Eugenics pioneer, Francis Galton, defined eugenics as “the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.”
Global warming can be defined as: “The study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the environmental quality of future generations.”
The eugenics movement and the global warming movement are similar in many respects. Both ideas were introduced by scientists, advanced by politicians, popularized by the media, embraced as a moral necessity, resulted in severe consequences and eventually rejected as harmful hogwash.
Eugenics, thankfully, has run its course. Global warming, however, is approaching its zenith, just before imposing severe consequences, and is, perhaps, still a generation away from being rejected as the hogwash it is.
Early in the last century, eugenics was called a science that justified public policies that promoted selective breeding among humans and attempted to force sterilization among the “lower classes” of people who did not fit the vision of popular eugenicists. In this century, what is called science is used to justify public policies that promote prescribed lifestyles and attempts to penalize people whose choices do not fit the vision of popular global warming zealots.
Scientists, politicians, preachers and ordinary people who doubted the doctrine of eugenics were outcasts, subject to ridicule and worse. Scientists, politicians, preachers and ordinary people who doubt the doctrine of global warming are outcasts, ridiculed and worse.
The eugenics movement, carried to its logical conclusion by Hitler, killed millions of innocent people. Global warming, when carried to its logical conclusion, will kill far more people than eugenics, and cause incomprehensible agony to people who desperately need affordable energy to survive and prosper.
The goal of the global warming movement is to end the use of fossil fuel. Proponents of this movement claim that fossil fuel use is “killing God’s green Earth,” as one popular TV ad declares. They claim that the use of alternative energy will save the planet for future generations.
Eugenics proponents claimed that selective breeding would constantly improve society by eliminating the lower classes destined for perpetual poverty. They were wrong. Global warming proponents are also wrong in their claims. The use of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide which certainly does not kill God’s green Earth – it enhances it. Carbon dioxide is to vegetation what oxygen is to people – essential to life. It is an indisputable fact that vegetation growth and production is enhanced in direct proportion to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The idea that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is “killing God’s green Earth” is as preposterous as the idea that society would be better if it consisted only of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans.
Were President-elect Obama taking office 100 years ago, he would undoubtedly be filling his cabinet with eugenics experts. This is a reasonable conclusion because he has obviously bought into the popular global warming movement and is filling his cabinet with people who share his vision.
The more than 31,000 scientists who reject this vision are outcasts, and are ridiculed by the elite politicians who are caught up in the global warming movement. More than 650 climate scientists, many of whom have been a part of the U.N. global warming studies, have publicly renounced the claims of the global warming movement.
These people too, are outcasts, ridiculed by the Obama global warming elite.
The tragedy is that the consequences of the proposed global warming policies will be as painful as the consequences of eugenics policies. People will die. Many more millions will be denied access to energy that could provide affordable life-saving refrigeration, heat, transportation and energy for industry.
These consequences are unnecessary. Fossil fuel energy is affordable and available for at least another century. Laws that arbitrarily deny use of this available resource are as unconscionable as the laws that forced sterilization 100 years ago.
Society was not made better by the eugenics movement; the planet will not be made better by the global warming movement.
From all the studies produced by billions of dollars of research in the last two decades, the only thing that has been learned for sure is that climate change is a natural function that the human race has not begun to comprehend. Science has barely scratched the surface. It is the height of arrogance to think that Congress can enact laws that nature will obey. As it always has, the climate will change according to the dictates of the architect of the universe, not according to the dictates of Barack Obama, Al Gore, Carol Browner, the U.S. Congress, or even the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change.
The climate change movement is, indeed, quite similar to the eugenics movement. In a generation or two, people will look back and wonder what on Earth was wrong with this generation to get caught up in such foolishness.
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham