The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column, “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists”:

” … State-sponsored ‘sexy’ technologies in the West have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Copenhagen Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean.

Enter the Chinese worker.

‘You buy a Prius hybrid car and think you’re saving the planet,’ divulged Lindsey Hilsum of PBS’s ‘News Hour,’ ‘but each motor contains a kilo of neodymium and each battery more than 10 kilos of lanthanum, rare earth elements from China. Green campaigners love wind turbines, but the permanent magnets used to manufacture a 3-megawatt turbine contain some two tons of rare earth.’

Mining for rare earth metals is not the cleanest undertaking. Hybrid hypocrites prefer by far that it be done by the poor villagers of the Baiyunkuang District of Darhan Muminggan in Inner Mongolia, northern China. There lie the largest deposits of rare earth metals.

The Prius is packed with the stuff.

The Limousine and Learjet liberals who legislate ‘green’ industries into being prefer to outsource all energy-related extraction. …”

Read the complete column, “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists,” now on WND.COM.

By popular demand, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is back in print. The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy or copies now!

Update (Dec. 18): A reprieve, for the time being. If I read the veiled vernacular correctly, BO has achieved as much this time around in Copenhagen as he did during his first trip there a few months ago.
The CSM: The Copenhagen Crowd—“the United States and four other countries—“has agreed to a new, voluntary climate pact today. The move, which could become the framework for a broader agreement here, drew responses ranging from cautious acceptance to outrage. But it could prove a historic development in big-power negotiations, say some analysts.”

The Telegraph: “The limited deal was understood to include both developed and developing nations agreeing to ‘list national actions and commitments’ on cutting carbon emissions, US officials said. Agreement was also reached in principle of a package of financial measures to help poorer counties faced with the worst effects of climate change. Crucially, the leaders also gave their assent to targets to limit any rise in global temperatures to 2C.”

[SNIP]

So more foreign aid. The undeveloped countries scored something, but they always do. “Yet More Of Your Money Down The … Rathole.”

From the word salad-like addresses delivered by assorted Third-World shakedown shysters, to the glam factor loitering in the swanky hallways—Copenhagen encapsulates what I’ve called (or, rather, what my dad has coined) The Age of the Idiot:

“Darryl Hannah arrived to make a splash in the city of The Little Mermaid. Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, joined assorted hacks at a British government press briefing. The martial arts film star Jet Li was everywhere and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the grand-daddy of them all, ended his speech with the inevitable promise – or threat – ‘I’ll be back!'” John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon were there too. [The Telegraph]