The Black Republican

I've just finished watching The Great Global Warming Swindle, a program produced by Channel 4 in Great Britain ( Ace), which is a fantastic rebuttal of Al Gore and his environmental propaganda opus, An Inconvenient Truth. It explains, in excruciating detail, how corrupt bureaucrats and activists have managed to buy off a few scientists, intimidate most of their otherwise-sensible colleagues, and perpetuate one of the biggest lies in human history, mainly by feeding the insatiable appetite of the dinosaur media for reality-TV melodrama.

After detailing the real science that disputes most of the manufactured disaster scenarios peddled by the likes of Gore, one of the soon-to-be-pariah scientists interviewed for the program summed up the politics driving the whole affair.

The shift to climate being a major focal point came about for two very distinct reasons. The first reason was because, by the mid-80's, a majority of people now agreed with all of the reasonable things we in the environmental movement were saying they should do. Now, when a majority of people agree with you, it's pretty hard to remain confrontational with them. And so the only way to remain anti-establishment was to adopt ever more extreme positions....

When I left... it was in the midst of them adopting a campaign to ban chlorine worldwide. Like, I said, "You guys - this is one of the elements in the periodic table, you know? I mean, I'm not sure if that's in our jurisdiction - to be banning a whole element."

The other reason that environmental extremism emerged was because world communism failed, the (Berlin) Wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activists moved into the environmental movement, bringing their neo-Marxism with them, and learned to use "green" language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than they do anything with ecology or science.

Dr. Moore and the others appearing in the special - each of whom speaks directly to the science related to his field - finish off the discussion by highlighting the effect anti-capitalist and anti-globalization efforts are having on the poorest of the poor in Africa and other developing regions. The producers point out the brutal fact that even the most basic amenities we take for granted in the West today are built upon our use of energy, especially electricity. Without it, there is no heat, no air conditioning, only open fires to cook with, barbaric medical care, and no modern industry to lift the populace out of poverty. As James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist and the Director of the Inter Region Economic Network, points out, "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel... is going to power some railway train network."

One would expect that the liberal bleeding hearts who continuously tell us we need to feed the hungry around the world, and who tell us the reason we aren't doing enough is because of our racism and bigotry, would take the side of the downtrodden peasant folk in the African bush, and that they would endorse doing whatever it takes to improve their lot. But these same liberals insist on promulgating the global warming agenda that dictates the use of expensive "clean" forms of energy instead of the relatively cheap and plentiful coal and oil reserves found in Africa. This mandate prevents the great majority of Africa from advancing out of poverty the way the rest of the world has. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear," says Paul Driessen, author of the book Green Power, Black Death. "If we're telling the Third World that they can only have wind and solar power, what we are really telling them is, 'You cannot have electricity.'"

A forceful and persuasive discussion, cutting back and forth between interviews with Shikwati and Moore, is equally clear about the fate of the African people if the liberals have their way.

Moore: I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is this romanticization of peasant life, and the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world.
Shikwati: One clear thing... is the point that there is somebody keen to kill the African Dream. And the African Dream is to develop.
Moore: The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries.
Shikwati: We're being told, "Don't touch your resources. Don't touch your oil. Don't touch your coal." That is suicide.
Moore: I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human. Like, "Okay, you don't have to think humans are better than whales, or better than owls, or whatever, if you don't want to. Right? But surely, it is not a good idea to think of humans as sort of being scum... That it's okay to have hundreds of millions of them go blind or die or whatever." I just can't relate to that.

UPDATE: One of the scientists appearing in the program has been told he "won't live to see further global warming" if he doesn't shut up. Is this what the Left means by "Academic Freedom"? ( Laura at the HQ)