Environmentalists' hatred for humans

"Green." "Renewable." "Sustainable." These have all become buzzwords, but the concept underlying them is laudable enough. The sources of energy on which we rely most, such as fossil fuels, will not last forever. There will come a time when we cannot rely on them. We will then, presumably, have to rely on other forms of energy to satisfy the ever-growing demand for power. We've seen the need for power skyrocket thanks to the integration of portable electronic devices in our society, in fact. Your tablets and smartphones, your iPads and iPods, are thirsty little machines that require steady infusions of electrical power. And that electricity has to come from somewhere. It is not unreasonable to worry about where those sources of power are going to be found when the ones we use now are depleted. And it is not unreasonable to suggest that perhaps there could be a better way to power our society, a way that pollutes less, a way that is, in fact, renewable, sustainable and even green.

Part of the problem with these buzzwords lies in how they are used like a bludgeon by environmental extremist groups. What separates a conservationist from an environmental extremist is the degree to which the latter is happy to harm his or her fellow humans in the name of "saving" the Earth. This is the same reason members of the Religion of Climate Change have earned themselves such a bad name among Americans in general. Set aside all the documented instances in which "climate change" figures were falsified to make the problem look worse than it is, the hypocrisy of global-warming activists who fly around in private planes and own mansions (yes, Al Gore, we're looking at you) and the nasty tendency of these activists to smear anyone who questions them as a "climate denier," and what you have left is still a serious problem. Specifically, even if we were to stipulate that global warming is happening, that it is a man-caused phenomenon, that man can somehow alter carbon emissions on planet Earth to reverse it and that America is not a tiny percentage of these emissions compared to industrial polluters like China and India, we're still left with a very serious issue: Environmentalists' hatred for human beings.

What I mean is that the "sustainable" solution to every energy- and climate-related problem, according to environmental activists, seems to be to completely cripple our economy while reducing the standard of living for Americans and diminishing the stature of the United States compared to the other nations of the world. Certainly Obama's environmental and energy policies have borne this out; the man has repeatedly stood in the way of energy initiatives that could improve our economy and decrease our dependence on foreign energy sources. While he was more than happy to take credit for the surge in production here in the United States, Obama opposed that increase in production and has taken repeated steps to close off federal land to it. While private business in the United States was busy tapping new sources of energy, Obama was refusing to approve the Keystone Pipeline and drafting plans to close portions of ANWR and the Atlantic Ocean to drilling for oil.

The latest crackpot environmentalist proposals have to do with banning automobiles, in whole or in part, at certain age or mileage or pollution standards cut-offs. Climate-change extremists are always happy to subvert individual liberty to centralized government planning. They adore the thought of all of America's citizens packed into densely populated urban areas – the same crime-riddled, disease-infested, heavily legislated gulags that even now provide political leftists with their strongest voting bases – and forcing all citizens to endure government-regulated, government-administrated, government-controlled public transportation as their means of getting, not from Point A to Point B, but from whatever point to whatever point the government mandates.

All of this is done in the name of cutting pollution and helping the Earth. It comes as no surprise, though, that "all of this" invariably amounts to robbing you of your liberty, depriving you of your property and controlling your actions as a human being. To the leftist, you are not a free citizen endowed by your creator with the right to your own life, the right to own property you earn and the right to pursue your own happiness. You are, in fact, a government-owned slave in the eyes of the environmental extremist. You are a cog in a machine that, when you do as you will, is not functioning as the leftists want you to. You will, therefore, be repaired – you don't have to like it – and if you can't be corrected, you will be removed and discarded.

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Against this sociopolitical backdrop, the city of Burlington, Vermont, has announced that 100 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable, "green" sources such as wind, water and biomass. This is a laudable achievement. It is a model for sustainable development for other cities in the United States and the promise of a brighter, less polluted future for all of us.

Or it would be, if it wasn't a lie. "Neither utility claims that each of their customers' lights comes from renewable sources all the time. When the wind isn't blowing and the rivers are low, they will buy power from traditional sources that include electricity generated from fossil fuels." In other words, no, the city is not powering its energy needs from 100 percent renewable sources. Traditional fossil fuels are taking up the slack (to an unspecified degree). Burlington's "renewable energy" lie is also built on the sale of "renewable energy credits," the same scam on which Al Gore's "carbon credit" scheme is built.

Energy independence, the use of renewable and sustainable resources and a drive toward "green" energy are all laudable goals. It is simply a shame that we cannot make this effort without constantly fielding the lies and distortions of environmental extremists – who are happy to twist the truth to score their points. Until we separate the truth of renewable energy from the falsehoods of the Cult of Climate Change, we will never be able to deal with this problem seriously and definitively.

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