Category Archives: Greenies, Eco-Poseurs, and the Environment

One of the biggest environmental stories in recent years is the sad saga of Chinese drywall. Upwards of 60,000 homes, and possibly as many as 300,000, are affected by the sulfide spewing gypsum board. In addition to the highly publicized corrosion of all sorts of metal parts, including air conditioning coils, and the obnoxious sulfide odors, nearly all residents of these homes are reporting health effects—usually upper respiratory complaints.

Moreover, there are dozens of reports of affected families who have left their homes, whose symptoms disappear completely in a few days. Absent actual medical tests, field confirmation of health effect etiology does not get a whole lot better than this.

So, you might ask, where are all the Greenie groups? Well, some of them are talking about the issue, but for the most part, they are doing little more than posting news items that have already appeared elsewhere. Google searches will pull up all kinds of hits, but virtually anything aggressive turns out to be a comment posted to some blog connected with a particular organization.

Consider Consumer Reports. The respected magazine still supports the horrific Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which was essentially an absurd overreaction to the lead paint Chinese toys of a few years ago. Bear in mind that there were already laws in place to deal with the problem, and CPSIA did nothing but create a bonanza for the large toy companies who imported the contaminated toys in the first place. This is because regulation ALWAYS favors larger companies. Tough luck for the little guys who did the right thing.

Nonetheless, CR was lavish in its praise of CPSIA, and still cites horror stories (all of which were in violation of laws on the books since the 1970s) as naive proof of their correct position.

OK, but where are they on Chinese drywall? How about nowhere.

This is not only a major environmental issue, it is clearly a consumer issue, since the affected people all purchased houses. So, to quote the cliché, where’s the outrage?

Before I answer that, consider the official position of the federal government on Chinese drywall. The Feds have spent millions of dollars to come up with these findings:

• There is a “strong association” between the problem drywall, the hydrogen sulfide levels in homes with that drywall, and corrosion in those homes.
• Air quality studies detected hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde at concentrations below irritant levels, but additive effects might be occurring.
• More investigation is ongoing to determine safety effects of corrosion.

I am personally aware of crude but effective tests performed by contractors months ago that proved the first point, and those guys did not need to qualify their results with “strong association.” It is virtually a precept of residential indoor air quality studies that additive effects of toxins that may be present at less than “irritant” levels are the major source of problems. How much more study is required to determine that continuing corrosion will inevitably promote safety issues, especially with electrical devices?

In short, the Feds are taking a go-slow approach here. But why? If trace levels of some chemical are found in an industrial workplace, the cavalry rushes in, fines are assessed, and new laws are written, usually in the absence of meaningful health data. So what’s the difference in the case of Chinese drywall?

Easy. Despite the smokescreen of pointless legal action against builders (who were victims themselves) and an especially ludicrous lawsuit against the biggest Chinese drywall company, the only way this problem gets solved is via a federal bailout. They know it, and we know it. They and we also know that the public sentiment against bailouts is not exactly sympathetic at the moment, so they are simply playing for time. If it were a case of the Feds forcing someone else to spend money, they would be all over it like white on rice.

As to the usual fear entrepreneurial “green” groups such as NRDC, EWG, and US-PIRG, since there is no evil American corporation to blame this on—thus not fitting their Marxist tendencies—they are silent, even though real health effects are being experienced by real people.

Here lie exposed the true colors of the Greens, along with their usually supportive chemophobic federal agencies.

Readers with a taste for bad movies might notice the allusion to the 1964 melodrama Where Love Has Gone, a famous stinker loosely based on the sordid Lana Turner/Cheryl Crane/Johnny Stompanato murder case of 1958. Even Oscar winners Susan Hayward and Bette Davis could not overcome the script, although the film did achieve some popularity at the time.

While that movie was based on a Harold Robbins novel, the regulatory movement always starts with a cause…

Any sentient human beyond perhaps the age of five will notice that there are manifold injustices in the world. Although you won’t read this too often in most American history textbooks, the notion of governments addressing such problems is relatively new. Certainly, even from ancient times, some perceived injustice affecting a person with the means to react—for example King Menelaus of Sparta launching the Trojan War to recover his kidnapped wife Helen—has been a large component of world history, but these same nobles cared not a whit about the plight of the common man.

As suffrage became more or less universal in what is now called the first world, some injustices that could realize immediate political advantage would be addressed, but it was never thought that government should provide the remedy to cure all social ills. That is, until Teddy Roosevelt took over for the assassinated William McKinley in 1901. TR’s Square Deal was to be the forerunner of all other overly ambitious and crypto-socialist federal programs that would follow. In fact, TR was the first U.S. president to call for universal health care and national health insurance.

While Teddy Roosevelt’s policies were popular, without a federal income tax there was a limit to what could really be done. As it is, William Howard Taft, TR’s chosen successor, was given a big boost in the 1908 election by his opponent William Jennings Bryan’s proposal to socialize the railroads, which went over like a lead balloon with the voters.

However, by 1912, TR and Taft had a falling out, in that Taft was accused of moving to the right. The party was split, and Woodrow Wilson—quite sadly—would be elected. There was no turning back. Taxes soared, along with government activism, and of course the imperial presidency and World War I. Had the US actually remained neutral in the conflict, Wilson, who was reelected in 1916 on the promise of keeping us out of war, would not have felt compelled to drag us in.

To be fair, one could make a reasonable case for at least some of the regulation that went on in that era such as pure food laws, prohibition of child labor, and the eight-hour work day. However, the line between reasonable regulation and power-mad federal fascism was crossed by FDR in 1933 with his National Recovery Administration, mercifully declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.

Unconstitutional or not, the paradigm was forever set: Find a cause, and then create an agency to regulate it.

Certainly, this was the origin of the EPA, and by the mid-1980s, most of the pressing legitimate environmental issues had been resolved. At that point, the agency descended into very questionable matters of chemical regulation that bring us to today’s efforts to regulate formaldehyde, for example, to levels less than it occurs naturally in human breath. Useful chemicals such as phthalates are all but banned, even as “safer substitutes” are being found to have greater problems than the phthalates.

Noted Catholic apologist Vincent Lewis explains regulatory zeal and its supporters on the basis of some form of collective guilt that must be assuaged. This guilt could be based in personal misdeeds, or even on the fact that few regulatory programs ever actually solve the problems they are intended to address, without creating equally arduous new ones in their place. Many simply fail completely with no noticeable benefits at all, beyond creating employment for bureaucrats and consultants.

This guilt must be remitted, and, like Oedipus who blinded himself once he learned of his terrible sins, the regulatory activists punish themselves with higher taxes, and ever-increasing complexity of daily life based on the untenable regulatory environment.

The Rubicon was surely crossed more than twenty years ago. Regulatory action was supposed to improve our lives, but with such abominations as the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act closing businesses and wreaking untold havoc to achieve NO goal that was not already in place since the 1970s on lead, and scapegoating phthalates for no good reason (even NPR agrees that there is no science to justify this), CPSIA—like it or not—is the face of regulation today, or, as we said, where regulation has gone.

“Greenie derangement syndrome” is something I have observed for a long time, and can be defined as a condition that often occurs when a person enters the fringe environmental movement, whereby despite previous education, training, and attitudes, he begins to lose the capacity for rational thought when considering environmental issues.

A corollary is that a person affected by this syndrome is prone to quoting sources out of context, or simply making things up, in an attempt to support his positions.

A good example is Dr. Christopher De Rosa, former director of the CDC’s Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, who stated on more than one occasion that there is no safe level of exposure to formaldehyde. Lest we blame only De Rosa, he is but one victim of the concept called the precautionary principle, which holds that if some concentration of a chemical is dangerous, than ANY concentration of that chemical—other than “zero”—must also be dangerous.

This concept is also known as the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. Here is an example, as applied to radiation exposure, where the model was first proposed:

If a particular dose of radiation is found to produce one extra case of a type of cancer in every thousand people exposed, LNT predicts that one thousandth of this dose will produce one extra case in every million people so exposed, and that one millionth of this dose will produce one extra case in every billion people exposed. This means that any given quantity of radiation will produce the same number of cancers, no matter how thinly it is spread.

Needless to say, many scientists do not buy into this concept. In the case of formaldehyde, it is especially foolish to believe in this since formaldehyde is a natural metabolite of all animals, is present in human breath at a median concentration of 30 parts-per-billion, and appears in many fruits and vegetables. Note that these are inherent concentrations, and are not affected whatsoever by environmental concentrations of formaldehyde.

If some FEMA trailers had elevated concentrations of the compound, it was due to off-gassing of newly installed items in the trailers, and lack of proper ventilation.

The point is that De Rosa and his cohort should know better, and probably DID know better, until Greenie Derangement Syndrome set in.

Another more recent example involves Bill Nye, the former “Science Guy,” who boasts a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell. Now featured on Planet Green’s “Stuff Happens” series, he seems to have succumbed to the Syndrome. On a recent episode that dealt with environmental hazards coming from your attic, he went off on a bit of a tirade against fiberglass insulation, and its use of formaldehyde resins to bind it together.

At one point he actually said the following:

“Twenty years ago, it took twice as much formaldehyde to embalm a dead body than it does today. Why is that? Because today, we already have twice as much formaldehyde in our bodies.”

It is difficult to overstate how absurd that statement is.

First of all, formaldehyde does not build up in our bodies, but exists at a steady state concentration of 1 to 2 parts-per-million in the blood.

Embalming fluid contains anywhere from 5 to 29 percent formaldehyde. This content is referred to as “index,” thus a 25-index fluid would have 25 percent formaldehyde. Doing the conversion, 5 percent formaldehyde is 50,000 parts-per-million, and a 25-index solution would be 250,000 parts-per-million. Do you really think that the amount of formaldehyde in the blood is going to affect this? What if the amount in our blood did double (which it most assuredly did NOT)? We would still be off by a factor of more than 10,000!

Note that even if we WERE walking around with these incredibly high and toxic levels in our blood, it wouldn’t matter, since the embalming process REMOVES blood before the fluid is injected.

This is far more than a simple mistake. His quote compounds multiple errors, and on its face is absurd in its suggestion that we are already walking around half-embalmed. Yet, because of Greenie Derangement Syndrome, not only was he able to say this, it was also not corrected by any of his staff, and no retraction has been posted on the website.

I have often suggested that the radical Greens cling to their beliefs as a substitute for religion. This, though, is a very easy religion to follow in that they don’t really have to do anything other than hold certain politically correct positions. Of course, they can also parade about doing cool “Green” things, much as the hypocrites, who sound a trumpet before them, that they may be honored by men (Matthew 6:2).

For that matter, what would Jesus do? While there are no Gospel references to the environment as such, we do see that Jesus is not terribly concerned about material things, nor even in conserving them. Luke 5:1-11 tells of the extraordinary catch of fish that threatened to sink the boats, but right after this happened, the catch was abandoned as Peter, James, and John left to follow Jesus.

Matthew 8:28-34 tells of demons being cast into a herd of swine, and then the entire herd being forced into the sea. Matthew 26:6-13 tells of expensive perfume being poured on His head, and the disciples becoming indignant at the waste. Jesus, though, instructs them not to worry about it, and that the woman who did this had performed a good deed. Finally, He even mocks the covetous man who plans to store up all of his wealth, so that he can then pursue a life of leisure—only to die that very night (Luke 12:16-20).

Returning to the 21st century, one further aspect of the syndrome is that the more absurd the position, the more our sufferers must believe in it, presumably since that shows their sincerity and determination. Thus, “The cooler weather is caused by global warming.”

Beware this syndrome. Identify it in others, and don’t let it infect you.

Back in the early 1970s, no one can deny that there really were legitimate environmental horror shows that needed to be attended to. Many remember Reserve Mining, in Silver Bay, MN—infamous for dumping taconite debris straight into Lake Superior. Coal-fired power plants using no abatement were all too common, and even though clean-up of automobile engines had already started, there was still a long way to go.

Aggressive enforcement along with advances in abatement technology were to make great strides, and by the late 1980s most of the big targets had been conquered. What was to happen with the burgeoning environmental movement?

Three factors came into play at about the same time. That environmental legislation could have profound effects on industry while growing government was not lost on the Left. As such, the notion of “from Red to Green” was born, whereby those in favor of an overarching, even socialist government, saw a way to achieve their goals that would have made Antonio Gramsci proud.

The second factor involved creating scares over chemicals of all types, usually focused on their alleged effects on babies or children.

One of the earliest kids’ causes was to be found in major efforts—none of which proved very successful—against teenage smoking. The theory was simple enough: Since it is difficult for people to quit smoking, and most of them started when they were teens, why not discourage them from starting in the first place?

But, there was some misdirection here. Clearly, few teenagers die of lung cancer or heart disease—the two main killers associated with cigarette smoking. Thus, strictly speaking, smoking is not really a children’s health issue at all. Rather, it can be PACKAGED as a children’s health issue. It was soon discovered that appeals on the basis of children’s health had great traction, whether they were true or not.

Sadly, these appeals would draw significant attention away from legitimate children’s health issues such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

The third factor was the subversion of public education. Long gone are the days of reading, writing, and arithmetic dominating the curriculum. These have been trumped by relevance, ethnic history, self-esteem preening, and, far too often, flat-out socialist proselytizing. Also lost in the shuffle are science and critical thinking skills.

Given these circumstances, is it any wonder that a host of phony chemical scares have been foisted on the public?

Recent examples of phony scares include bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates. Related to this are substances that are toxic, but their ingestion scenarios have been way overblown such as lead.

The lamentable Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, currently embarrassing Congress on a daily basis as it decimates small business, was founded on the pretext of improving children’s safety, and contains restrictions on lead and phthalates. Even though the overwhelming source of lead poisoning is lead in paint, and that hazard has been subject to considerable regulation for over 30 years, the new law forces testing of ALL children’s products, from books to bicycles, and has already had many “unintended consequences.”

I use quotes for the above term since the consequences of this absurd law were obvious, and unless Congress wishes to portray themselves as simpletons, could hardly be unintended. It might be better to call them “ignored consequences,” and then wonder why they were ignored, and have not yet been remedied.

No credible data on deleterious effects of phthalates on humans has ever been proffered. At most, dicey extrapolations of animal testing have been used to create scares based on these compounds, as well as BPA, acting as so-called endocrine disruptors.

However, there are many naturally occurring phytoestrogens, far more potent as disruptors than either phthalates or BPA, such as genistein—found in many legumes and certainly in soy-based infant formula. Thus, the flagrant contradiction of banning the BPA in baby bottles and nipples, but ignoring the “danger” in the formula itself. And, yes, genistein is also present in human milk.

Lead, too, occurs in most of the foods we eat. As such, the notion that “any amount of lead is dangerous” is clearly nonsensical. May we add that formaldehyde is present in most fruits and vegetables, and exists in human breath at a median level of about 30 parts-per-billion—a level deemed “dangerous” by some irresponsible and clueless authorities. Yet, these chemicals and dozens more are being used to scare parents and promote donations to dubious “environmental” groups.

It is long past time to expose these organizations as the charlatans they are, and to save our emotions and money for causes based on truth rather than mindless fear.

Who indeed, and that’s the problem. On August 14, 2008, President Bush signed into law the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). There are two main portions (or “titles”) of the Act: Title I–Children’s Product Safety and Title II–Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform. Within Title I are eight sections, two of which are concerned with certain chemicals that might be found in children’s products. Section 101 regulates the amount of lead that can be contained in these products, and Section 108 regulates certain compounds called phthalates, used as softeners in plastics.

No doubt in response to the several scares over lead in Chinese-made toys, the lead regulations provide for a phased-in tightening of the allowable lead starting on February 10, 2009 and proceeding through August, 2011. A drastic lowering applies to permissible lead paint content from 0.06 percent to 0.009 percent (effective August 14, 2009). This level could be lowered after further studies are conducted.

Significantly, since clothing is considered a children’s product, the thrift stores and resale shops howled in protest.

“We will have to lock our doors and file for bankruptcy,” said Shauna Sloan, founder of Salt Lake City-based franchise Kid to Kid, which sells used children’s clothing in 75 stores across the country and had planned to open a store in Santa Clara, CA this year.

Carol Vaporis, owner of Duck Duck Goose Consignment in New Port Richey, FL, said her store stocks barely used brand-name clothing from places such as Limited Too and Gymboree. “We really provide a service to the community to help people get clothes for their children they otherwise couldn’t afford,” she said. In addition, families who turn in clothing get a portion of the sales price.

As with so many laws that are introduced to “protect” the public, it was beginning to look like CPSIA would be hurting people who needed to purchase used clothing, and people who might generate a little income by selling this clothing to the stores—in other words, those of limited means. Then there is the matter of shutting down the thrift shops themselves, many of which are raising money for charity.

Fortunately, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the agency that will have to enforce the law, published a ruling on January 8, 2009, that provides, in part:

The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children’s products made after February 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban. Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards.

But, there is still a gray area, as the ruling continues:

The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties.

Typically, lead in clothing can appear in buttons, charms, and appliques that have been added to fabric. Presumably, if the resellers avoid these, they will be OK. At least, the burden of testing has been removed from these small operators.

It might have been a whole lot easier to simply ban lead content buttons, charms, and appliques, along with lead-containing jewelry. As it happens, in the most celebrated and tragic case, a four-year-old Minnesota boy died in February, 2006 after ingesting a lead charm, that fell off a pair of Reebok athletic shoes. The charm in question contained an unbelievable 99.1% lead. Subsequent testing of the same type of charms showed that they could range from 0.07% lead all the way up, and this is apparently typical of cheap metallic jewelry items.

The ban on phthalates is controversial, to say the least. Lunatic Greenie activists who were originally trying to get vinyl products banned—but then gave up since there are far too many essential medical applications—set their sights on phthalates, since they are necessary for the production of vinyl plastics.

It is well worth noting that many eminent toxicologists—including Michael Kamrin and Robert Golden—are by no means convinced that there are any safety issues with phthalates—one of the most studied group of chemical compounds in history. More than that, the CPSC’s own scientists had already done work confirming that phthalates are a non-issue, and the agency is far from pleased with that provision of the CPSIA.

To make matters worse, the National Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit in December, 2008. requesting that the phthalates provision apply retroactively to inventory on hand as of February 10, 2009. Previously, the CPSC had issued a ruling that the phthalates ban is NOT retroactive. Otherwise, hundreds of millions of dollars in inventory would be in limbo, resulting in higher costs to consumers, during a recession.

All this for compounds that have never been shown to have any ill effects on humans in the stated applications. Rather, certain rodent studies suggested that they might be endocrine disruptors—IN RODENTS, at substantially higher concentrations.

However, rats and mice do not equal humans! For example, it is well established that rodent-based tests for certain thyroid effects may not be relevant for extrapolation to humans due to substantial species differences in thyroid function. Numerous drugs in common use produce adverse thyroid effects in rodents, but not in humans, including CNS-acting drugs (phenobarbital, benzodiazapines), calcium channel blockers (nicardipine, bepridil), antihistamines (doxylamine succinate) and steroids (spironolactone). For these drugs, a listing of possible side effects does not even include adverse effects on the thyroid.

Furthermore, extensive data exists on the in utero effects of DES (a very potent estrogen) on humans, which, at the very least, imply that massive exposure to phthalates—at thousands of times the levels proposed— would be necessary to produce adverse effects.

But, who needs science when muddleheaded officeholders, led by misinformed and biased staffers, think they know what’s best for us?

In December 2007 and January 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measured formaldehyde levels in a stratified (strata based on type of trailer) random sample of 519 FEMA-supplied trailers. CDC’s final report was issued on 2 July 2008. The geometric mean level of formaldehyde in sampled trailers was 77 parts-per-billion (ppb). The range encountered was 3-590 ppb.

The good news is that this mean level is lower than 100 ppb, generally considered to be the point at which sensitive individuals report symptoms. By comparison, nearly all people experience some irritation at 800 ppb, and 750 ppb is the OSHA 8-hour time-weighted average allowable exposure level for formaldehyde.

We offer our comments on the CDC report…

The agency utilized NIOSH Method 2016, a form of wet chemical analysis that required sample to be taken via a special pump for one hour at one select location in the trailer. We do not believe that this was the best way to accomplish the formaldehyde measurements. For one thing, the method has poor accuracy: ± 19%. For another, the result is simply an integrated average “single number,” that could be affected by ventilation and smoking habits of the occupant. Moreover, since the final analysis of the samples was not done on site, they had to be sent, via overnight courier packaged in ice, to the testing lab’s facility in Michigan.

Method 2016 yields formaldehyde concentration data in milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m³), but CDC reported the results in ppb. As such, a conversion must be made, and temperature and barometric pressure must be taken into account. Experience has shown, though, that this may not be done in practice. Instead, a conversion factor is stated—albeit at “normal temperature and pressure” (20° C, 760 torr)—that is often regarded as a static number applicable under all conditions.

Note that the formaldehyde testing was done in a temperature range of 41° F – 91° F. As no barometric pressure data was given, we are unable to consider this parameter.

Let’s convert the above-stated temperature range to Celsius: 5° C – 32.8° C. 77 ppb at the first temperature would be 0.101 mg/m³, and at the second temperature would be 0.092 mg/m³. This represents a variance of almost 9 percent. Although temperature data was recorded for each trailer formaldehyde measurement, and temperature was part of the mulitvariate statistical analysis, it is unclear if the actual formaldehyde concentration measurements were corrected for temperature variation.

A direct reading instrument (such as Interscan’s) would have allowed sampling at various locations in the trailer, and far more data could have been obtained in 10 minutes that way, than by using Method 2016 for one hour. Additionally, the instrument would have been much more accurate (± 2% of reading ± 1 ppb). The results would have been immediate, allowing for further field protocol adjustments, if necessary. For example, it may have been discovered—quite inadvertently—that a particular fixture common to many trailers (such as certain cabinetry) was a significant point source of formaldehyde emissions.

Such a finding could have immediately influenced additional testing within all trailers.

It is well known that cigarette smoke contains formaldehyde, and a trailer occupied by a smoker would have confounded the results. While the CDC study included questions about smoking on its questionnaire, I am uncomfortable with their finding that 66% of the subjects occupied trailers in which no one had smoked for the previous two weeks. It would have been far better to analyze the trailer air for some marker of cigarette smoke.

In any event, simply prohibiting smoking for the one hour period of the sample collection (as was their protocol) does nothing for the smoke-contaminated air already present!

Finally, even though this entire study was driven by media horror stories of all sorts of supposedly drastic health effects, there was not a single health question on the interviewers’ questionnaires. The CDC papers over this by stating that “it was not a health effects study.”

But, that is beside the point. It would surely have been valuable to correlate measured concentrations with reported symptoms, even in the most generic manner. A golden opportunity was missed here, and I have a feeling it was deliberate.

Both political parties—especially the Dems—talk a whole lot about the environment, lowering the carbon imprint (or footprint), and being energy efficient. But what about two huge events, that involve travel for thousands of people, as well as massive energy consumption at the destination? And what if there were no good reason why these events should be taking place at all?

I’m referring, of course, to this summer’s political conventions.

As things now stand, both parties have chosen their presidential candidates. The VP choices will be made in due course, and the platforms are being hammered out right now. So, one might ask, if John Q. Public is being told to tighten his energy belt, why do the parties get a free pass?

The official reason is that it is very important for the party faithful to get together in this manner, it is traditional to do so, and that “the country” expects no less. In addition, being appointed a delegate with a convention floor pass is a prize doled out to rank and file workers, who will no doubt show their gratitude by laboring all the harder come this fall.

The actual reason is a bit more complex. First of all “the environment” and “reduce your carbon footprint” are nothing more than election year campaign platitudes. They sound good, but mean absolutely nothing, or if they COULD mean something, no policy specifics are ever given. After all, Obama touts “change we can believe in.” Can anyone in the US explain what that means?

How can you believe in some sort of change, without knowing the details? You can’t, but if you are caught up in the cult of personality, it doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, if you are a realist, and recognize that campaign promises are almost never kept, you are not part of the intended audience for political conventions.

Beyond this, it simply comes down to the dollars. Try counting up the money involved with thousands of airplane tickets, thousands of hotel rooms, and tens of thousands of meals. Who knows what kind of backroom deals were made by the cities to secure the conventions—but you can be sure that money changed hands.

What an incredibly bold move it would be for one party to simply proclaim: We are taking the step to reduce our carbon footprint, and will be having a virtual convention. Some penalties will be paid to all the pre-booked vendors, but look at what we have saved!

But, you see, to do this would require that the parties actually believe in something more than just winning an election. More than that, the politicians would have to adjust their own behavior—rather than simply scold you for yours—when it came to the environment.

Call this a golden opportunity squandered.

It is worth noting that the modern environmental movement was founded on the 1962 book Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson. Although Carson was a trained biologist, who had received some praise for her earlier works, it is sad but nonetheless quite true that the hideous distortions regarding pesticides and countless errors in fact that literally fill Silent Spring are the product of an embittered spinster dying of breast cancer. It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure out that she needed something on which to blame her fate, and anointed environmental pollution—mainly pesticides—as the evil that would wipe out civilization.

Thus, Carson gave the nascent environmental movement its first apocalypse, and DDT became the prime agent of doom. As it turned out, she was right about the doom, but it was the banning of DDT that brought it about, with tens of millions—mostly poor Africans—dying of malaria.

That she is still regarded as some sort of heroine today can only be understood, based on the kind of mentality that produces “lender liability” lawsuits. Here, the plaintiff maintains that you shouldn’t have loaned me the money because you should have known that I wouldn’t pay it back, and you should have exercised better due diligence. In other words, it wasn’t my fault. Applied in this case, it would have vilified the actual people who believed her pernicious nonsense and put her agenda into play. Unfortunately, William Ruckelshaus and company have yet to pay the price.

Nevertheless, the stage was set. Any big environmental issue must be framed as a terrible crisis; supporting science is vague, nonexistent, fudged, or distorted; and the cognitive dissonance whereby concern for human lives is always preached but never practiced hangs over the proceedings like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Earlier faux crises include…

• Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb


• Carl Sagan’s “nuclear winter”


• Ozone depletion

Ehrlich’s true “bomb” was how reality displaced this sick poseur’s posturing, although he did make lots of money. Many are unaware that he supported a proposal to simply stop both private and government-sponsored food aid to countries that experienced chronic food shortages, unless they controlled their populations. Otherwise, he was quite willing to let them starve. Ehrlich the humanitarian!

Sagan died before his theory was completely destroyed, but supposedly he was willing to take the credit for preventing nuclear war. I guess you’d have to be a wee bit puffed-up, confused, and emotionally and spiritually tone-deaf to simultaneously be a dyed-in-the wool atheist and still say “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

If chlorofluorcarbons were really depleting the ozone layer, how come the so-called “hole” only appeared above Antarctica, with nothing at all over the northern hemisphere, home to infinitely more air conditioners? I don’t know, either.

As to Global Warming, we can probably acknowledge that it is occurring, if to a tiny extent—perhaps 0.6 degree Celsius (1.08 degree Fahrenheit) over the entire 20th century—assuming that we can trust “average global temperature” data. However, blaming humans for the rise, or even holding that the rise is unique is nothing less than absurd.

Notwithstanding that infamous “hockey stick” curve that somehow left out both the so-called Little Ice Age (LIA) and Medieval Warm Period (MWP), these epochs are part of the historical record.

During the MWP (roughly 600 to 1400 AD), Greenland was actually green, wine was produced in England, and agriculture and exploration flourished. During the LIA (roughly 1500-1850) northern Europe got colder, and culture and development shifted to the south.

More than that, evidence exists to show at least 600 moderate warming events in the last 1 million years.

As to human-generated carbon dioxide causing the warming, let’s be rational. Consider that carbon dioxide constitutes about 0.03 percent of the atmosphere, and, at best, less than 20 percent of this comes from fossil fuel combustion. Actually, the doomsayers have this the wrong way round: As the Earth warms up, more of the gas is released from the warming oceans.

Few would disagree that a warmer climate is preferable to a colder one, and human history bears this out.

As to the ridiculous doomsday scenarios of coastal cities being flooded into oblivion, even if we believe every worst case model, it is certainly not a matter of New York City suddenly being submerged, like some bad science fiction movie. These changes, if they occurred at all, would take hundreds of years at least.

Moreover, we can’t help pointing out that the Katrina disaster was caused in large part by “environmental” groups blocking proper levee construction, despite the existence of a a KNOWN hazard. Remember that in the face of a visible, real, and actual crisis, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men still couldn’t manage the simple task of extracting those in harm’s way.

Keep that, and the global warming alarmist United Nations’ continuous record of failure and corruption in mind, when you contemplate turning the future over to such authorities.

Beware also those prophets of impending doom, and judge them and their predecessors by their fruits.