Freedom Line Blog

From our friends at AEI in honor of Earth Day, another “inconvenient fact” refuting hysterical climate alarmist claims:

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Another Inconvenient Fact

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Today marks the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, now being celebrated in 190 countries by an estimated 1 billion people.  To put that in perspective, that number is roughly the amount of adherents claimed by the Roman Catholic Church.  And as Robert Nelson points out in the Detroit News, the environmentalism movement that birthed Earth Day has turned into its own religion.

America’s leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.”

In other words, issues such as climate change are now much more than about “science.”

And this places a greater burden on environmental theology than it is often able to handle. Success in stirring powerful religious feelings about the environment does not automatically lead to wise and effective policies.

But that’s not stopping Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, from pleading for a comprehensive climate change bill, a measure that will take the price distorting regulations on gas prices and impose them on every other energy sector.

Americans don’t need to pay more for less energy, Chairman Waxman.  Pass this bill and we’ll see if your eco-gods can deliver you from the voters’ wrath this November.

Apologies for the misleading headline.  According to recent reports by climatologists, it’s actually been several years since the globe we call Earth ceased warming.  Although many global warming alarmists are at a loss to explain how a supposedly constant increase in global temperature could stop without warning (and just before a conference to fund its decrease), that doesn’t mean the cause for the sudden cessation is unknown.  In fact, the real head scratcher here is how the mainstream media missed the obvious reason for winning the war on climate change.

Since at least 1970, Ed Begley, Jr. has waged a one man war for the environment.  That year he bought his first electric car and celebrated the first Earth Day.  As detailed in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Begley is SERIOUS about his eco-responsibilities.  He cooks food in a solar oven that “sits in the yard and gets up to about 375 degrees on a sunny day.”  When he dies he wants to put his 205 pounds of organic matter to good use.  “I want to be buried with a cardboard box and a sheet and put in the earth.”  After all, we come from the earth, and return to the earth, right?

But life for an eco-warrior and global warming stopper isn’t just about capping your cooking temperatures and trading in your coffin.  There are hassles too.  According to Begley, the worst thing about being green is “when you don’t have a recycling bin nearby and you have to carry garbage around in your car to get it home.”  That would be the two bedroom, one and a half bath home he shares with his wife and daughter.  It’s also the one he’s plowed steady sums of money into adding a bevy of cutting-edge technologies to reduce his carbon footprint.

So while the climatologists scramble to fix their computer models and the diplomats try to convince each other that spending for a warmer day is still needed (if not necessary), remember the man who through eco-mortification and carbon penance became the green hued saint that saved the planet.  (Until it starts warming again…)