"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," said Samuel Johnson on April
7, 1775. If the great man of British letters were alive today, he might amend
that to say that, in America, "environmentalism is the new last refuge of
scoundrels." I surely would.
I was reminded of Johnson's quote by two other quotes. They were by aspiring
candidates for the Democrat Party's nomination to be president in 2004. The
trigger was news that the Environmental Protection Agency had decided to
revise the rules concerning how much "pollution" could be released by
utilities upon which we depend for electricity.
Actually, what the former rules did was make it impossible to make any
changes to curb "pollution" through various upgrades of the facilities. Until
the revision, a utility would not be able to make incremental changes at a
reasonable cost. Instead, it would have to undertake wholesale upgrades
costing a huge amount of money. Naturally, the utilities opted to make only
those mandated upgrades they could afford.
Since coal is burned to produce forty percent of all electricity generated
for consumer use in America, the Greens have sought to make the production of
energy as costly a process as possible for both the utilities and their
consumers. Huge natural reserves of high-grade coal in Utah were put off
limits to any use by the Clinton-Gore administration.
But I digress. Within hours of the Dec. 22 EPA announcement, two leading
Democrat contenders for the presidential nomination immediately issued
statements. By 3:19PM, North Carolina's Sen. John Edwards said that Americans
would suffer "more smog, more soot, and more premature deaths." By 3:21PM
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said "To safeguard the environment, we don't
just need a new EPA administrator, we need a new president."
If you want to know what Al Gore thinks just read his insane screed, "Earth
in the Balance." We are waiting to find out if he will run again, but if you
are as crazy as Gore, the odds are he is already gearing up for another run.
He will run hard on the many bogus issues of environmentalism. In the midterm
elections Americans correctly perceived that Democrats have no idea how to
provide for the security of this nation, insuring sufficient energy
resources, or the general welfare of its people.
The Democrat candidates will, for the next two years, beat the drums of
environmentalism to remind everyone that George Bush and all Republicans
actually want to kill everyone with "pollution." They have made these claims
in the past and they will do so again, and again, and again.
The problem with that is, like everything else the Greens say, it's a lie.
There is no global warming. The air in America is clean. The water you drink
from the tap is clean. Americans are living longer, healthier lives than ever
before.
In the voluminous body of quotations and literature that has been spoken and
penned by environmentalists, we are confronted by the spectacle of the
chronic scold, the person for whom enough is never enough. This is
particularly true of government laws and regulations to "protect" the
environment.
Earth and nature are never to blame for the ills they perceive. It is always
mankind. It is always industry. It is always technology, chemistry or some
other branch of science. It is always innovation in agriculture, ranching, or
forestry. It is always capitalism. It is always prosperity. Mostly, though,
it is always freedom.
What this great, prosperous nation needs are more facilities to generate the
energy we require to keep our extraordinary economy growing, to provide heat
and electricity to the homes and apartments of our growing population, to be
less dependent on oil from nations that hate us, and to extract the natural
resources this nation possesses in abundance.
Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs", a weekly commentary posted on the
Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. In January, Merril Press will publish a collection of his columns.
