iklé-Khalsa. But her husband says a second child could have too high an environmental cost. “We’ve had the discussion of, ‘If we have another biological child, it means we never fly,’ ” and do other things to offset the child’s carbon footprint, she said.
New climate victims: Road and bridges?
Carbon Control News reports that:
The Department of Transportation is developing a risk assessment tool for local planners to estimate the vulnerability of roads and bridges to climate change effects as well as steps policymakers can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While bad weather can certainly impact roads and bridges, “climate change” is most certainly a stretch.
The money line is:
The risk analysis will be included in an upcoming study that will likely be used by local highway officials to argue the need for federal [greenhouse gas] standards… and to establish a new $100 million Transportation and Land use program to plan for future growth and reduce energy consumption.
Bottom line: The Obama administration will be paying budget-hungry local highway bureaucrats for their support in enslaving us with greenhouse gas regulation.
Hillary advisor: ‘Too many people’
In case you missed it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s science advisor, Nina Fedoroff, told the BBC on March 31 that,
[Humans had exceeded the Earth’s] limits of sustainability… We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people… There are probably already too many people on the planet.”
A question for Dr. Federoff: Exactly who are the surplus people?
You know, the eugenicists only hated some people — those they viewed as genetically defective. The Nina Federoffs of the world seem to be even more indiscriminate.
UK green: Cut population in half
The Sunday Times reported on Mar. 22 that,
JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.
Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m [from 61 million currently] if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.
The 30-million goal is about what the UK population was in late-Victorian times.
Steve Milloy’s new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them spotlights green efforts to ration people.
Obama not a Malthusian?
In remarks on global warming legislation to the Business Roundtable last week, President Obama said that,
… And I’m not somebody who — I’ve never bought into these Malthusian — woe — Chicken Little, the earth is falling — I tend to be pretty optimistic. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t pretty optimistic. But I think this is — the science is overwhelming. This is a real problem. It will have severe economic consequences, as well as political and national security and environmental consequences.
Yet as pointed out in this fact sheet from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, President Obama’s lead science advisor, John Holdren, is nothing short of the reincarnation of Thomas Malthus, a pioneer in chicken little-ing about overpopulation. CEI notes that,
… Holdren has advocated governmentfunded sterilization programs and the “de-development” of industrialized economies to ward off “ecocide.” And he has complained that “people are the bane of a rational energy policy,” by which he meant that his energy-rationing schemes to prevent “climate disruption” are politically unpopular.
Early in his career, Holdren warned of “ecocide,” an “ecocastrophe” caused by expanding populations and growing economies that exceed the “finite ability of this planet to support people.” Holdren became a vocal proponent of population control.
- In 1969, he wrote about the necessity “to convince society and its leaders that there is no alternative but the cessation of our irresponsible, all-demanding, and all-consuming population growth.”
- Two years later, Holdren claimed that “population control, the redirection of technology, the transition from open to closed resource cycles, the equitable distribution of opportunity, and the ingredients of prosperity must all be accomplished if there is to be a future worth living.”
Steve Milloy discusses how the greens want to ration people in his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
Take action:
Keep a shovel handy when listening to President Obama.
Green gridlock: No new transmission lines?
Twenty-six environmental groups have written White House energy czar and former Socialist International official Carol Browner informing her that, if the electricity transmission grid must be expanded — they prefer rationing — the grid should be dedicated exclusively to renewable sources. New lines should not facilitate the expansion of coal power, say the greens.
Deregulation or greens to blame for utility shut-offs?
The Washington Post reported today that,
Utilities across the Washington region have sent out millions of notices to customers who have fallen behind on their gas and electric bills in the past year and are increasingly shutting off service as residents find that they cannot pay rising heating costs.
In addition to billing cycle issues, the Post attributed customer payment difficulties on deregulation:
Higher wholesale energy prices continue to push up electricity and natural gas costs, a result of deregulated markets in the District and Maryland. A typical monthly Pepco bill for District customers is $103.67 today, compared with $58.16 in 2004.
The fuller story is that Maryland had capped electricity rates until a few years ago when the caps expired and market forces — like supply pressures — pushed prices up.
Who’s against increasing supply? A year ago, the Post reported that it was the greens.
Lefties recommend insulating poor from climate costs
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think-tank, has issued a new report concluding that global warming policies
…will significantly raise the price of fossil-fuel energy products — from home energy and gasoline to food and other goods and services with significant energy inputs… They will… cut into consumers’ budgets…
For the 60 million Americans in the bottom quintile of income (about $15,000 annually for a family of three), the CBPP says that
even a modest 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost them an average of $750 a year in higher energy-related prices that result from the emissions cap.
The CBPP recommends that these families receive tax rebates to compensate them for the effects of higher energy prices.