Friends of the Earth are Nobody's Friends
By Alan Caruba (11/04/07)
While most of us spend our time working to pay our energy bills and put food on the table, Friends of the Earth (FOE) spend theirs doing everything in their capacity to insure that the nation and the world will not have sufficient energy to meet the needs of the human family. They may be friends of the earth, but they are no friends of those of us who live on it.
This Mother of All Green Groups has devoted itself to finding every way possible to make our lives miserable, all in the name of protecting the environment. They are, of course, totally devoted to the Big Lie about Global Warming.
In a recent news release (10/3/07) FOE said, “The science is unequivocal. Global climate change is real, occurring at an alarming rate with catastrophic consequences.”
Well, let’s understand something. The climate is always in a state of change.
If, by “climate change” FOE means “global warming”, a term they’re trying to use less these days because they know how discredited it has become, then the assertion that “catastrophic consequences” are due any day now demonstrates how the entire environmental movement is based on scare tactics and oblivious to the truth.
The FOE news release told of “a coalition of environmental advocates (who) filed a petition today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to set pollution rules for large, ocean-going marine vessels. These vessels include cargo and cruise ships.” Now, if you want to push up the cost of every single thing that is transported by cargo ship, this is the way to do it. And, while they’re at it, they want to add more to the cost of that cruise you may be planning.
FOE and its friends, Oceana and the Center for Biological Diversity, assert that, “Ships are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The global fleet of marine vessels releases along three percent of the world’s carbon dioxide, an amount comparable to the emissions of Canada.”
The fact that 95 percent of greenhouse gases consist of water vapor is conveniently ignored or that the oceans of the world trap and release carbon dioxide all the time is also overlooked. Every human on earth exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day, but FOE does not want to deal with real science.
If you are FOE, the only thing that matters is the lie and using the lie to drive up the cost of moving goods, raw materials, and people around the world. Their proposal benefits no one.
FOE doesn’t care what kind of energy resource it attacks because these Green loonies are opposed to all forms with the exception of wind and solar power, two of the most inefficient and inadequate ways of providing energy anywhere other than isolated places like the Poles, deserts, or jungles.
An example of this was another news release (10/4/07) that attacked nuclear power. For three decades FOE and other Greens have successfully thwarted efforts to introduce nuclear power more widely throughout the nation while loudly decrying the use of coal and other resources used to generate electrical power. “Many of you know why nuclear power isn’t an answer to global warming: in stark contrast to solutions like wind power and increased efficiency, nuclear power involves too much time, money and risk.”
As our nation’s leaders worry about events in the Middle East, from where easily a third of our oil is imported, Congress has begun to consider a loan guarantee proposal to encourage new nuclear plant construction. One might think this was a good thing insofar as nuclear fission does not produce any of that horrid “air pollution” attributed to other forms of energy production.
FOE asked, “If we are really talking about meeting the challenge of global warming, nuclear power is about the slowest way to go about doing so. It takes at least 10 years for nuclear power plants to go from conception to operation. Wind turbines can go up in a year, and efficiency improvements can be realized almost immediately.” This is utter nonsense.
Wind power is the least efficient way to provide electrical energy and would involve having to cover an entire state with windmills to come even close to matching the output of a single nuclear power plant with a footprint of a few acres. Nor is it even remotely possible to achieve enough energy “efficiency improvements” to reduce or meet the needs of a nation with three hundred million people and growing.
Lastly, need it be said that “meeting the challenge of global warming” is no challenge at all, given the fact that there is no catastrophic global warming?
What people have to understand is that “enough” is never enough for the Greens.
Until they have us all growing our own crops and raising chickens, cattle and sheep in the backyard, digging latrines instead of using flush toilets, using bicycles or horses for transportation, they will never been satisfied.
Welcome to the Bad Old Days.
© Alan Caruba, November 2007
http://alancaruba.com/
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