Feeling guilty about global warming yet?
Reprint of an article by Mischa Popoff that appeared in Dec.09 issue of Okanagan Business Examiner
World leaders will soon meet in Copenhagen to take another crack at getting between you and a hot shower. If global warming science makes you feel guilty for keeping your home at room temperature and driving a car to work, fret not; it’s not science.
The bugbear of global warming began as a shameless political gambit. Maurice Strong, a Canadian living in China, wanted us to feel very guilty for our standard of living in the West so he worked with the United Nations to organize the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that laid the groundwork for the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.
Here are Strong’s words from before the summit:
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of rich countries? ...So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Instead of raising living standards in poor nations, the efficiency of Western economies would be undermined through cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxation.
Still feel guilty?
During President Bill Clinton’s second term, the United States Senate voted unanimously to reject Kyoto on a motion made by a senior Democratic Senator to reject all such treaties in perpetuity. Canadians meanwhile have a hard time remembering the Canadian vote on Kyoto. I’ll come back to that.
We’re told the evil oil lobby killed Kyoto down south. Think about that for a second. A second-term Democrat in the White House with an idealogical environmentalist as his vice president, none other than Al Gore, and we’re supposed to believe oil companies killed Kyoto? It’s more likely the Democrats just didn’t feel guilty.
Guess where all the CO2 trapped in fossil fuels comes from? That’s right, the earth’s atmosphere, which once held ten times more CO2. Any farmer can tell you that increasing CO2 levels boosts agricultural yields; scientists estimate 15% of the earth’s population exists thanks to rising CO2 in the last century. (You’re supposed to feel guilty about that.)
The atmosphere stopped warming in 1998 in spite of rising CO2. In fact in 2005 the much-ballyhooed “hockey-stick graph”, which Al Gore claims shows we’re living in the warmest period ever, was shown to produce its hockey-stick shape even if random data were used. Now who’s guilty?
What if all computer models used to support Strong and Gore’s doomsday scenario were rigged? Surely the UN would never go along with something like that. Well yeah, they did.
Then it emerged that temperature records themselves are skewed because cities are naturally warmer than surrounding landscapes. Temperatures rise as cities grow, but (oops!) the UN’s scientific panel failed to take that into account.
Strong and Gore will never debate global warming. It’s more expedient to pitch this social-engineering agenda as a good versus evil battle that any elementary school kid can understand, or be brainwashed by, which brings us back to how Canada came to be a signatory to Kyoto.
Clinton and Gore stood by while ltheir Democratic allies united with Republicans to kill Kyoto. But what about the vote in Canada’s Parliament? Was it close? Do you remember?
There was no vote in Canada. Jean Chretien ratified the Kyoto Protocol at a brief ceremony in his office in 2002. That’s right ... in his office. Preston Manning and his Reform caucus criticized Chretien, but the media let him get away with it and has badgered the right ever since for not drinking Strong and Gore’s suicidal cool aid.
Forget elected members of Parliament. Never mind Chretien’s own cabinet or David Anderson, Canada’s longest serving Environment Minister, who was not even consulted. One man, a man who happens to be chums with Strong, signed us all up to do our part to bring about the collapse of industrialized civilization.
Go ahead and have a hot shower, keep your house at room temperature all year long and drive to your heart’s content. Guilt and Copenhagen are for losers.
Mischa Popoff is a freelance political writer with a bachelor’s degree in history.
So can we go for drives again?" begs Kia.
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Anyone who supports driving is IN DENIAL.
ReplyDeleteDriving a stinking,noisey , stress provoking autombbile is the most ignorant and selfish thing we do.
Automobiles are our weapons of mass destruction.
Thousands upon thousands are killed each year as a result of automobile accidents.
Millions of people are injured/ This incurs great cost to our budgets. Hospitals get congested from the injuries, our police and emergency services are kept busy. Our roads and streets require huge expenses to maintain and clean.Then there are court costs, rehabilitation, coroners.
People built 2 car garages and bigger houses,
the fast food industry expanded,
Our passenger rails were closed.
Malls everywhere and big box stores for people to drive to to do their shopping.
So mindless and so ignorant!
Every driver should have to spend a week as a pedestrian before he/she can renew their license. Then they can see how bad it is.
Get your kids, and grannies and grandpas and other reltives to stand beside your automobile for an hour while you run it.That way you might experience what its like outside the automobile.
What a waste of so much energy and materials just to transport one or 2 people around.
Wake up and smell the exhaust, please!
The NOISE from the traffic on the road is now so bad that I cannot stand to be out in my garden. The smell and fumes are awful as well.
The increase of dust in my house is now a chore to deal with daily.
I am frightened to cross the road even on a crosswalk.
Our streets are filthy from all the automobiles.
Climate change, yes or no, where the heck is the Health Department on this?
Take longer showers. Well, young fella, you don't miss your water until the well runs dry.
Mindless consumption and ignorance to the consequences of this consumption is the problem
The waste is staggering.
Great article Mischa!
ReplyDeleteWhat I enjoy most are the responses that always seem to come. I feel sorry for oemissions.
the automobile and more generally the ability to turn oil/gas into mobility is responsible for so many advances that we take for granted today.
My uncle moved out of the "old" house in 1998 when we built an apartment into his new shop. My uncle came from what oemissions hopes everyone moves to. They were farmers who started working with horses, had a hand pump for water, and an outhouse.
That changed when I took over the farm...brought in the necessary horse power (read that as diesel powered John Deere tractors) to make the farm truly productive both in terms of grain output, grain quality, and increased farm income.
Two final thoughts:
1) I'm am and have been certified organic since the 90's and I've done more to improve soil quality than my uncles/grandfather/great grandfather - so that farm will be more productive and sustainable for years to come.
2) I can't help but wonder if Oemissions also grows corn in that little garden. Se without all those awful automobiles and semi delivery trucks, I can only assume that they also do what my uncle/grandparents did when they kept the corn cobs in the outhouse since they too didn't have toilet paper delivered.
I think these articles are only written to get people so fired up they continue to read more articles from this author. I guess it works as I wonder what crazy things will be written next.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks that the earth is just fine and is not getting worse with what humans are doing to it is crazy. Anyone can pick apart the science and the graphs all day long but we don't need to. Lets ask one question, has our air and water quality gotten better or worse in the past 30 years? How about, sewage, garbage etc? The list goes on. The bottom line is we don't need to save the world but each person should do their part to lessen the impact on the earth. Does that really make us losers??? I think it makes us responsible human beings.
if mischa were really a historian, he would know that when the earth's atmosphere did contain 10 times the co2 than now, there were no farms to take advantage. the comparison is ludicous to what we humans can deal with by way of co2.
ReplyDeletei am no scientist so i can only go by what i read, and analyse the data for myself. i have chosen to error on the side of caution and i think our societies should as well.
in the west, we have become to concerned with the quantity of our lives rather than the quality. since the late '60's, i have made a concerted effort to reduce my impact on the planet. this has been a conscious decision.
my wife and i live well on less than $25,000/yr. we have an non-certified organic farm and apiary. we own several fossil fuel vehicles out of necessity and are improving the land we farm with organic methods for the 'seventh generation'; our great-grandchildren. i don't think we are excessive but are always looking for ways to reduce our fossil fuel impact, which i think most people don't do.
if you own a snowmobile or quad that cost more than $20,000 you could have been part of the solution instead of part of the problem by putting that money into a solar array. this is just one example of a change in the way we think. unfortunately, we have no political will to change. so we will see if mischa is right or the climate scientist were.
there will be no substantive agreement in copenhagen, so all you small minds can go watch the olympics in with the reassurance that business as usual will continue.
capitalism is killing us all!!!!!!!
leon r. pendleton
edgewood, b.c.