Quoting a "recent study," Britain's The Independent published a story on June 13, which claims that "smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa."
After Hurricane Mitch dumped torrential rains on Central America in 1998 that destroyed thousands of homes when entire mountainsides slid into the valleys, Argentine delegate to the U.N. Climate Change meetings in Buenos Aires, Ms. Maria Julia Alsogaray, told the assembled thousands that the rains were caused by American pollution.
Were these claims true, we could simply hire Pecos Pete to lasso Mitch and drag him off to Africa. Problem solved.
The solution is no more preposterous than the claims.
Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace, was correct when he told Forbes magazine, "It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true." Greenpeace has built an industry around creating a fictitious problem, and soliciting money to solve it. The United Nations is following the Greenpeace model by creating and perpetuating the myth of global warming, and soliciting billions of dollars to fight it.
Dr. Stephen Schnieder, Stanford University's outspoken global-warming advocate, admitted at a press conference at the Buenos Aires U.N. meeting, that no "reputable" scientist could say for certain that climate change due to human activity has yet occurred. No reputable scientist can yet say for certain that human activity causes global warming.
But it doesn't matter what is true – what matters is what people believe to be true. John Stossel's ABC special, "Tampering with Nature," revealed that environmental extremists have been incredibly successful in convincing school children that humans are causing not only global warming, but all manner of environmental evils. Truth and facts are ignored or avoided in order to whip up an emotional response to advance a political agenda.
Sadly, your tax dollars are being used to spread fear and myths through our schools. Since 1996, the National Wildlife Federation has received more than 20 federal grants, totaling $5,129,817 – most of which was expressly for providing "educational" materials to elementary-age children.
The World Resources Institute has received $5,083,466 from the federal government during the same period, most of which is expressly for developing global-warming materials. The list goes on, and on, and on. Literally thousands of environmental extremist organizations waddle up to the federal trough each year, and take away billions of your dollars to fan the fires of half-truths, scary scenarios and tales of doom and gloom – all to advance the global green agenda to ensnare the world in the grip of global governance.
Suppose for a moment that U.S. smokestacks actually caused the drought in Africa, or the mud slides that killed thousands in Central America. Would this not be a crime against humanity?
The International Criminal Court, which begins operations on July 1, was created to prosecute "crimes against humanity." Of course, it is the court that decides what, exactly, is a crime against humanity. If the ICC believes that smoke stacks in the U.S. are the cause of the African drought, or global warming, or murderous hurricanes, what is to prevent it from prosecuting the perpetrators for their crimes against humanity?
Remember, what is true doesn't matter – what people believe to be true is the basis for action.
This environmental exaggeration can be brought under control by eliminating grants to environmental organizations that propagate these myths. Funding should be stopped immediately to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and to the U.N.'s Global Environmental Facility.
Parents should examine their children's school material, and march to their school-board meetings and demand that materials based on propaganda be removed from their schools. Individuals who receive scary solicitations from environmental extremist organizations should return them with no money, but a note demanding to be removed from their mail lists.
We need to continue to study climate, and all of nature. But efforts to return society to the dark ages, or to create a world power – global governance – to force nations and individuals to conform to some misguided vision of how people ought to live, are arrogantly regressive and repulsive.
U.S. smokestacks have brought the world longer life, better health and wonderful hopes for the future of all mankind. Let's sweep aside the naysayers, and make the future even better.