printThe 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]
Just like those who want electric cars, so that they can plug them into the wall socket to charge overnight, the thought never occurs that the electricity must be generated somewhere. And unless it is by a nuclear power plant, there is air and water pollution created to charge up the toy car.
These are all ignorant hypocrites. They gladly command us to live in small houses so that energy use is minimal, yet they live in huge mansions, fly private jets, move around in limousines, and gas up the planet with their noxious ideas.
I have a few choice words for these (dangerous) morons, but not in print.
Much of the Carbon trading hooey merely is wealth redistribution of jobs (and pollution) from America/Europe to the 3rd world and has NO impact on “worldwide” carbon dioxide.
Ironically, the most energy-packed power source, nuclear fission, is blocked by these NIMBY leftist “environmentalists”. The amount of waste material that is produced is miniscule compared to the land taken by zillions of windmills, solar collectors, strip-mined mountains, etc. Strange how France and Japan seem to get 80% of their power from nuclear energy but the gasbags of DC are promoting every silly idea.
The BEST example of our modern stupidity was found by John Stossel – free electric golf carts:
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/17/free-stuff-from-sam
I would love to understand how scrapping cars with many years of service left for other cars is either energy / environmentally wise? But then, I believe that the FREE MARKET provides sufficient incentives for conservation and elimination of unneeded energy – what a nutty concept!
The nitwits of the left never think about the consequences of their actions. Their personal opinion based on their own elitism and superiority makes them absolutely sure of everything. Just like putting a hefty tax on luxury items like yachts to confound the evil rich. All the rich did was buy their yachts from foreign manufacturers and the American workers of local yacht manufacturers were out of work. Product decisions advanced by government and not the market place have the same effect as all government endeavors. Disaster.
Amen! You want to really be disgusted? Check out Scientific American – it’s neither one or the other but it’s November issue really takes the cake. In it, in an article entitled, “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030” that proposed that most of the energy needs of the entire planet provide by solar and wing by 2030. [SEND LINKS, PLEASE]
Seriously, when I e-mailed Dr. Jacobson, pointing out that Areva was bidding on a nuclear power plant and asked about the untaxed $1,000,000 earned through oil and gas by Kennedy Family’s Arctic Royalty Limited Partnership and Ted’s opposition to wind power on Cape Cod (Cape Wind Project, 2003), Al Gore’s monthly electrical bill being 4x the national average he insisted I was being silly and wouldn’t respond. Odd given the article’s conclusion that only the lack of political will is the only thing standing in the way of Nirvana on earth.
Should have mentioned that Areva is a company largely owned by the French government – now you know why Sarko is pushing global warming.There are 14 nuclear power plants in France. I forgot to count how many there are in the rest of Europe. 31 states in this country have nuclear power plants.
Do they think nuclear power plants are going away? What about coal? 7 states mine coal and the World Coal Institute Coal Facts 2007 states: “At current production levels, proven coal reserves are estimated to last 147 years.”
The goofy professors, Mark Z. Jacobson (Stanford, prof. of civil and environmental engineering – ain’t tenure grand?)and Mark A. Delucchi (research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies at U of C, Davis)are really, rally big on batteries. To their credit they acknowledge a “possible” materials shortage of silver, lithium, neodymium, indium, tellurium, and platinum.
Given the shortage of these mental, pricing, the environmental damage Ms. Hilsum documents (does she still have a job?) doesn’t it make sense to develop a power source that doesn’t depend on them. As a compassionate capitalist it makes sense to me!
Jacobson and DeLucchi’s estimate for their program over the next 20 years? $100,000,000,000,000. That’s $1 TRILLION from the Limo and Lear jet libs (priceless – ROFWL while I cry).
What’s at stake here a failure of these people to understand the philosophy and history of science. Do they understand that only Judeo-Christianity made possible the scientific method? (See Wis 11:20: But thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight, RSV)
Can’t wait to read your thoughts!
One need look no further than the gathering at Copenhagen to see the true nature of the environmental bureaucrats. They gave Hugo Chavez’s ant-capitalist rant a standing ovation. The entire scam to redistribute western wealth to third world dictators to whom we owe “climate debt.” Every drought or flood in Latin America is now blamed on climate change, specifically climate change made by the evil Americans.
Robert Mugabe also got a captive audience for his senile rambling. To be fair, I’m sure that he has dramatically reduce Zimbabwe’s carbon emissions!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/penny-wong-jeered-hugo-chavez-cheered/story-e6frgczf-1225811179614
Environmentalism, ie., global cooling,er…I mean warming….er…climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind with the possible exception of the “God is dead” hoax.
In the 1950’s and 60’s there was a movement in the United States by the Communist Party to destroy the country through mass demonstrations, sabotage, and civil disorder. Groups such as the Weather Underground, The Weathermen, The Black Panthers, et al, all avowed Marxists and Maoists, along with their underlings, the college student anarchists and other dumbed-down atheistic dupes, failed in their bid to overthrow the U.S. government and were eventually driven underground.
These individuals then resurfaced as academics, politicians, and bureaucrats who infiltrated the environmental movement and virtually took it over, as they also did the education system and local, state and Federal government in the U.S.
These individuals are the ones who are now filling the heads of students and the masses full of mush and misinformation; the ones who are mired in our government as career bureaucrats; and are the behind the scenes movers and shakers of virtually all the clandestine Marxist/Maoist theology being spouted throughout all of these movements.
They are Communists, whose sole endeavor is the disruption of capitalism and the destruction of the Free World.
Here are links to the Scientific American article. On their site you have to pay to read the entire article, but I did find a PDF of it located elsewhere.
A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 – Scientific American Website
A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 – Full Article, PDF Download
I’ve been hearing about solar for 30 odd years since the age of Jimmy Carter – yet these Scientific American hucksters think it will take over in 20 years (when it is still insignificant). So, if it is such a great idea, why haven’t the Chinese, with all their trillions of $$ of capital, developed it??
Foreign Aid – any altruist has the right to spend his/her own money on any 3rd world project they like. They have no right to my money.
That’s what it is all about. Keep sounding the sky is falling trumpet. buy off enough media to keep the lie going. Get the laws in place to confiscate the America’s wealth, and then presto…reveal that all of the steps that they have taken worked. The globe has stablized and started to cool! Hooray! Now, I have this bridge I;d like to sell you on…