The Patriot Post® · 40th Earth Day Birthday

“By exclusive property, the productions of the earth and the means of subsistence are secured and preserved, as well as multiplied. What belongs to no one is wasted by every one. What belongs to one man in particular is the object of his economy and care.” –James Wilson

It’s that time of year again – that time when the northern hemisphere will be warming, as it has for millions of years, except during ice ages.

Since most of the world’s industrial capacity and economic wealth is located north of the equator, this means that the now-perennial onset of global warming hysteria is about to sprout into full bloom.

On 22 April 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) founded “Earth Day” in order to launch an annual “teach in” about conservation and environmental concerns.

Of course, conservation is not a bad word – it even shares the same root word as “conservative.” Indeed, our family makes every effort to use energy and resources wisely. The “waste not, want not” principle is good economic practice.

However, the Left’s motives for “Earth Day” don’t stop at educating folks about conservation and environmental preservation. Those objectives provide cover for a much more sinister purpose – using ecological concern to justify all manner of government regulation and intervention.

It’s no small irony that Nelson founded “Earth Day” on the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday, as it was the impetus for creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Nelson modeled his anti-capitalist protests after anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of that era, and the so-called “environmental movement” he helped spawn has devolved from a pack of unwashed adolescent peaceniks and malcontents into a slick, influential and well funded cadre of Lefty politicos. (This would be the same movement that protested against nuclear energy, which yields no carbon dioxide as a byproduct of energy production.)

Nelson’s cadre has managed, by way of the EPA, to implement an enormous hidden tax burden on the American people – more than a trillion dollars last year – in the form of runaway environmental regulations, which surreptitiously increase the prices of products and services.

The grand potentate of the modern envirofascist movement is ignoble laureate Albert Arnold Gore, the man whose global warming histrionics and globe-trotting “green technology” promotion have likely made him the world’s first “carbon billionaire.”

Gore and his bishopric of eco-theologists have amassed a large and growing cult of earth-worshiping Gorons, lemming-like adherents to his teachings on the end times ahead.

Gore and his socialist ilk use this cultish devotion to create a central authority over industrial production in the West through mechanisms like the Orwellian Kyoto Treaty.

It must be noted, though, that when Earth Day was gaining popularity back in the 1970s, there was growing concern that another ice age was on the horizon.

Today, the Gorons contend that the earth is heating up, and global warming is their ruse for insisting that transnational governing authorities, a global EPA if you will, must be established to control the global economy.

Christopher Horner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, aptly describes Gore as “green on the outside, red to the core,” noting that his environmental concerns are a thinly veiled subterfuge for his socialist agenda.

Earth’s climate is changing, of course. It always has, and it always will. Mean global temperatures might, in fact, have trended upward, even though many climatologists are now suggesting that the planet might be in a 10- to 30-year cooling trend.

However, Gore and company have twisted the facts to fit their agenda. Witness the recent “Climategate” e-mail scandal at the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s most influential (some would say nefarious) climate-change research units. Were global warming really “settled science,” its proponents wouldn’t need to fudge the numbers or conspire to keep conflicting research out of peer-reviewed journals.

Commenting on the misuse of science to support political agendas, Malcolm Ross, whose capacity for reason has not been unduly restrained by his Harvard PhD, concludes of such folly, “Freeze or fry, the problem is always industrial capitalism, and the solution is always international socialism.” After 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey, Ross has gained a few insights into how government bureaucrats endeavor to regulate the economy by way of environmental mandates.

Make no mistake; those who are attempting to enact global mandates are advancing, first and foremost, socialist economic agendas under the guise of concern for the global climate. The implication for liberty, in those few pockets of the world where it still exists, is ominous.

Gore’s left-hand man, Barack Hussein Obama, has managed in the last month, to gain control of 17 percent of the U.S. economy (health care) in addition to the 15 percent of the economy already fully under control of the central government.

Now that hotter temperatures are in the seasonal forecast, prepare for efforts by Obama and Gore to supplant the remaining 68 percent of the economy by way of renewed hyperbole about global warming.

In March, some group of politicos on the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force issued this report: “Climate-change impacts are pervasive, wide-ranging and affect the core systems of our society: transportation, ecosystems, agriculture, business, infrastructure, water and energy, among others… Climate change already is affecting the ability of federal agencies to fulfill their missions.”

That would be the remaining 68 percent of the economy not yet fully nationalized.

In a 40th anniversary Earth Day dispatch from Vice Prevaricator Joe Biden, (BF-D) (subject line “Ramping Up for Earth Day”), he announced the redistribution of “$452 million in Recovery Act ‘Retrofit Ramp-Up’ awards.”

Speaking to a group of his sycophants, Biden said, “I wonder what sometimes our constituents think when we come up with these names: The ‘Retrofit Ramp-Up.’”

While I do not exactly consider myself a “constituent” of the Obama administration, I can tell you what I think of the “Retrofit Ramp-Up”: Exactly what you are thinking if you are a Patriot taxpayer.

Perhaps the Ramp-Up will be as successful as the myriad of other such boondoggles.

For example, according to The Washington Times, in March “the Government Accountability Office [GAO] released a report on a $300 million Department of Energy program designed to promote commercial products that boast fashionable ‘green’ credentials. A team of GAO investigators with an uncharacteristically fine sense of humor submitted 20 bogus products to the department and walked away with Energy Star certification for 15 of them, including a gasoline-powered alarm clock.”

The Times’ editor concluded, “GAO deserves credit for illuminating the careless attitude that sets in when the greens start spending other people’s money. After all, when it’s being done in the name of the environment, liberal thinking is that there’s no need to measure a policy’s costs against the alleged benefits.”

For his part in the charade, Obama released an Earth Day video in which his teleprompters claimed, “Through the Recovery Act, we’ve invested in clean energy and clean water infrastructure across the country. We are taking the necessary steps to keep our children safe and hold polluters accountable.”

Ah, let’s “invest” for the children.

Bottom line: Human activity does affect the climate. Every time you exhale CO₂, you increase the concentration of that minuscule greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but if you want to make a positive impact upon the environment, don’t hold your breath. Roll up your sleeves and promote liberty and free enterprise, because, per capita, it is the free nations of the world that have the cleanest environments, and those with Socialist governments that have the worst.