Archive for the ‘Ecostatism’ Category
As the United Nations wrapped up its recent climate conference in Bonn, talks organizer Christiana Figueres proclaimed that climate change is the “the most important negotiation the world has ever faced.” Faced with real problems – financial meltdowns, unemployment, war and genuine human suffering – the world no longer agrees.
It’s a good thing human productivity doesn’t threaten the global thermostat the way the U.N. would have us believe. If it did, we’d be cooked. Countries rich and poor are backing away from commitments they made years ago during rosier economic times, before the public became aware of Climategate, renewable energy costs and genuine debate.
The Kyoto Protocol, the only binding international agreement signed since the global warming scare began, expires after 2012. Canada, Russia and Japan have declared they will not renew; China and the United States never signed it, and the U.S. has made it plain it is not about to. And poor countries are becoming less enamored about signing on, as they realize hard economic times mean there will be little climate “mitigation” and “restitution” money coming their way from (formerly) rich countries.

Investor’s Business Daily
- Price Of Junk Science - Global Warming: After the 1998 tobacco deal, many wondered where the next battleground for the shakedown lawyers would be. Few wonder now. The legal war over climate change is heating up — and it’ll be costly.
- Defunding The U.N. - Accountability: The new GOP Congress is preparing to cut U.S. funding of the United Nations and the latter is hollering. But with the U.N. doing all it can to undercut its top donor, we fail to see why Congress shouldn’t cut.
- Editorial: Our So-Called ‘Centrist’ President - Politics: Will the man who conned the public into believing he was a moderate, but who has governed as the most immoderate leftist in the country’s history, now try to pull the same con so he can be elected again?
- To Russia With … Hate - Terrorism: Does Monday’s carnage in Russia mean Islamist bombers are indiscriminate and irrational, and pose no special threat to free nations? You might as well ask whom Hitler hated more: Churchill or Stalin?
- Perspective: Shriver And Lieberman: Last Links To JFK - Last Thursday was the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, and while the anniversary did not go unmentioned, it got less attention than I expected.
- On The Left: For Most Part, GOP Hopefuls Are Unknowns - Herman Cain is thinking of running for president. I learned this from an article by Dan Balz, the Washington Post’s chief political correspondent, so I know it’s true.
- Viewpoint: What The President Shouldn’t Say Tonight In The State Of The Union - This evening, in fulfillment of Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, President Obama will give the State of the Union address. Tonight, this president is at a crossroads. Will he level with the American people and make a meaningful shift in administration policies or will he merely recast the same old policies with new rhetoric?
- On The Right: Heroes Of Old Were Creators — Not Talkers - When I mention that my family used kerosene lamps when I was a small child in the South during the 1930s, that is usually taken as a sign of our poverty, though I never thought of us as poor at the time.
Laura Ingraham
- Rep. Peter King on combating radical Islam – January 24, 2011 (mp3)
Mark Levin
American Thinker
- State of the Obama ‘Remaking America’ Revolution - Right now, Americans are forcing transformation on Barack — not the other way around.
- Pillars and Bipartisan Pairs - In recent years, the State of the Union has become nothing more than a laundry list of utopian plans for the future framed in political terms.
- Obama Fakes Right - The country will be treated to yet another orgasmic reaction by the once-mainstream media upon the conclusion of President Obama’s State of the Union speech.
- The Birther Trial Balloon - This latest Matthews/Abercrombie fiasco is not about the birthers. It is about reelecting Obama in 2012.
- That Disdain for Palin - The name of the game is winning elections.
- What Obama Will Not Say at the SOTU - A long list.
- Having Fun with the State of the Union - It matters not what President Obama will say in his speech tonight. Despite the exit of some old staffers and the entrance of some new ones, he is not changing.
NOTE: This post was originally published on David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog on October 30, 2010, by Chris Rowan.
Jonah Goldberg defines Fascism as:
. . . a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.
- Liberal Fascism, p. 23
Eco-fascism is a variant of Fascism that is also totalitarian in the sense that any action by the state to achieve some ecologically-worthy goal is justified. No aspect of human life is off limits. Examples range from bans on smoking in public and the use of cell phones in cars to recent attempts by Congress and the EPA to impose a tax and/or regulatory regimen on our exhalations and emissions made by the burning of fossil fuels. Now it seems we are going to be taxed for the little plastic grocery bags we use to transport our groceries from the supermarket to our cars.
The rationale for the ban is dubious, at best. The cynic in me views the ban as yet one more statist bureaucratic scheme to separate me from my money.
This past January, the City Council of Brownsville, Texas, unanimously passed a ban on retailer-provided, single-use, sanitary, disposable, plastic grocery bags. The ban is voluntary for now, but becomes mandatory with exceptions for bagging fish, meat, and poultry in 2011. Paper bags were not offered as an alternative. The main reason for the ban was to address a litter problem associated with the little plastic “tumbleweeds” that seem to be everywhere – vacant lots, fences, roads, parking lots. Very unsightly.
We had facts and figures to show that, yeah, Brownsville was sick of litter, and the biggest thing we litter are plastic bags.
- Rose Timmer, Healthy Communities of Brownsville
The Brownsville City Commission also pointed out that sewers and drainage systems are being clogged with the plastic bags, and the community’s waterways are similarly polluted. They further claimed that the plastic bags are difficult to recycle and contaminate materials processed through the city’s composting program. A local newspaper reported:
The ordinance the commission approved notes the city has a duty to protect the natural environment, the economy and the health of the city’s residents.
Let’s take a closer look at these assertions, shall we?
Nigel Leck, an Australian software developer, grew tired of debating climate realists on Twitter so he created a spambot to “wear down” his opponents. The bot, @AI_AGW, scans Twitter every five minutes looking for key phrases commonly used by those who challenge the global warming orthodoxy. It then posts one of hundreds of canned responses hoping to frustrate skeptics.
CFACT’s Twitter account @CFACT (follow us!) often receives many of these unsolicited messages each day. Since the bot became active on May 26, 2010, it has sent out over 40,000 tweets, or an average of more than 240 updates per day.
Technology Review gushed that Leck’s bot “answers Twitter users who aren’t even aware of their own ignorance.” Leck claims that his little bit of trollware is commonly mistaken as a genuine Twitter user leading the unsuspecting to sometimes debate it for days. Eventually it wears people down.
Leck’s bot is an innovative, yet appalling new tactic in the ongoing campaign by global warming proponents to stifle debate and end discussion of climate science and policy.
Spamming Twitter users is a tactic that is likely to backfire, as have so many of the ploys alarmists have tried in the past. There is nothing internet users find more annoying than trolls using spam to shut down online discussions.
Over the last year we have witnessed the large-scale collapse of public trust in global warming science and policy. The warmist’s Climategate emails, relentless propagandizing, refusals to debate, carbon profiteering and lecturing by celebrities who lead lavish lifestyles while preaching austerity for the rest of us, have offended people’s intelligence and sense of fair play.
Using a spambot to harass climate realists will do nothing to ingratiate the warming argument with anyone with an open mind. Should climate realists put up a bot of their own? Should we let the two bots debate each other and leave it to the machines? CFACT knows better. When you interact with our @CFACT account on Twitter, you are talking with a live human being.
Science demands an open, honest give and take. So does public policy making in a free republic. Harassment and spam is not the answer.
Posted by Chris Rowan with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Music to my ears. Elections have consequences. Thankfully, we may finally relegate Global Warming Alarmism to the ash heap of history alongside other really stupid ideas, like Phrenology and Communism.
My favorite excerpt:
It has become increasingly clear that any observed warming during the past century is of natural origin and that the human contribution is insignificant. It is doubtful that any significant warming is attributable to greenhouse gases at all.
The Green Bubble is about to Burst
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Originally published at David Horowitz’s NewsRealBlog
By Chris Rowan
Jonah Goldberg defines Fascism as:
. . . a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.
- Liberal Fascism, p. 23
Eco-fascism is a variant of Fascism that is also totalitarian in the sense that any action by the state to achieve some ecologically-worthy goal is justified. No aspect of human life is off limits. Examples range from bans on smoking in public and the use of cell phones in cars to recent attempts by Congress and the EPA to impose a tax and/or regulatory regimen on our exhalations and emissions made by the burning of fossil fuels. Now it seems we are going to be taxed for the little plastic grocery bags we use to transport our groceries from the supermarket to our cars.
The rationale for the ban is dubious, at best. The cynic in me views the ban as yet one more statist bureaucratic scheme to separate me from my money.
By Hugh Goldberg
Here is an article on what the Obama administration is doing to the Coal Mining Industry. This is exactly what they said they would do. Maybe the Coal Mining industry needs to clean up its act, but this is the heavy hand of government at its best. This is really scary because if they drive these guys out of business, where are we going to get our energy from and what is going to be the cost?
We have been mining coal in this country for generations, so I find it hard to believe that it is killing the environment so badly that is must be stopped immediately.
Hugh
——————–
By Judson Berger
Michael Fox can literally see where his job ends.
The 14-year veteran of the West Virginia coal mining industry is about a year and a half out from finishing his current project, and he can see the boundaries of the site. He doesn’t know whether there will be any work left for him after that, since a wave of environmental regulation has put his firm’s other permits on hold.
(From American Thinker)
The latest Senate energy bill, quietly unveiled last week, looks like sweet compromise on radical measures like cap and trade, but buried within is a bitter poison pill that will could be swallowed in a vote that may come this week.
Unlike the 1,200-page House of Representatives energy bill, which passed last year, this scaled-down proposal does not call for an 83-percent reduction in greenhouse gases (or any reduction in greenhouse gases) and contains no mention of a cap-and-trade scheme. Also contrary to the House bill, this one does not provide a family of four earning up to $55,000 with a monthly stipend — deposited directly into their bank accounts — to offset higher energy costs. It also does not supply three years of unemployment benefits at 70 percent of former wages — plus job retraining and relocation — to those whose jobs are shipped overseas, as prescribed in the House bill.
Instead, at a glance (which is the way most in Congress ever seem to examine legislation), this bill appears rather easy to take. Most of its 357 pages are devoted to sections entitled “Oil Spill Response,” “Reducing Oil Consumption,” “Improving Energy Security,” and “Protecting the Environment.” There’s even a portion devoted to further grill BP via subpoena power. With sugar-coating like this, the sixty votes necessary to pass seem possible.
However, beneath the glaze, there’s a clot of overpowering government spending and social engineering.
For example, electric vehicles are pushed via the bill’s “Promoting Electric Vehicles Act of 2010.” No surprise here, particularly since the government has a 61% stake in General Motors and Chevy’s electro-mobile, the Volt. Besides this Act allowing the feds to spend $25 million on new electric cars for their official fleet, there’s an astounding electric car welfare program. Section 2116 explains that 400,000 such vehicles will be virtually given away at low cost — or perhaps no cost — to people living in “selected communities diverse in population” and “demographics.”
Additionally, pages 264-265 require that any new construction or remodel of an existing structure must include the installation of proper hookups for charging an electric vehicle. So even if you have no intention of owning such a car, adding that extra bedroom will require you to spend additional money to install battery-charging infrastructure in your garage.
The bill also heralds the coming of the “Batteries For Tomorrow Prize.” The first person to build a car battery that runs 500 miles on a single charge will win a taxpayer-funded reward of $10 million.
And there’s bait to entice truck owners to switch from traditional petroleum to natural gas. Section 2002 describes federal rebates, ranging from $8,000 for large pickups to $64,000 for heavy-duty Class 6 trucks weighing 26,000 pounds, available for those who install the equipment to make the fuel swap. And government grants (not loans) of up to $50,000 are available for gas stations to install natural gas refueling pumps.
And then there is the section of the Senate bill dedicated to the new federal building code. Originally rolled out in the House’s energy plan, the code — which supersedes all state and local measures and is thoroughly detailed in my book, Climategate — now has a name: “The Home Star Retrofit Act of 2010.” This Act places a hard squeeze on every property owner to spend thousands of dollars in environmental compliance upgrades in a time of economic stringency and falling home prices.
Federal dollars will be paid to those who decrease their energy usage. With the Smart Meters being installed across the country (mandated in the 2005 energy law and capable of recording your energy usage minute by minute), the government will be able to accurately determine your carbon footprint. To entice you to reduce your footprint, rewards of $3,000 will be given for a 25-percent reduction in energy consumption, and $1,000 more for each 5-percent reduction achieved — up to a maximum of $8,000. A similar plan is proposed for water consumption.
Additionally, federal rebates of up to another $8,000 per home are available for upgrading doors, windows, insulation, roofs, water heaters, air conditioners, etc.
Even with the government kickbacks, if you’re still unable to afford all of the upgrades, Section 3015 declares that Fannie Mae will be the official lender to provide you with a “Home Star Efficiency Loan.” This means taxpayer sponsored Fannie will be taking on even more debt.
As one who has written extensively about the ideological machinations of the environmental movement and its leaders, I can tell you that this Senate bill is everything they wished could have been packed into the original House proposal.
If the Senate bites on this legislation, an airsickness bag will be required. The bill will go to committee, be conjoined with the massive House plan, and be presented to a lame duck Congress who will ram the bad medicine down our throats.
We need to hound the Senate now. Tell them to keep this poison pill away from their lips.
Brian Sussman is a former television meteorologist and the author of Climategate: a veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam. He hosts the morning show on KSFO, 560AM, in San Francisco.
Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
(From American Thinker)
By James Lewis
Stalinism” is a useful term for the totalitarian left — even to the left itself. It’s one word they haven’t been able to chew up, gulp down, and transform into its opposite. They still know what “Stalinist” means, even after generations of new names for the same community agitators: “The New Left,” “hippies,” “Black Panthers,” “youthful radicals,” “idealistic students,” “feminists,” “the workers,” “black nationalists,” “Third World socialists,” “the wretched of the earth,” “Green Party,” “Gay activists,” “LGBT,” “Global Warming,” “peace and freedom party,” “eco activists,” “civil rights campaigners,” “post-modernists,” “gender studies,” “J Street,” “Bolivarismo,” “ACORN,” “undocumented workers,” “Moveon.org,” “Liberation Theology” — there must be hundreds and hundreds of front labels for the Same-Old, Same-Old. They make up new ones all the time. This year’s fashionable lefty cult is called “progressivism!”
I wrote Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz (D-TX27) some time ago and implored him to oppose any legislation that imposed some sort of “carbon tax” on business and/or individuals. I don’t believe for a moment that my letter had any effect on Ortiz’s decision-making, but it does appear that he is going to at least voice opposition to the EPA ruling which opened the door to carbon taxation and regulation.
I received this form letter from the Congressman’s office yesterday:
Dear Mr. Rowan:
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns regarding the December 15, 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling on the endangerment finding and the ’cause or contribute’ findings for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. As always, I value the input from my constituents and appreciate this opportunity to respond.
As the Representative for the 27th District of Texas in the U.S. Congress, I am concerned about the negative effect of greenhouse gases on our environment. However, I am acutely aware that some environmental regulations could place an undue burden on our citizens and industries. We must develop regulations based on sound, reliable science that yields results. For this reason, I have co-sponsored H. J. Res. 76, which formally states Congress’ disapproval of a rule submitted by the EPA relating to the endangerment finding and the ’cause or contribute’ findings for greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.
While I strongly believe we must continue to develop a comprehensive and sustainable energy and environmental policy, I will not support legislation or regulations that impose undue financial burdens on hardworking South Texas families. President Obama’s Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has estimated that a 15% reduction in carbon emission could cost the average American family $1300 per year more in utility costs. In such difficult economic times, we simply cannot afford to drive up the cost of energy.
You can be certain that I will continue to work to craft sensible and balanced energy and environmental legislation that addresses the needs of our nation while keeping costs manageable for families struggling to make ends meet. Please be assured that I will keep your concerns in mind as I work on this issue with my colleagues. Thank you again for your correspondence. Please visit http://ortiz.house.gov to learn more about my views on other issues and legislation, and do not hesitate to contact me regarding any issue at the federal level. With kindest regards, I am
Sincerely,
Solomon P. Ortiz
Member of Congress
It’s a non-binding resolution, but it’s better than voting for a carbon tax bill. I strongly suspect that we are being told one thing while Congressman Ortiz does another. We’ll just have to wait and see.
-Chris
I originally uploaded this to Scribd so it could be viewed without downloading it first, but it turns out that the PDF file is password-protected and encrypted. So, Scribd won’t display it. Wouldn’t be prudent. Click on the image below and the PDF will download to your PC. Assuming, of course, you have the Adobe PDF Reader installed.
-Chris
I originally uploaded this to Scribd so it could be viewed without downloading it first, but it turns out that the PDF file is password-protected and encrypted. So, Scribd won’t display it. Wouldn’t be prudent. Click on the image below and the PDF will download to your PC. Assuming, of course, you have the Adobe PDF Reader installed.
-Chris
The Peter Morrison Report
Summary of this week’s report:
There’s some good news this week for Texas conservatives – Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples are defying the feds, who are trying to saddle Texas with burdensome regulations in the name of fighting global warming, which is nothing but a hoax being perpetrated to stifle the economy and erode our freedoms.
Full report:
Sometimes it seems as if there’s never any good news for Texas conservatives, and the endless litany of backsliding and betrayal on the part of our politicians can be downright discouraging. That goes with the territory, of course. Politicians these days find it much easier to play to the liberal media than to stick with their principles and remember why we elected them. Fortunately, that’s not the case this week – three Texas leaders are actually showing some backbone and are taking a stand to resist political correctness and federal encroachments on our state sovereignty.
Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for declaring carbon dioxide (CO2) a dangerous pollutant. If the EPA has its way and this ruling stands, the consequences for the Texas economy will be enormous. Our oil industry may not be as robust as it once was, but it’s still big business in Texas, and the EPA’s action will take a huge toll on it, even as our nation is desperate for domestically produced gas and oil. It’s estimated that thousands of jobs could be lost, along with substantial tax revenue, all because of the misplaced fear over “man made global warming.”
Governor Perry made it clear that it’s not only the oil industry that’s at risk: “When the EPA recently declared carbon dioxide a toxic substance,” he said, “they put countless businesses, farms, even large churches in their cross hairs.” The EPA’s threats are even more outrageous in light of the fact that Texas has made substantial progress in reducing pollution without any federal abuse of state sovereignty. We have our own state office for dealing with pollution – the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and even the EPA admits that TCEQ has done a good job at reducing carbon dioxide and ozone levels. That’s not enough for the power hungry DC bureaucrats, and they’re actually claiming the right to usurp this state function and take over the TCEQ if Texas doesn’t bow to their demands.
This isn’t just an overzealous federal government trying to reduce pollution; it has nothing to do with concern for the environment at all. The ultimate goal is government control over every aspect of the economy and even our personal lives, and concern for the environment is simply a ruse. Decades ago radical socialists realized that they were never going to make any headway in America by being honest about their goal of a totalitarian central government and would have to pursue their agenda by other means. The environmental movement was chosen as one of the most promising paths to gradually turning America into a socialist country. Environmentalism and “global warming” hysteria have always been driven by far left-wingers, and that’s no coincidence.
One of the biggest milestones on this path occurred in 1997, when the “global warming” hoax was just beginning to gain traction. That’s when the Clinton administration signed America on to the Kyoto Protocol, which requires countries to fight “global warming” by taking stringent measures toward “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would minimize dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” (Anthropogenic means caused by man’s activities, as opposed to naturally occurring.) It’s precisely because of the Kyoto Protocol that the EPA is now going after Texas industries. Many people believe the sole purpose of the Kyoto agreement was to stifle free enterprise and capitalism, and there are some good reasons to think they may be right.
If that wasn’t the case, then it’s a mystery why countries like India and Communist China are exempt from adhering to the Kyoto standards. China is now the worst polluting country in the world, by far, yet it’s exempt from these burdensome standards that are supposedly aimed at reducing pollution across the planet. That’s because the agreement unfairly targeted developed countries – America, England, Japan, Germany and most European nations. The argument was that these prosperous nations, all of which have capitalist economies, had caused more pollution than “developing” countries, so we would have to make far more radical reductions in CO2 than these “developing” countries. Somehow Communist China was given a pass, even though they were one of the world’s largest economies even in 1997. Meanwhile, freedom loving nations are being forced to crack down on business and industry while China and India can pollute all they want.
It’s outright hypocrisy, and it’s clear that it’s being done to punish Western countries, and move them toward socialism in the name of cleaning up the planet. Now the EPA wants to start enforcing the Kyoto Protocol in Texas, to reduce greenhouse gases. This nonsense has got to stop. The “global warming crisis” is nothing but a hoax, and that’s becoming clearer all the time. It seems every day we read about a new scandal concerning lies, evasions, distortions, faked research results and obfuscation being employed to spread this leftist propaganda. Not long ago we had Climate Gate and the leaked emails, and just last week one of the top “global warming experts” in the world admitted that there hasn’t been any significant warming since 1995, and that the planet may well have been warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now.
It’s clear that the leftist propaganda about man-made “global warming” is nothing but a house of cards, and it’s quickly collapsing under the weight of the evidence. It’s outrageous that the EPA wants to burden the Texas economy with draconian regulations even as the whole theory behind them being necessary is being discredited. Governor Perry, Attorney General Abbott, and Agriculture Commissioner Staples are right to defy this power grab, and stand up in the federal courts for the sovereign rights of the Lone Star State, and we need to show our gratitude. I encourage everyone to let these men know how much we appreciate them bringing this lawsuit, and opposing Obama’s plans to foist socialism down our throats under the ruse of concern for the environment.
Governor Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Fax: (512) 463-1849
Email: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact/
Attorney General Greg Abbott
Office of the Attorney General
PO Box 12548
Austin, TX 78711-2548
Phone: (512) 463-2100
Fax: (512) 475-2994
Email: greg.abbott@oag.state.tx.us
Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples
Texas Dept. of Agriculture
P.O. Box 12847
Austin TX 78711
Phone: (512) 463-7476
Fax: (888) 223-8861
Email: pub.info@TexasAgriculture.gov
Sources:
http://www.texasinsider.org/?p=22001
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123894530
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Ratification_process
The Peter Morrison Report
http://www.PeterMorrisonReport.com
http://www.facebook.com/morrisonreport
PO Box 8742, Lumberton, TX 77657, USA
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UN Panel’s Glacier-Disaster Claims Melting Away (RT @ellen1066) http://bit.ly/6EpoX3 #climategate



