Radical Environmentalism and Second Thoughts | FrontPage Magazine
By Arnold Ahlert On June 12, 2013
Late in March, Mark Lynas, a leader in the movement against Genetically Modified (GM) crops, did something virtually unheard of within radical environmentalist circles: he apologized for demonizing “an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.” In May, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore was equally contrite, noting that his fellow extremists “have abandoned science and logic altogether.” Others in the movement are expressing similar reservations. Yet in assessing the damage radical environmentalism has engendered, one may be forgiven for wondering if such apologies are sufficient.
Moore gets to the heart of the matter, explaining that while the 1980s ushered in the age of radical environmentalism, the issues for which he and his organization had fought have been largely accomplished. Thus, in order for his cohorts to remain employed, Moore admits they had to adopt increasingly extreme positions he categorizes as “anti: anti-human, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade and globalization, anti-business and capitalism, and ultimately, anti-civilization.”
Real Clear Energy reporter Marita Noon encapsulates the end result: “Moore’s view helps understand how the environmental movement has gone from trying to save the planet to killing the US economy.”
In conjunction with an equally radicalized Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), activists are targeting the coal industry’s production and exports, despite the reality that the United States has the largest recoverable resources on the planet, and developing nations such as India and China are clamoring to get them. The EU is in the mix as well, having discovered that the cost of renewables is prohibitively high. And despite environmentalist claims that exporting coal, and creating all the high paying jobs that come with it, will ruin the planet, all that will be ruined is our economy: exporters from Australia and Indonesia will fill the vacuum.
The same goes for Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). This product was once favored by environmentalists until fracking made it cheap, ruining their dreams of a fossil-fuel free world. Their case was made even more absurd on February 22, 2012, when former EPA head Lisa Jackson, an extremist whose agency over-reach has tested constitutional limits, told an energy conference in New Jersey, “I think that fracking as a technology is perfectly capable of being clean. I do.”
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Moore gets to the heart of the matter, explaining that while the 1980s ushered in the age of radical environmentalism, the issues for which he and his organization had fought have been largely accomplished. Thus, in order for his cohorts to remain employed, Moore admits they had to adopt increasingly extreme positions he categorizes as “anti: anti-human, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade and globalization, anti-business and capitalism, and ultimately, anti-civilization.”
Real Clear Energy reporter Marita Noon encapsulates the end result: “Moore’s view helps understand how the environmental movement has gone from trying to save the planet to killing the US economy.”
In conjunction with an equally radicalized Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), activists are targeting the coal industry’s production and exports, despite the reality that the United States has the largest recoverable resources on the planet, and developing nations such as India and China are clamoring to get them. The EU is in the mix as well, having discovered that the cost of renewables is prohibitively high. And despite environmentalist claims that exporting coal, and creating all the high paying jobs that come with it, will ruin the planet, all that will be ruined is our economy: exporters from Australia and Indonesia will fill the vacuum.
The same goes for Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). This product was once favored by environmentalists until fracking made it cheap, ruining their dreams of a fossil-fuel free world. Their case was made even more absurd on February 22, 2012, when former EPA head Lisa Jackson, an extremist whose agency over-reach has tested constitutional limits, told an energy conference in New Jersey, “I think that fracking as a technology is perfectly capable of being clean. I do.”
- go to link -
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