Carey Roberts
Climate greenshirts: the rise of eco-fascism
By Carey Roberts
I like liberals. In fact I count liberals among my best friends. But when they get peeved, liberals can say the darndest things!
I'm not bothered by the progressives' sky-is-falling predictions or the off-key Mother Earth dirges. But when the environmentalists begin to call for disinformation campaigns, criminal prosecutions, and cold-blooded executions, I say, "Hold on a green minute, fella!"
Before proceeding, I'll give credit where credit is due, to Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma who has documented many of the jackboot tactics on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee website: www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=04373015-802A-23AD-4BF9-C3F02278F4CF
The first tactic of the Climate Greenshirts is to smear the warming unbelievers as "climate criminals" who are committing "terracide" (that's climate-speak for killing the Earth).
Green activist Michael Tobis takes it one step further, resorting to over-wrought Nazi comparisons. Tobis has darkly claimed "my paternal grandfather among other close relatives was in fact killed at a concentration camp on the basis of (right-wing) conspiracy theories." (The fact that the Nazis were hard-core socialists seems to have escaped Mr. Tobis' notice.)
Next stop on the road to eco-totalitarianism: disinformation tactics and governmental control of free speech.
Cass Sunstein, President Obama's regulatory czar, advocates this strategy to counter the claims of the so-called climate change deniers: "government agents or their allies...will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity:" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
In the United Kingdom, Fred Pearce penned in the Guardian of the necessity to "silence" the doubters. And journalist Alex Lockwood has proposed "the Internet should be nationalised as a public utility" in order to contain the superfluous claims of the warming skeptics.
Mr. Orwell, are you taking note?
But many progressives view speech-muzzling as a weak-kneed measure. Why not a hearty round of criminal prosecutions to speed us down the path to the long-awaited eco-nirvana?
James Hansen of the National Air and Space Administration has called for trials of the skeptics for alleged "high crimes against humanity." Grist Magazine's David Roberts has demanded Nuremberg-style inquisitions for the "bastards" who are populate the global warming "denial industry."
During a 2007 Live Earth concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former senator, railed against the "corporate toadies" who question global warming and demanded their head on a platter. "We need to start treating them as traitors," he shouted to the frenzied crowd. Two years later Kennedy declared coal company execs "should be in jail...for all of eternity."
Gee, what's Mr. Kennedy planning to do for an encore?
Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki has called for pre-emptive action against foot-dragging politicians: "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act." Ironically, Dr. Suzuki is a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
And then there's the Ultimate Solution, the answer to all the laggards who stubbornly refuse to jump on the global warming bandwagon.
The Talking Points Memo website is a hot-bed of environmental activism. A June 2 posting asked pointedly, "At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers"? A few days later former Clinton administration official Joe Romm explained away the intemperate remarks "not as a threat, but a prediction."
At the recent Copenhagen summit, one European negotiator exclaimed South African citizens deserve to "fry" because their national delegation signed a statement rejecting binding emissions targets. In Canada, columnist Al Lehmann gleefully quoted a friend calling for deniers to be "slowly roasted."
Czech president Vaclav Klaus recently made these chilling remarks about the current state of global climate-change activism:
"Communism and environmentalism — we are talking about two ideologies that are structurally very similar. They are against individual freedom. They are in favor of centralist master-minding of our fates. They are both very similar in telling us what to do, how to live, how to behave, what to eat, how to travel, what we can do and what we cannot do. There is a huge similarity in this respect."
Maybe it's time to denounce the excesses of the modern-day Green movement for what it really is: eco-fascism.
© Carey Roberts
January 27, 2010
I like liberals. In fact I count liberals among my best friends. But when they get peeved, liberals can say the darndest things!
I'm not bothered by the progressives' sky-is-falling predictions or the off-key Mother Earth dirges. But when the environmentalists begin to call for disinformation campaigns, criminal prosecutions, and cold-blooded executions, I say, "Hold on a green minute, fella!"
Before proceeding, I'll give credit where credit is due, to Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma who has documented many of the jackboot tactics on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee website: www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=04373015-802A-23AD-4BF9-C3F02278F4CF
The first tactic of the Climate Greenshirts is to smear the warming unbelievers as "climate criminals" who are committing "terracide" (that's climate-speak for killing the Earth).
Green activist Michael Tobis takes it one step further, resorting to over-wrought Nazi comparisons. Tobis has darkly claimed "my paternal grandfather among other close relatives was in fact killed at a concentration camp on the basis of (right-wing) conspiracy theories." (The fact that the Nazis were hard-core socialists seems to have escaped Mr. Tobis' notice.)
Next stop on the road to eco-totalitarianism: disinformation tactics and governmental control of free speech.
Cass Sunstein, President Obama's regulatory czar, advocates this strategy to counter the claims of the so-called climate change deniers: "government agents or their allies...will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity:" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
In the United Kingdom, Fred Pearce penned in the Guardian of the necessity to "silence" the doubters. And journalist Alex Lockwood has proposed "the Internet should be nationalised as a public utility" in order to contain the superfluous claims of the warming skeptics.
Mr. Orwell, are you taking note?
But many progressives view speech-muzzling as a weak-kneed measure. Why not a hearty round of criminal prosecutions to speed us down the path to the long-awaited eco-nirvana?
James Hansen of the National Air and Space Administration has called for trials of the skeptics for alleged "high crimes against humanity." Grist Magazine's David Roberts has demanded Nuremberg-style inquisitions for the "bastards" who are populate the global warming "denial industry."
During a 2007 Live Earth concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former senator, railed against the "corporate toadies" who question global warming and demanded their head on a platter. "We need to start treating them as traitors," he shouted to the frenzied crowd. Two years later Kennedy declared coal company execs "should be in jail...for all of eternity."
Gee, what's Mr. Kennedy planning to do for an encore?
Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki has called for pre-emptive action against foot-dragging politicians: "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act." Ironically, Dr. Suzuki is a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
And then there's the Ultimate Solution, the answer to all the laggards who stubbornly refuse to jump on the global warming bandwagon.
The Talking Points Memo website is a hot-bed of environmental activism. A June 2 posting asked pointedly, "At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers"? A few days later former Clinton administration official Joe Romm explained away the intemperate remarks "not as a threat, but a prediction."
At the recent Copenhagen summit, one European negotiator exclaimed South African citizens deserve to "fry" because their national delegation signed a statement rejecting binding emissions targets. In Canada, columnist Al Lehmann gleefully quoted a friend calling for deniers to be "slowly roasted."
Czech president Vaclav Klaus recently made these chilling remarks about the current state of global climate-change activism:
"Communism and environmentalism — we are talking about two ideologies that are structurally very similar. They are against individual freedom. They are in favor of centralist master-minding of our fates. They are both very similar in telling us what to do, how to live, how to behave, what to eat, how to travel, what we can do and what we cannot do. There is a huge similarity in this respect."
Maybe it's time to denounce the excesses of the modern-day Green movement for what it really is: eco-fascism.
© Carey Roberts
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