OPINION/COMMENTARY

America's New Dark Ages

Today's environmental movement has little to do with protecting the environment and everything to do with imposing a radical agenda to derail human progress, destroy free enterprise, and diminish individual liberty.

"Nuts," you say? Maybe you're not paying attention.

Item: A recent issue of The DeWeese Report shows a photo of a team of oxen. The Associated Press photo was taken at a demonstration to show the "ecological advantages of animal-driven farm equipment." Incredibly, the enviro-wackos seek to turn back human progress to the days of Daniel Boone by eliminating modern farm equipment such as tractors and return to days of the oxen cart. Just some fringe nuts with no credibility, you say? This demonstration was held at an AG Expo at Michigan State University with your tax dollars...

‘NYET’ TO KYOTO

This fall Western environmental groups expected Vladimir Putin to give their cause its biggest victory in over a decade. Last month they looked forward to the Russian President’s announcement that Russia would soon sign the international agreement on global warming known as the Kyoto Protocol. It was therefore a shock when participants attending the World Climate Change Conference in Moscow heard Putin and his advisors denounce the agreement and marshal scientific and economic arguments against it. The environmentalists’ comeuppance in Moscow is the latest sign that their movement is in big trouble.

Kyoto is the movement’s Holy Grail. The agreement, signed by over 100 nations in Japan in 1997, requires industrialized countries to implement policies reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a model for U.N. bureaucrats and foundation-funded activists who want to regulate energy use on a global scale. However, to be legally binding, the treaty must be signed by at least 55 nations that account for at least 55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. So far the 100 signatory nations account for only 44 percent. Because the Bush Administration rejects the treaty, that leaves Russia. With 14 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, its endorsement is critical...

The Air Up There - Is It Hotter?

If human activities are having a dramatic effect on globally-averaged temperature, then the temperature in the low atmosphere would be rising at a rate faster than at the Earth's surface. A flurry of recent studies continues to round out the picture and suggests that alarmism about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is more hype than scientific fact.

The best analysis of air temperature over the last 25 years is based on measurements made from satellites and checked with information from weather balloons. That work, conducted by J. Christy and R. Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), shows a small global warming trend. Even if the small trend were entirely human-caused -- an unlikely possibility because temperature exhibits many naturally-caused changes -- it contradicts the forecasts of extreme, human-made global warming...

Shenanigans at Greenpeace—And the Media Yawns

After a year in which financial improprieties gobbled up headlines like never before, it would stand to reason that a brewing scandal involving a major international organization, millions of dollars, and alleged tax evasion would receive similar treatment. But if that major international organization is famed environmental group Greenpeace, the media goes mute.

Two months ago, nonprofit watchdog Public Interest Watch (PIW) filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service alleging that Greenpeace has engaged in massive transfers of money between its many subgroups in order to skirt U.S. tax laws. PIW simultaneously issued a companion report, called “Green Peace, Dirty Money: Tax Violations in the World of Non-Profits,” which details how the environmental group transferred $24 million in tax-exempt contributions over a three-period to fund non-tax-exempt activities...

Killing Millions to 'Save' the Earth

...So, when I received a copy of Paul Driessen's book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power ~ Black Death , the first thing I noticed was the familiar image on its cover. "In 2000, say World Health Organization and other studies, malaria infected over 300 million people. It killed nearly 2,000,000-most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Over half of the victims are children, who die at the rate of two per minute or 3,000 per day."

In his introduction to Driessen's book, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, says, "This book should have been written years ago." He's right, but it has taken years for the full picture of the evil perpetrated by those claiming they want to "save the Earth" to emerge.

Many of us who have struggled to demonstrate the moral depravity and corruption of the environmental movement have concentrated on various elements of it. Driessen's triumph has been to present the full picture.

Capturing the theme of Driessen's book, Innis says, "The movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates these people's most basic human rights, denying them economic opportunities, the chance for better lives, the right to rid their countries of diseases that were vanquished long ago in Europe and the United States."...