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Global
Warming: by Eric Englund On February 14, 2002, President Bush provided details for his plan to combat global warming. The cornerstone of his plan is to promote voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Naturally, environmentalists were outraged that President Bush refused to adhere to the Kyoto Treaty. It is President Bush’s contention that the Kyoto protocol would cost nearly 5,000,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. Of course, environmentalists claimed that there is a bigger picture here. All people, especially those living in industrialized countries such as the U.S., must sacrifice in order to win the universal struggle against global warming. As we have seen over the past three decades, environmentalists have succeeded in eroding property rights in the United States in order to protect Mother Earth as they see fit (i.e. through the Clean Water Act, through the Endangered Species Act, through ridiculous wetlands legislation, through air quality laws, etc). Whether or not President Bush understands this, the real struggle is between liberty and totalitarianism. For if environmentalists succeed in gradually taking away our private property rights, then a free market and liberty cannot exist. Thus, it is my contention that the struggle against environmentalism is actually a struggle for liberty (using the classical liberal definition). Undoubtedly, environmentalists will take exception to being called illiberal socialists (but I repeat myself). Perhaps there are those of you who are alarmed about global warming and sympathize with the environmental/green movement. My response is for you to be careful with whom you associate; which leads me to provide the following quote from Dr. George Reisman’s magnum opus Capitalism: …it should not be surprising to see hordes of former Reds, or of those who otherwise would have become Reds, turning from Marxism and becoming the Greens of the ecology movement. It is the same fundamental philosophy in a different guise, ready as ever to wage war on the freedom and well-being of the individual. So who are these former Reds who have converted to Green Socialism? One excellent example is Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev is now the president of Green Cross International (a non-governmental environmental organization). Among the many issues with which Green Cross International has become involved, global warming is right at the top of its list. Gosh, when Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher became so chummy in the mid-1980s, I never once heard the Soviet dictator express concern about the environment. Clearly, Mr. Gorbachev has identified environmentalism as a Trojan horse capable of resurrecting socialism on a global scale. How can I say that about Mikhail Gorbachev? Didn’t he bring glasnost (freedom of speech) and perestroika (economic and political reforms) to the Soviet Union? Indeed he did. Yet, these were means to his end of trying to save Soviet Communism and, therefore, to save his absolute and unspeakable power (that brought human misery to millions). Perhaps I am being too harsh on Mr. Gorbachev? To this I simply respond, read Requiem for Marx (edited by Yuri N. Maltsev). Dr. Maltsev was a reformist member of the Institute of Economics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences until he defected in 1989 (he now is an Associate Professor of economics at Carthage College and is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute). In writing the introduction to this excellent book, Dr. Maltsev states: "Gorbachev never learned economics in school. In all my dealings with him I had never seen even a slight flash of economic insight, or even the desire to learn more about economics. He preferred to think like a communist: everything can be done by issuing orders and demanding obedience, no matter how perverse, contrary to human nature, and brutal they may be." This certainly isn’t the image painted by the United States’ adoring press corps. Gorbachev seems to be so nice. To this I respond with another excerpt (regarding the "nice" Mr. Gorbachev) from Yuri Maltsev’s introduction in Requiem for Marx: What he did in the Baltic States – authorizing the Soviet military to crack the skulls of innocent people in the Baltics – qualified him to be included among history’s litany of murderous rulers, but he was never included. Even while he was heralded in the West as a great reformer, he was also running labor camps, committing human rights violations, and sending people to prison for speech crimes. As the Soviet Union came to an end, the public had been reduced to a collective of hunter gatherers, barely living at a subsistence level. Maybe the former Soviet dictator has changed. Perhaps Mikhail Gorbachev really does care about the environment and has no interest in resurrecting socialism. To this, I simply refer one last time to Requiem for Marx. Yuri Maltsev states: "Before the coup that removed him from power, Gorbachev told a reporter, ‘I’ve been told more than once that it is time to stop swearing allegiance to socialism.’ ‘Why should I? Socialism is my deep conviction, and I will promote it as long as I can talk and work’." Without a doubt, Mikhail Gorbachev views environmentalism (with its anti-capitalist mentality) as the movement most likely to succeed in defeating capitalism Are there other examples of socialists that have come to embrace environmentalism? Indeed, there is an environmentalist in power today. Libya’s dictator, Muammar Al Qadhafi is an unabashed Green Socialist (I prefer to call him a Green Communist). In fact, Qadhafi has written a book that many Greens believe is the manifesto for Green Socialism. This book is titled The Green Book (it is a three volume set). I have read all three volumes and each one was quite disturbing. In this book, he talks about capitalist exploitation, money, profits, plants, animals, people, and families: all in a manner that ring familiar with the dogma chanted by such groups as Greenpeace, PETA, Earth First!, among others. The following points highlight several of Colonel Qadhafi’s views as conveyed by The Green Book:
First and foremost, Qadhafi is an anti-capitalist as reflected in the first four points. Without question, he has adopted Marx’s views about capitalism’s alleged exploitation of workers and Marx’s loathing of money. Secondly, as shown by the last three points, he has melded National Socialism into his brand of communism (which I call Green Communism). Much like Hitler viewed Germany as an organic whole (i.e. made up of people, plants, animals, natural resources, etc.), Qadhafi views Libya as a collective organism with a "life" of its own. Naturally, global warming poses a threat to Libya’s "life". Just to give you an additional "taste" of how bizarre Qadhafi’s book is, here is a biocentric excerpt from volume three of The Green Book: To dispense with the natural role of woman in maternity – i.e. nurseries replacing mothers – is a start in dispensing with the human society and transforming it into a biological society with an artificial way of life. To separate children from their mothers and to cram them into nurseries is a process by which they are transformed into something very close to chicks, for nurseries are similar to poultry farms in which chicks are crammed after they are hatched. Nothing else would be appropriate for man’s nature, and would suit his dignity, except natural motherhood, (i.e. the child is raised by his mother…) + in a family where the true principles of motherhood, fatherhood, and brotherhood prevail, + rather than in a center similar to a poultry breeding farm. Poultry, like the rest of the members of the animal kingdom, needs motherhood as a natural phase. Therefore, breeding them on farms similar to nurseries is against their natural growth. Even their meat is closer to synthetic meat than natural meat. Meat from mechanized poultry farms is not tasty and may not be nourishing because the chicks are not naturally bred, i.e. they are not raised in the protective shade of natural motherhood. The meat of wild birds is more tasty and nourishing because they grow naturally and are naturally fed. As for children who have neither family nor shelter, society is their guardian, only for them should society establish nurseries and the like. It is better for those to be taken care of by society rather than by individuals who are not their parents. Obviously, Qadhafi is taking a stab at nurseries and daycares which are now prevalent in capitalist societies. The comparison of children to chickens must warm the hearts of animal rights activists (this is biocentrism at its best). For Libya to remain a strong collective organism, nothing less than free-range children will do. This is truly bizarre stuff. So what has Green Socialism brought Libya? It is a third-world country with an impoverished people. Its main export is well-trained terrorists. What a utopia. Let’s get back to the alleged threat global warming is posing to humanity. Paragons of virtue like Qadhafi and Gorbachev are sounding the alarm. Alas, this alarm is being sounded in order to form a united front against "capitalist exploitation of Mother Earth" while the truth about global warming is being ignored (scientific evidence does not support the assertion of global warming). Environmentalists are terrorizing people with ghastly misinformation portraying our impending doom. Ultimately, it is the goal of environmentalists to terrify people (particularly those living in industrialized nations) into believing that their conduct has universal implications relevant to humanity as a whole. If the psychological terror campaign succeeds, then people (especially in the West) will be browbeaten into trading liberty and private property rights for the "safety" of our planet. At this point, Green Socialism will have won using global warming as its Trojan horse. So what is the truth about global warming? Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, had much to say about this in his June 11, 2001 article in OpinionJournal.com (titled: "The Press Gets it Wrong: Our Report does not Support the Kyoto Treaty"). Dr. Lindzen served on the National Academy of Sciences panel on climate change and co-authored its report. Here are important excerpts from his article: Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, most important being water vapor and clouds). But – and I cannot stress this enough – we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us nothing relevant to policy discussions. One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the climate is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned about global cooling. Before closing, I would like to clear up an issue that may be confusing. How can communism and National Socialism (i.e. Nazism) be compatible? Indeed, Colonel Qadhafi melded together Marxist Communism and National Socialism in The Green Book. However, let’s go to a much better book, The Black Book of Communism, for an answer: By means of propaganda, the Communists succeeded in making people believe that their conduct had universal implications, relevant to humanity as a whole. Critics have often tried to make a distinction between Nazism and Communism by arguing that the Nazi project had a particular aim, which was nationalist and racist in the extreme, whereas Lenin’s project was universal. This is entirely wrong. In both theory and practice, Lenin and his successors excluded from humanity all capitalists, the bourgeoisie, counterrevolutionaries, and others, turning them into absolute enemies in their sociological and political discourse. Just as Lenin and his successors excluded capitalists and others from humanity, Hitler and his henchmen excluded Jews, the infirmed, and others from humanity as well. Tens of millions of people were murdered at the hands of these totalitarian regimes. As written in The Green Book, Qadhafi clearly is attempting to exclude capitalists from humanity. Now do you see the connection? Beyond a shadow of a doubt, environmentalists want people (especially those living in capitalist countries) to believe their conduct is causing global warming and, thus, destroying our planet. Therefore, environmentalism has capitalism in its crosshairs. It is those of us who benefit from the fruits of Western Civilization that are being turned into enemies in the daily sociological and political discourse of environmentalists. Americans, including President Bush, must come to understand that environmentalism is a serious threat. If we succumb to the global warming propaganda being thrust upon us daily (with our left-wing press wittingly or not being used as the primary tool of terror/propaganda), then Green Socialism stands a chance of dismantling Western Civilization and throwing us back into the dark ages. Our rights to life, liberty, and property are at stake here. February 22, 2002 Eric Englund [send him mail], who has an MBA from Boise State University, is a surety bond underwriter in Bellevue, WA. © 2002 LewRockwell.com |