Fake Environmentalism

The current environmental movement is fake. It is a cover for left wing agitation, for people who have had nowhere else to go since the wall came down and they could no longer quite keep up the pretence that socialism was good for poor people when all the poor people (i.e. not senior Communist Party members) could say what it was like to live under true socialism. They are the authoritarian left, and the environment is an excuse to attack industry and commerce, a great relief to any leftie, and to tell other people what to do, balm to the soul of the authoritarian.

What it is not about is saving the environment. The trigger for this thought was that the US ‘Cash for Clunkers’ programme had run out of money in four (some reports said five) days, instead of running until November. I read a report or two and it turns out it is not like Gordon Brown’s ridiculous scrappage scheme, only intended to buy votes for the left. It was intended to be an environmental programme, to take inefficient cars off the road.

However that has not been the implementation of the programme. Cars with woeful mileage (the 22 mpg car mentioned would run at about 26 mpg in imperial gallons; my 11-year-old, family-sized car with a V6 engine which was sold in the USA manages to average 32-33 mpg). However we have not seen the howls of outrage from the environmental lobby we have come to expect from any alleged offence against the Earth, because Obama is of the left. Even reports that try to measure the environmental impact such as this one in Time not only give a pass to 24 miles per US gallon (31 miles per imperial gallon) but they fail to even consider the manufacturing impact. They don’t even mention that cars have to be made, and that takes energy and primary resources.

I am smug every time I see a Prius. My car cost me less than £2000, so the money I saved can go towards fuel. It is far more fun to drive than a Prius, quicker, tauter, faster and with better handling. It is as practical as a Prius, with a large boot, with folding rear seats. Most amusingly it is far more environmentally sound for me to buy that than a Prius, because it is an old car. The manufacturing impact has already been spread over 11 years and more than 100,000 miles; a reliable car, with little stress on the engine, it will probably last another 100,000. Unlikely for a Prius’s battery and drive.

Likewise in the UK we have not had any demonstrations against scrapping old cars. Of course Gordon Brown is an old leftie. Environmentalists attacking his policies would not advance the real aim, socialism.

This fakery is all over the environmental movement. Wind farms are wonderful, because they forget that wind turbines have to be made and maintained, and that they don’t actually produce much power or last very long. Solar panels have similar faults overlooked.

Nuclear energy is of course turned down without consideration. It has been proved beyond doubt to be far safer than coal in the developed world. The only really serious accident has been at Chernobyl, but that case was irrelevant as the design of the reactor and the unbelievably foolish experiment conducted on it caused the accident, neither relevant in the west. Three Mile Island which had the worst nuclear accident in US history has never been conclusively shown to have killed anyone, unlike the coal-mining industry. It only caused such uproar due to a silly, unrealistic film with traitor Jane Fonda called China Syndrome, released early to take advantage of the publicity.

There was for years a secret nuclear reactor in the heart of London, safely producing power. Yet the environmental lobby does not want nuclear power because the communists who hold sway have always been anti-nuclear. So our government energy policy is now being decided by the dead communist party of the USSR, and its plan to try and get Britain to disarm through useful idiots.

In 1995 Greenpeace started a huge campaign to stop the Brent Spar oilrig from being dumped in the Atlantic ocean at a depth of 2,500m. Instead it was cut up at far more cost to the environment. I can’t find the volume of the North Atlantic, but a scratch calculation comes up with around 75 million billion cubic metres. Even in the North Sea oilrigs look tiny, believe me I have flown across often enough; all the oilrigs ever built are not going to seriously pollute the Atlantic, over the timescale on which a structure disintegrates. In the end even Greenpeace admitted that they had Brent Spar’s potential damage out of all proportion, although they managed to blame Shell for that. This was an attack on industry in general, Shell Royal Dutch (a popular victim of the left) in particular, nothing to do with the environment.

Of course the big daddy is ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ when the world starts to cool. This is not only bad science. It is anti-scientific (shutting down debate is not science, that is totalitarianism). Not only is there no strong evidence that carbon dioxide is harmful, we know for sure it is beneficial (plants need it, and most grow better in higher concentrations). So on balance carbon dioxide might well not only be harmless but it might be good for the environment!

So any time the environmental movement tries to change your behaviour, just remember what they really are. If the change is to your advantage, or has some local environmental benefit that you can quantify then do so. Don’t do it because you are told