In a lengthy academic paper, President Obama’s regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, argued the U.S. government should ban “conspiracy theorizing.”
Among the beliefs Sunstein would ban is advocating that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.
Sunstein also recommended the government send agents to infiltrate “extremists who supply conspiracy theories” to disrupt the efforts of the “extremists” to propagate their theories.
In a 2008 Harvard law paper, “Conspiracy Theories,” Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor, ask, “What can government do about conspiracy theories?”
“We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”
In the 30-page paper – obtained and reviewed by WND – Sunstein argues the best government response to “conspiracy theories” is “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups.”
Continued Sunstein: “We suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.”
Sunstein said government agents “might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”
Sunstein defined a conspiracy theory as “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”
Some “conspiracy theories” recommended for ban by Sunstein include:
“The theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud.”
“The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
“The 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile.”
“The Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international economy.”
“That Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by federal agents.”
“The moon landing was staged and never actually occurred.”
Sunstein allowed that “some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true.”
He continued: “The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the CIA did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of ‘mind control.’”
Sunstein’s paper advocating against the belief that global warming is a deliberate fraud was written before November’s climate scandal in which e-mails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K. indicate top climate researchers conspired to rig data and keep researchers with dissenting views from publishing in leading scientific journals.
Sunstein: Ban ‘right wing’ rumors
Sunstein’s paper is not the first time he has advocated banning the free flow of information.
WND reported that in a recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein argued websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors.”
In the 2009 book, Sunstein cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist William Ayers.
He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”
Ayers became a name in the 2008 presidential campaign when it was disclosed he worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’ apartment.
‘New Deal Fairness Doctrine’
WND also previously reported Sunstein drew up a “First Amendment New Deal” – a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would include the establishment of a panel of “nonpartisan experts” to ensure “diversity of view” on the airwaves.
Today the gloves came off and the true purpose of the “global warming” scare became nakedly visible. Ugo Chavez, the Socialist president of Venezuela, blamed “global warming” on capitalism – and received a standing ovation from very nearly all of the delegates, lamentably including those from those of the capitalist nations of the West that are on the far Left – and that means too many of them.
Previously Robert Mugabe, dictator of Rhodesia, who had refused to leave office when he had been soundly defeated in a recent election, had also won plaudits at the conference for saying that the West ought to pay him plenty of money in reparation of our supposed “climate debt”.
Inside the conference center, “world leader” after “world leader” got up and postured about the need to Save The Planet, the imperative to do a deal, the necessity to save the small island nations from drowning, etc., etc., etc.
Outside, in the real world, it was snowing, and a foretaste of the Brave New World being cooked up by “world leaders” in their fantasy-land was already evident. Some 20,000 observers from non-governmental organizations – nearly all of them true-believing Green groups funded by taxpayers – had been accredited to the conference.
However, without warning the UN had capriciously decided that all but 300 of them were to be excluded from the conference today, and all but 90 would be excluded on the final day.
Of course, this being the inept UN, no one had bothered to notify those of the NGOs that were not true-believers in the UN’s camp. So Senator Steve Fielding of Australia and I turned up with a few dozen other delegates, to be left standing in the cold for a couple of hours while the UN laboriously worked out what to do with us.
In the end, they decided to turn us away, which they did with an ill grace and in a bad-tempered manner. As soon as the decision was final, the Danish police moved in. One of them began the now familiar technique of manhandling me, in the same fashion as one of his colleagues had done the previous day.
Once again, conscious that a police helicopter with a high-resolution camera was hovering overhead, I thrust my hands into my pockets in accordance with the St. John Ambulance crowd-control training, looked my assailant in the eye and told him, quietly but firmly, to take his hands off me.
He complied, but then decided to have another go. I told him a second time, and he let go a second time. I turned to go and, after I had turned my back, he gave me a mighty shove that flung me to the ground and knocked me out.
I came to some time later (not sure exactly how long), to find my head being cradled by my friends, some of whom were doing their best to keep the police thugs at bay while the volunteer ambulance-men attended to me.
Deliberately timed to coincide with the start of the United Nations’ climate conference in Copenhagen, the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday declared that carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas that’s essential to life on Earth, poses a threat to human health and welfare. This determination clears the way for the federal government to begin restricting energy production and restructuring the entire American economy.
The EPA cited a 2007 Supreme Court ruling declaring that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act, but the science upon which that ruling was based has now been called into question when emails and internal documents between the UN’s leading climate change scientists were leaked to the public. Contained with in the files was evidence of suppression, manipulation and destruction of climate data. The emails revealed that the entire historical climate record that is the basis for all determinations of climate change is based on inaccurate data and has been manipulated to match a political and economic agenda.
If the EPA acts unilaterally to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, the impact on the economy could be even worse than a cap and trade law enacted by Congress. The reasons for this move by the Obama Administration’s EPA appear to be two-fold: First, to establish authority for President Obama to make enforceable agreements at the UN’s climate conference even in lieu of a treaty or Congressional approval; and Second to give the administration leverage to coerce the Senate into enacting a cap and trade law just to lessen the economic damage that could be wrought by the EPA’s heavy-handed restrictions of CO2.
At this moment, our national economy is under threat by carbon regulation schemes on three fronts: The Copenhagen conference designed to create a world carbon regulatory authority which could undermine our sovereignty; The cap and trade bill that’s been passed by the House of Representatives and now awaits Senate approval; and the Obama Administration’s decision that it can regulate carbon dioxide via the EPA even without approval by Congress.
For a preview of what this could mean to American families, one can look to Germany, where due to restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, electricity costs three-times more than in the US and gasoline is now $8.00 per gallon.
You must make your voice heard loud and clear right now. This is no longer a far-away possibility. It’s happening as you read this. Time’s up.
Take Action: If you don’t think it’s a good idea to dramatically slash domestic energy production at a cost of trillions of dollars and untold American jobs over the politics of a discredited climate scare, pick up your phone and call the White House right now. Tell the Obama Administration you won’t stand for this unparalleled fleecing of the American public. Call (202) 456-1111 to be heard today.
Greens candidate Clive Hamilton says global warming sceptics will prove to be not just worse than Holocaust deniers, but deadlier than the Holocaust’s genocidal killers. After all, Hitler killed only 17 million people:
Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming… So the answer to the question of whether climate denialism is morally worse than Holocaust denialism is no, at least, not yet.
Wow. Faced with such unfettered madness, I can’t even get angry. I knew Hamilton was strange, but now the only question left is what such a hysteric is doing as a Professor in our universities?
Odd that Hamilton is the one to raise the Nazi analogy, given, first, that his own totalitarian instinct seems oddly familiar:
President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed today that next month’s much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.
The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty. Hopes for that have dimmed lately. But comments by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to put the final nail in any remaining expectations for the December summit.
“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.
The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the U.N.-sponsored climate conference’s chairman, flew overnight to Singapore to present a proposal to the leaders to instead make the Copenhagen goal a matter of crafting a “politically binding” agreement, in hopes of rescuing some future for the struggling process.
A fully binding legal agreement would be left to a second meeting next year in Mexico City, Froman said.
Obama backed the approach, cautioning the group not to let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,” Froman said. Addressing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later, Obama talked of the need to limit greenhouse-gas emissions “in Copenhagen and beyond.”
Froman said the Danish proposal would call for Copenhagen to produce “operational impact,” but he did not explain how that would work or to what it would apply.
Despite the cooperative-sounding words, the two-year process of crafting a landmark treaty has been stymied by deep distrust between rich, developed nations and poorer developing nations such as India, Brazil and China.
The developed nations hold that all countries must agree to legally binding targets to reduce heat-trapping gases. Developing countries say they can make reductions a goal but not a requirement, and they want more money from wealthy nations to help them make the transition.
A major bill dealing with energy and climate in the U.S., a domestic priority of Obama’s, is bogged down in the U.S. Senate with scant hope it would be completed by next month, giving the American president little to show in Copenhagen.
Between that and the developments in Singapore, there may be little reason for Obama to travel there. White House aides had been saying privately that the outcome of talks during Obama’s weeklong Asia trip, including a three-day visit to China that starts Sunday night, would help determine whether Obama might go to Copenhagen.
Obama arrived late Saturday night in Singapore for the annual 21-nation APEC summit that had begun without him early that morning. In remarks to the group today, Obama reached out by announcing that he would host the 2011 gathering in his native Hawaii.
Once again, take this story with a grain of salt. They may well press ahead with a full-blown treaty and a politically binding” agreement can cause all kinds of havoc as well. - GCS Editior
Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a “climate emergency.” As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the “trigger” placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee.
As Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation points out, the Kerry-Boxer bill requires the declaration of a “climate emergency” if the concentration of carbon dioxide and other declared greenhouse gases in the atmosphere exceeds 450 parts per million (ppm). It was at about 286 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and now sits at around 368 ppm.
That figure was picked out of a hat because the warm-mongers believe that’s the level at which the polar ice caps will disappear, boats can be moored on the Statue of Liberty’s torch and dead polar bears will wash up on the beaches of Malibu.
The Senate version includes a section that gives the president authority, under this declared “climate emergency,” to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions … to address shortfalls” in achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.
What the “appropriate actions” might be are not defined and presumably left up to the discretion of the White House. Could the burning of coal be suspended or recreational driving be banned? Sen. David Vitter, R-La., asked the EPA for a definition and received no response.
Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Chris Horner says “this agenda transparently is not about GHG concentrations, or the climate. It’s about what the provision would bring: almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty for the activist president and, for the reluctant leader, litigious greens and courts” packed by liberal Democrat appointees.
Binding agreement not expected in Copenhagen
Administration working towards treaty next year
America refuses to rush into reaching a climate change deal in Denmark
By Suzanne Goldenberg and John Vidal
The US has given up hope of reaching a global climate change treaty at Copenhagen and is working towards a deal late next year, the Obama administration said today. The decision ends hopes of a legally binding deal being sealed next month.
“We have to be honest in the process and deal with the realities that we don’t have time in these four weeks to put the language together and flesh out every crossed t and dotted i of a treaty,” said John Kerry, who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee.
Todd Stern, the state department climate change envoy, agreed. “It doesn’t look like it’s on the cards for December,” he said. “We should make progress towards a political agreement that hits each of the main elements.”
The scaling back of US ambitions follows a growing international consensus that a binding legal agreement on global warming could not be reached at Copenhagen – now just 32 days away. The US shift resets expectations for what will be accomplished at Copenhagen, once billed by the UN as a last chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.
Editor’s note: The treaty isn’t dead yet, and despite this story, it, or domestic cap and trade laws could still be just around the corner. Remain vigilant. This story (and ones like it) could even be a smokescreen to throw people off guard.
Flying deep under Washington’s radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
“I have read that treaty,” Monckton said, “and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word ‘government’ actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, ‘climate debt’ — because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. And we’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. … And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement. How many of you think that the word ‘election’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘vote’ or ‘ballot’ occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once.”
Monckton then warned that if Obama were to sign the treaty, he would be flushing U.S. sovereignty down the global toilet. He further pointed out that even though ratification of our president’s signature on that treaty would need 67 votes in the Senate, it could pass via a simple majority as an amendment to the cap-and-trade bill.
PolitiFact (as well as many left-leaning blogs) quickly criticized Monckton’s conclusions as conspiratorial and climate-skepticism rhetoric, based upon the notion that the treaty is a draft and not a finalized document. The apologetic of PolitiFact leaves the impression that the current draft is the roughest of cuts, but in reality, it is the result of seven sessions of deliberations and revisions from several subgroups, including representatives from developed and developing countries “with a view to modifying it in the direction of consolidation and convergence.”
As I myself read through the latest draft of the 181-page treaty, I noticed many lines that could warrant Monckton’s and others’ concerns. Phrases such as “creation of new levels of cooperation,” “a shift in global investment patterns,” “adjust global economic growth patterns,” “integrated system of financial and technology transfer mechanisms,” “new agreed post-2012 institutional arrangement and legal framework,” “new institutional arrangement will provide technical and financial support for developing countries,” “global fund,” etc., are messages that make one wonder how far this political body’s arm would reach into our country and force our hands into others.
Then there are red-flag statements such as these:
–”Ensuring that global crises, such as the financial crisis, should not constitute an obstacle to the provision of financial and technical assistance to developing countries in accordance with the Convention.” (Page 11)
–”The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following: …” (Page 18)
–”Particular effort should be taken to enhance cooperation amongst intergovernmental organizations.” (Page 47)
–”A special fund shall be established: (a) For the economic and social consequences of response measures. … (b) To assist countries whose economies are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing and export, and/or on consumption of fossil fuels.” (Page 138)
Now, if that isn’t one powerful intergovernmental or global-governmental group overseeing and manipulating America’s and others’ economic and political conditions, I don’t know what is.
We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven’t heard about it, that’s because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.
Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.
So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.
The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.
Don’t worry if you were unable to attend last night’s conference on global climate change held at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can watch the newly released 22-minute documentary entitled “Climate Chains” as well as the 95 minute speech given by Lord Christopher Monckton after the movie.
Most media coverage of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), focuses on the bill’s cap-and-trade program and the free rationing coupons (emission allowances) that the bill’s co-sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), had to hand out to utilities and other interests to secure their support for the legislation.
But the cap-and-trade program occupies only one of four of the bill’s main sections (”titles”). Other titles contain a host of mandates and “incentives” (carrots and sticks) to reshape energy and transportation markets.
Anyone concerned about the environment and seeking the best solutions for how to protect it will find The Really Inconvenient Truths, by Iain Murray, to be a valuable, fact-filled resource that is both informative and entertaining.
By Alex Newman
A man named Benjamin Cone from North Carolina bought land with no trees and allowed the forest to grow back on it. Once the forest returned, a protected woodpecker moved in, prompting the government, under rules of the Endangered Species Act, to prohibit any meaningful use of a large portion of his land — he was denied the right to any logging, driving the value of his property down from $1.7 million to about $260,000. The new feathered resident and the accompanying plunge in his land’s value caused a reasonable response: the owner decided to clear-cut the rest of the forest to avoid losing it to the woodpeckers and their bureaucratic allies.
Throughout the United States, landowners have become so fearful of losing the right to manage or sell their land if a protected species decides to make its home on the land that the Endangered Species Act has been sarcastically termed the “Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up Act.” Instead of doing everything possible to attract and safeguard endangered species, landowners often manage their properties to avoid inhabitation — and secretly kill the species if they do show up.
One inescapable conclusion that a logical person would reach after reading The Really Inconvenient Truths by Iain Murray is that the quasi-religious, big-government, environmentalist movement creates disincentives for people to take care of the planet — and actually prevents proper care of the planet.
The book makes a compelling case against the liberal approach to preserving the Earth and its resources, arguing that government controls usually have unintended consequences that prove far worse than the problems they were originally intended to fix. To make his case, Murray explains some of the tragic effects that liberal policies have produced.
Murray starts by debunking myths about the pesticide known as DDT, which became the newly burgeoning environmentalist movement’s target after the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. He calls it “one of the founding texts of liberal environmentalism.” Then he writes: “It is also a shoddy bit of scholarship that may be responsible for millions of deaths.” After thoroughly disproving Carson’s “science,” Murray provides ample evidence that the ill-conceived war waged against this chemical really did contribute to millions of deaths in Africa by depriving the continent of the ability to control and eliminate malaria-carrying mosquitoes. There are over 500 million cases of the disease each year, and it is the primary cause of death among pregnant women and children under five in countries like Zambia. He also contends that they don’t admit their mistake because going back and acknowledging it now would devastate the global movement Carson helped spawn.
Murray goes on to highlight the array of problems that have resulted from “ethanol mandates” in a chapter subtitled “Save the Planet, Starve the World.” Government subsidies that were provided for ethanol — brought about by political pressure from the environmental lobby — made this dubious fuel economically viable despite evidence that shows its inefficiency. Even worse, now that so much corn is being used in its production, food prices are soaring, negatively affecting the poor above all. Murray also draws a link between the mandates and further destruction of the environment caused by the increasing demand for corn which requires more acres to be planted. And to make a long story short, ethanol will not save the Earth from the dreaded greenhouse gases even under the best circumstances. In addition to creating a similar level of the gases to traditional fuels, the clear-cutting of land resulting from the increased demand means fewer trees to process carbon dioxide into oxygen.
In another disaster caused by governments subsidizing certain sectors of the economy, Murray discusses the overfishing that has almost wiped out certain fish stocks. He claims that without the massive government subsidies, the overfishing wouldn’t have even been economically viable. There are so few fish left among certain species that it wouldn’t have been profitable to fish for them, allowing the fish time to recover if fishing fleets were not subsidized.
Murray also delves into the causes of the historic fire at Yellowstone National Park in 1988. Apparently environmentalists were determined to prevent any harm to forests, so at their behest, government managers suppressed fires for decades, and the forest developed into a sort of tinder box, growing thick underbrush that normally would have been kept in check by natural fires or private interests. When the policy was suddenly changed, again at the behest of environmentalists, to allow “natural” fires, over a million acres were burned and smoke reached as far as the East Coast. He then shows how and why loggers and other private owners with a vested interest in the property manage forests far better than government.
“Just about everywhere one looks, the principles of collectivization and green environmentalism stand in the way of sound management of the resource,” he contends, before explaining the “Tragedy of the Commons” — that is, the lands or resources that supposedly belong to everyone, but where no one has property rights and therefore no one has the authority and responsibility for protecting those environmental assets.
Increased government control and regulation of the environment leads almost inevitably to tragedy of the commons. One of the most tragic examples of government-caused environmental destruction discussed in the book is the death of the Aral Sea. Al Gore claimed that the sea dried up because of global warming, but “in truth, it’s the bitter fruit of central planning and totalitarianism.” According to Murray and his sources, the Soviet bureaucracy decided to grow massive amounts of cotton in the region, irrigating the land around the Aral Sea until its feeder rivers ran dry and eventually destroyed the sea and the industries and populations that depended on it. The problem continues to this day, with the dictator of Uzbekistan imposing target production rates for cotton on his subjects, primarily to enrich himself and his cronies. The people of the region are told that it’s for the benefit of “the state.” It is an environmental catastrophe that has led to the death of the sea and is also causing the destruction of the farmland and the poverty of the people.
Murray acknowledges that not all environmental catastrophes are caused by liberal environmentalists, even conceding that some are caused by short-sighted businesses. But, short-sighted businesses can be held accountable in court when they, for example, pollute another’s property.
The book also hits hard at the motivations and character of the leaders of the environmental movement and its followers. “It is my contention that, just as environmentalism has replaced Marxism as the central economic theory of the Far Left, so too has environmentalism begun to replace liberal Christianity as the Left’s motivating religious force,” Murray writes. In what would be humorous if it weren’t so serious, he claims that with Al Gore, “The Goracle,” at the top of the hierarchy, many of his “flock” follow him on faith and defend outrageous claims without even so much as questioning what is said, with some going as far as worshipping nature or the Earth while maintaining an “anti-human” crusade.
Murray provides so much documented proof of Gore’s lies that the idea of somebody taking him seriously almost seems ludicrous. But according to the book, Gore is still the “undisputed global head of the environmental movement,” which speaks volumes about the movement itself. And while many of his followers may be genuinely concerned about the planet, Murray states: “As with Marxist economics, the new environment-centered economics is a mere justification for a rejection of the free enterprise system.”
Wonder why Russia has Europe over a barrel? Ask German Environmentalists
By William Yeatman
It is said that Vladimir Lenin once called Soviet sympathizers in Western countries “useful idiots” for unwittingly advancing the cause of revolutionary Russia. Were the Bolshevik leader alive today, he might apply the same label to German environmentalists, whose influence over their country’s energy policy has been an inadvertent, but essential factor in Moscow’s post-Cold War rise.
Two decades of stringent environmental regulations have made Germany, Europe’s largest economy, increasingly dependent on natural gas from Russia, the world’s largest exporter. Of course, economic leverage translates seamlessly into political power, and Russia’s sway over German foreign policy has been conspicuous as the recent imbroglio in Georgia has continued to play out.
In fact, Germany has the means to power its economy without Russian natural gas, so energy dependence is unnecessary. For starters, it is home to the largest reserves of coal in Europe. But thanks to the European Union’s marquee climate-change mitigation policy—the continent-wide Emission Trading Scheme—the economics of power production have shifted decidedly against coal because its combustion releases the most greenhouse gases of any conventional fuel source.
Given that coal is currently taboo, Germany could meet its energy needs by expanding the use of nuclear energy, which emits no carbon dioxide when used to generate electricity. Yet the environmental movement in Germany opposes nuclear energy because its waste is difficult and dangerous to store. In 2000, environmentalists won passage of the Nuclear Exit Law, which commits German utilities to phasing out nuclear power by 2020.
Rather than coal or nuclear, the environmental movement prefers sustainable sources of power such as wind and solar, and it has convinced the German government to grant generous subsidies to the renewable energy industry. But despite these investments, renewables are still too costly to displace conventional energy sources, which is why wind and solar power account for less than 2 percent of Germany’s primary energy production, according to government figures.
That leaves natural gas, which is cleaner than coal and less expensive than alternative energy. Germany is fortunate to have large deposits of gas—more than 9 trillion cubic feet—most of which is thought to lie beneath the northwestern state of Niedersachsen. Environmental regulations, however, have limited exploration and development in the region.
To meet its demand for energy, Germany turned to Gazprom, a state-owned company that has a legal monopoly on natural gas exports from Russia. Natural gas currently accounts for almost a quarter of all the energy consumed in Germany, including all electricity in homes, gasoline in cars, and coal for industrial boilers. That’s up 40 percent since 1991. And Gazprom now supplies 40 percent of all natural gas consumption in Germany, an increase of 55 percent over the same period.
Currently, almost 40 percent of Germany’s domestic gas consumption comes from Russia. That share is likely to increase with the construction of the Northern Pipeline, a project to be completed in 2010 that would link Russian gas directly to Central European markets.
It’s little wonder, then, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first major world leader to pay a visit to new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Or that at last spring’s NATO summit in Romania, German diplomats orchestrated the opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush’s plan for expanding the trans-Atlantic military alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine. Before the summit, Russian officials had warned that NATO expansion would cause a “deep crisis,” and provoke a “response” from Russia.
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it’s time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA’s Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of “99% confidence”).
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that “80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters,” according to a report by NPR’s Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.
So let’s stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification.
The late Natalie Grant Wraga once wrote, “Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”
And who was this person?
Natalie Grant Wraga (who died in 2002 at age 101) was an internationally-recognized expert on the art of disinformation. In her Washington Post obituary, Herbert Romerstein — veteran intelligence expert in the legislative and executive branches of government — described Grant/Wraga as “one of our leading authorities” on Soviet deceit.
In a 1998 article appearing in Investors Business Daily (IBD), reporter John Berlau wrote that some of the most respected scholars on Soviet Intelligence have credited this woman with teaching them how to penetrate desinformatzia, Moscow’s term for its ongoing operation to deceive foreign governments.
John Dziak — onetime senior intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — is quoted by IBD as saying were it not “for someone like Natalie, we would have had more failures, and the Soviets would have had more successes.”
Which leads us where?
In many of her writings, she dropped her last name and wrote under the byline Natalie Grant. That takes us to the spring 1998 issue of The Register. Therein, Grant identified Green Cross International (GCI) as a Non-Government Organization (NGO) founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last communist dictator of the Soviet Union. The aim of GCI was worldwide enforcement of a rigid environmental agenda.
Concurrent with the advancement of GCI, there was the birth of yet another NGO called the Earth Council, chaired by Maurice Strong, a key environmentalist mover and shaker at the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, Strong — a Canadian — describes himself as “a socialist in ideology and a capitalist in methodology.” The bio also notes that “some consider Strong a frightening power seeker.” And then this: “He shares the views of the most radical environmentalist street protester, but instead of shouting himself hoarse at a police barricade at a global conference, he’s the secretary general inside, wielding the gavel.”
Meanwhile, about a dozen people participated in the organizing meeting of Gorbachev’s GCI, including then-U.S. Rep. James Scheuer (D-N.Y.). The congressman had publicly stated that regardless of whether the allegation of man-made “global warming” was valid or exaggerated, the U.S. should proceed to take the steps required to fight it because those steps supposedly would benefit the planet. (As explained in last week’s column, the Cap and Trade — “Tax and Rob” — legislation aimed at carrying out the radical enviro agenda at a steep cost to American consumers and taxpayers was dropped like a hot potato in the U.S. Senate June 6, lest the great unwashed arise in anger and deliver an unwelcome verdict at the polls. It will be back in 2009. Connecting these dots is relevant. But I digress.)
The main organizing events
Other GCI meetings were to follow, including what Grant called “The Big Event — the Moscow Conference,” in January 1990. Then-Senator Al Gore was among the speakers. Only two years before, he had conducted hearings on Capitol Hill where the “global warming” theory was showcased.
As the Moscow conference got underway, the Soviet Union was then on its last legs — down, but not yet out, you might say. Gorbachev, still the Soviet leader, voiced his government’s demand that the nations push for a nuclear test ban, an international environmental monitoring system, a covenant to protect “unique environmental zones” (a mindset that has since led to an international fight over UN efforts to disallow snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park on American soil), support for United Nations environmental programs, and a follow-up conference in June 1992 in Brazil.
Grant writes that while Gorbachev was expressing the “views” and “suggestions” of the Soviet Communist Party, those suggestions did not fall on deaf ears. “Before long, the activities of the movement began to reflect the communist ‘recommendations.’”
Now, why all this background?
On May 28, here in Washington, the featured speaker at the annual dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) was The Honorable Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic.
Klaus’s book Blue Planet in Green Shackles had just been released. As the Czech head of state put it at the dinner, the purpose of the book was to outline his firm belief that much of organized environmentalism is “an ideology I consider the most dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity in the current era.”
By Aaron Kline
By Jennifer Loven, AP
By Marlo Lewis
Wonder why Russia has Europe over a barrel? Ask German Environmentalists 
By Bret Stephens
by Wes Vernon
Entries (RSS)
