Constructive Environmentalism CFACT Style

Many years ago, when I was working for an environmental information department at a large company, I was intrigued to discover that a colleague, putting together a data base with information sources, had created a sub category called “Anti Environmental Groups”. At a closer look, this turned out to be a listing of think tanks with a scientific, free market oriented approach to environmental issues (no doubt CFACT would have been on the list, had she found us). She claimed she couldn’t come up with any alternative name. Should be added that she was a very skilled and reasonable working mate, but apparently tricked by the mainstream propaganda in those days. As the main listing included both WWF and Greenpeace, a better division could have been between reasonable, militant and violent groups. No such luck.

The history and rhetorics of the radical green movement is not a sunny one, sometimes just ridiculous, on occasion rather sound. More often downright scary.

Peter C. Glovergoes through some of the often forgotten rethoric on the barricade, in a splendid article in The Commentator.

You should read thew article in full, but let me pick a few central passages and quotations:

Journalist Alex Lockwood (in the leftwing UK Guardian) proposes “the internet should be nationalised as a public utility in order to contain the superfluous claims of warming skeptics”. Fred Pearce (again in the UK Guardian) demands we “silence the doubters”. At the 2007 Live Earth concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jnr called for skeptics to be “treated as traitors” following this up with the demand that all coal execs “should be in jail for all eternity”.

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Alarmist high priest James Hansen has called for skeptics to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity”.  Hansen has also endorsed a book by Keith Farnish that advocates sabotage and environmental terrorism by blowing up dams and demolishing cities to return us to an agrarian age.

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Kari Norgaard is professor of climate change at the University of Oregon. At a recent London conference she called

for skeptics to be viewed as “racists” and climate scepticism as a “sickness” needing to be “treated.

If I may pitch in, couldn’t we agree that environment is about what’s around us. Our living conditions. These, in my humble opinion, not only include, but are based on things like private property and common decency.

A bit confused. As every year. Rather used to working and traveling across time zones, but the daylight saving time switch somehow doesn’t really get along with my head. At least no heart attack, though they are reported to be more frequent in connection to the switch. And all the farmers, and their cattle, sigh once again.

Sincerely hope too, that niehter I, nor anyone else, will be injured during the upcoming, annual Earth Day, but that might be too much to hope for. The stupidity is on again. I write about it every year, apparently to no avail, as it’s still on.

No one, at least no one serious about it, even among the enthusiasts claim that cutting all lights for one hour, would do anything to save energy, or the climate. At best it could disrupt the electricity flow and cause more severe power failures. If that is the goal.

It’s symbolic, it’s claimed. I certainly agree. If anything, it serves as a reminder of how important electricity and energy is. Not just to the hospitals, that hopefully wont participate this year either, or the traffic lights, also, hopefully not out, but for most of our daily lives. Returning to candles, or to the era before the tamed fire, is not really a desirable option.

We’ll see how many accidents there will be this year. Luckily the counter movement Life Hour, (available on Facebook), seems to be gaining some momentum. Lighten up!

Please Come Back to Europe

Intended another story, but some issues just make me tired. Like the tiny news piece yesterday in the local paper, informing us that the local community – in a basically monopolized health care market – would no longer provide so called Laughing Gas, to women giving birth.

The reason given was that it hurts the environment.

I’m rather aware of the potential hazards, also to nurses and doctors, of all sorts of anesthesia. And of precautions taken. But why this word “environment“?

Earlier, the talk in the environmental debate was that the worst villain was women eating contraceptives.

I will never give birth, for the simple reason that I’m a man, but I know enough ladies to imagine the suffering (sure, sometimes, it’s just a walk in the park) and anxiety with a pregnancy and birth.

Neither can I eat contraceptive pills, because they are still women only, but again, I know enough women to know that there are health hazards involved. Diminishing, but still risky.

Now, why use “environment” to attack the vast 50 percent of the general population who are female? Never understood those male politicians who pledged to be “feminists”. I still don’t, but if you don’t stop harassing my lady friends, I will certainly reconsider.

Realist or Alarmist?

During my years in the climate debate, I’ve been called all sorts of things. Climate Hater, Weather Denier, to mention a few. Apparently all climate realists are now also “Anti-Science”, and according to Robin McKie, writing for the Observer, though this article  was found in our fanzine The Guardian, people are getting scared.

“Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.

She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.”

 If they had asked me, I could have delivered quite a few speakers, not very hateful, and certainly scientists. As a matter of fact, this service is constantly offered and provided by CFACT and our vast network of scholars.

To my disappointment though, CFACT Europe is not even mentioned by name, but the theme seems to have been that this plague is spreading into Europe too.

According to the article, the conference does not seem to have been a lot about science, just about being scared, so probably my services would not have been of great use. Never mind Climategate. Never mind the lack of significant global warming. Never mind that man can’t control the sun. We are here to share the horror stories. But my offer stands, and until we meet, feel free to browse our web site, quite full of not so hateful science and reflections.

Sidewalks are slippery, with the newly arrived and thus unusual European winter. Traffic is as bad as every year and people are frantic to make last minute purchases.

Then comes another old tradition, with a new name. It used to be some mumbo jumbo about not exploiting something, now the young hooligans blocking traffic and shopping malls call it a Climate Action.

Could, in the midst of winter, these kids at least try to show some decency towards their fellow men and women, who are just out to – with or without wheelchair or crutches – risking their health in order to spend a nice holiday.

Grumpy? You bet. But, Yes, this is not a season for grumpiness. Please take my advice, go sit on Santa’s lap instead of harassing people. Who knows, we might even get peace, prosperity and a clear sky to contemplate on that star up above.

The fact that you didn’t make it in Durban does not give you the right to deny others to enjoy the pleasures of the season. Merry Decency to you all.

Driver Still Behind the Wheel

I love a sunny story and the most recent one I stumbled upon, cherished in the environmental movement, is a recent innovation – still under development – of a new method to turn toxic textile.factory effluent into clean water.

Go for it, Maria Jonstrup!

One of the most disturbing ingredients of the environmental debate, is the tendency to find a conflict between a decent environment and scientific and industrial innovations. While some, and indeed Dr Jonstrup’s, are admittedly labelled Green, others are seen as the enemy. What’s really the historical perspective, if we agree that environment means the living conditions for humans?

To make a travesty of Howard Roark’s court speech in The Fountainhead: Once upon a time, one man found out how to tame fire. He was probably burned at the stake by the local environmental organization.

Virtually all innovations have initially been under attack by environmental, or religious sceptics, be it electricity, motor vehicles or nuclear power. The current exception normally is what’s referred to as Green Invention, most often not primarily because it’s good for the environment, but because it got the blessing by the government, in other words is financed with tax money.

Jonstrup seems to be a welcome exception to this. Another one would be the recently started experiments with “no driver vehicles”, including trucks, using advanced GPS equipment to navigate, thus optimizing the fuel consumption and emissions. Don’t be scared. The tests so far have a human driver along, just in case, a bit as in commercial aircraft on autopilot. Exciting! What I like is that it’s developed in cooperation between universities and industry. Good luck!

When London submitted its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, it sweetened its offer with a promise “to purchase emission reduction credits and to invest directly in clean energy projects in the developing world to offset … emissions.”  Organizers estimated that “international travel to London by competitors, officials and members of the Olympic Family would generate an estimated 35,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.”

The scheme called for large transfers of funds from London to the developing world.  “Our approach goes beyond merely offsetting emissions,” London 2012 Environmental Project Manager David Stubbs promised, “and aims to spread environmental and social benefits beyond London to countries where the impacts of climate change are most acutely felt.”

These promises were made in 2005, when climate propaganda stood unchallenged — before the specter of economic crisis, joblessness and government spending came to haunt Britain as they do today.   London is a city recently set ablaze by a no longer hidden underclass of voluntarily uneducated and unemployed wards of the state.

Harsh reality has sounded a wake up call for Londoners and the prospect of shipping millions of pounds overseas to finance projects with no connection to the Olympics (that will have no meaningful impact on our climate) no longer seems so sporting.

Bloomberg Business quotes Green Party member of the London Assembly Darren Johnson as saying, the decision to drop the offsets is “not fair … Obviously we want the Olympics to benefit London, but environmentally they should be a green Olympics to benefit the whole world as well.”

In place of offsets, organizers will look for local ways to “reduce their carbon footprint.”  CFACT expects that as disappointed as investors who had sought to profit from the overseas carbon offset schemes may be, there are others with schemes rooted closer to home who will be all to willing to cash in.

We can no longer afford the waste and abuse that are part and parcel of feel-good schemes like offsets and subsidies.  CFACT calls on London to blaze a path to an environment where large scale public and business enterprises can proceed with no obligation to pay baksheesh to radical green campaigners and carbon profiteers.

We’ve reached a new tipping point.  Henceforth use of the term “carbon footprint,” where tongue is not planted firmly in cheek, identifies a scheme unlikely to pass rigorous examination.  Policy makers, accountants and fraud examiners take note.

The Telegraph reports that British nobles, including Dukes and a cousin of the Queen are cashing in on tax and ratepayer subsidies to erect wind farms on their country estates.  Each turbine can net a noble £20,000 a year or more.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s father-in-law is a baronet who is pulling in “as much as £350,000 a year from eight turbines on his estate at Bagmoor in Lincolnshire.”  This may give Cameron’s un-torylike policy surrender to radical green interests some perspective.

For generations the UK could count on its aristocrats’ selfless noblesse oblige.  Country estates have traditionally been havens of bucolic green space and conservation.  Today’s gentle folk appear ready to abandon the needs of the land and bring industrial turbines to glen, wood, hillside and moor.  We’ve entered a brave new millennium of selfish noblesse spolio.

Sadly, many of these turbines end up situated in inland areas where there isn’t even much wind.  They generate not electricity, but subsidies.

The Telegraph quoted “Sir Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust but speaking in a personal capacity [who] said: “The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape.”

This may well be the worst example of regressive redistribution of wealth in Britain since the Sheriff of Nottingham shook down the peasants for Prince John.

It’s old news, but hey, that’s history for you.

A new booktakes a look at both the history of the cold war and the environmental movement. And especially environmental impact from both. You may not agree with everything, but sometimes it’s important to remember how absurd the world really was in those days.

The major part of Europe put in ruins, by all sides, during WWII. The rebuilding of Germany, well, West Germany, and the continous lunacy in Stalinist Russia.

The Soviet rapid industrialization put aside any environmental concern. Not to mention safety.

The worst lunacy, probably, potentially dangerous for all of the world, the reverse of the floods, was halted. If that project really had been carried out, you could possibly talk of real man made climate change.

Wars and famine are the worst environmental problems. Though the so called West were not always the nicest chaps. that’s nothing compared to the – partly deliberate (Ukraine), partly unavoidable – starvation in – Yes – The Evil Empire.

At the same time, the Green movement went around cursing, guess who?

Bureaucracies and weed have the thing in common that when not controlled, they grow beyond control. The same goes for governmental organisations, supra national or others, with the addition that it’s most often difficult even to find out who’s in charge, what the mandate is, not to mention the plan. Delegates and functionaries, as well as paid scientists seem to be on a constant world tour, with one only goal in common, to grow and find enough solid ground and symbolic conflicts to justify next year’s tour. The only thing certain is that someone else will have to foot the bill.

So, what to do, when all the old topics have been carefully transferred to – also growing – sub organizations? Where’s the new new mission to pay for next year’s lunches?

One suggestion from French President Sarkozy is already on the table for the 2012 environmental conference Rio+20. Here’s a good update with links to various documents.

“The Rio Earth Summit in May 2012 will try to set a global vision on greening the economy, with France leading European calls to establish a brand new World Environmental Organisation (WEO).”

The amount of documentation – and what will follow during the year – is more than enough to keep everyone busy, but some of the wordings are already rather intriguing.

Goals first: “A major goal of the initiative is to address market failures in tackling the environmental fall-out of economic activity (applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle or the so-called ‘internalisation of externalities’). It also addresses social goals, such as jobs, the overall macroeconomic framework and development policy.”

A sub goal in this is said to be the, from an economic perspective more than intriguing, ambition to “Getting prices right”. 

And the wording: “The current talks are mainly focused on the establishment of a specialised UN agency for the environment or upgrading the existing UNEP, which lacks the authority to push ambitious policies.”

The authority. Think about the implications for a bit. Where are we really heading?

Is the fear for the secret establishment of a world government really justified?

“To ensure consistency at global level, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has championed the idea of a World Environment Organisation (WEO) that would be responsible for ensuring coherent and effective action across multiple levels of decision-making.”

I rest my case. ET, come pick me up. We are out of here.