Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Scam of Green

You know the scam of green has hit rock bottom when the Washington Post is criticizing the government’s alternative energy partnerships, grants, and subsidies and Al Gore’s $100 million fortune gained through investments in the climate change hoax. “Al Gore is 50 times richer than he was when he left the vice presidency in 2001.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-liberals-green-energy-contradictions/2012/10/15/8c251ba2-16e6-11e2-8792-cf5305eddf60_story.html)

Being the die-hard liberals that they are, the paper cannot help itself in describing Gore’s wealth as “Romneyesque” and Mitt Romney himself as a “private-equity baron.” In the liberal view, it is acceptable to gain wealth, whether honestly or dishonestly if you are a Democrat, however, if you are a Republican, you become a baron, a comparison with negative connotations, harking back to the robber-barons era.

Criticizing modern liberalism and the Democrat Party, the author condemns their green agenda and their dependence on cash from high-tech venture capitalists and lobbyists, questioning their claims that they are supporting “the little guy,” the ordinary Americans who struggle to survive in an almost 16 percent unemployment environment.

The real unemployment figures, if reported correctly and honestly, are much higher than the stated 7.8 percent by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the happy media supporting President Obama’s re-election campaign. The main stream media has not bothered to report that the seventh largest economy on the planet, California, had failed to report its unemployment figures on time last week and was thus not included in the BLS unemployment calculations.

Charles Lane says that it is much harder to describe “liberalism as a philosophy of distributive justice.” Quoting Andrew Jackson’s words of 1832, the author is indirectly complaining about the injustice of our Government.

I do not recall our founding fathers advocating socialist re-distribution of wealth. Liberalism is a political philosophy founded on the ideas of liberty: free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to life, liberty, and property. Nobody is entitled to anybody else’s property. It was John Locke who argued that each human being has a natural right to life, liberty, and property and governments must not violate these rights. Yet liberals trumpet that an omnipotent government should be the arbiter and re-distributor of private property and wealth.

Charles Lane makes a valid point that our government does not have a mandate to choose economic winners and losers through green subsidies, grants, or tax breaks for oil and gas. However, in his progressive views, governments must pursue “the legitimate goal of environmentalism.”

I am not sure if there is a legitimate goal of environmentalism or who has mandate to pursue that goal. The majority of Americans believe environmentalism to be counterproductive to our capitalist economy and a threat to private property and our way of life.

Maurice Strong, the founder of the United Nations Environment Programme, exemplifies environmentalism gone berserk: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilization collapses? Isn’t our responsibility to bring that about? Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” (Rio Earth Summit)

Questioning Gore’s “climate crusade” as being based on money and not about saving the planet, the author talks about Fisker, the manufacturer of the hybrid cars, mostly priced above $100,000, the Kharma sport model selling for $117,000. Lane believes the huge financial gain does not hurt Gore’s credibility about climate change, just the solutions he advocates.

It is not in the interest of liberals to let climate change/global warming crusade die. There is too much money, wealth, power, and global control to be gained from pushing this hoax.

The Met Office in the U.K. reported last week that 3,000 temperature readings on land and sea have shown that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in global temperatures. According to the Daily Mail, “the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.”

The media reported with great fanfare six months ago figures through the end of 2010 – a very warm year because the data seemed to agree with their agenda. The reporting was disingenuous because it supposedly showed a slight warming trend since 1997. However, 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, erasing the warming trend. I would also argue that environmentalists constantly mix weather and climate, depending on their talking points. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html)

Everybody understands green energy is expensive and not feasible and cheap on a mass scale for years to come. Our huge economy and transportation need more than just wind mills and solar panels. Our economy needs natural gas, oil, clean coal, nuclear energy, and hydroelectric energy.

The New York Times reported on California’s “net metering” subsidy for solar-panel users. Consumers who can afford to install photovoltaic panels are paid by their utilities for the excess capacity of electricity and to keep them on the grid. The utilities’ costs are passed on to lower income customers. (Washington Post, Charles Lane, October 16, 2012)

Liberals are finally discovering that expensive electricity rates are bad for industry and private customers alike. The $3.4 billion from the 2009 stimulus bill spent on the Smart Grid may be efficient and profitable in energy distribution for utilities but it is very expensive for consumers, invades their privacy, and creates cyber security issues and privacy issues. Germany’s rapid replacement of nuclear power with wind and solar has increased utility rates so much that 200,000 long-term unemployed Germans lost power in 2011 because they could not afford to pay their electric bills. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/energy-turnaround-in-germany-plagued-by-worrying-lack-of-progress-a-860481.html)

Liberals are finally discovering that much higher electricity rates through smart metering are hitting their pockets and it hurts. Progressives are realizing that the Democrat talk about “green jobs” is nothing but a con redefinition of already existing jobs. Furthermore, smart grid and smart meters, with all their negative effects on human health and privacy, are destroying the jobs of the traditional meter readers. Lane calls this unintended consequence “creative destruction” - “what makes capitalism go.” But Economics 101 teaches students that self-interest, greed, the price system, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” and the pursuit of profit are the motivators behind capitalism.

Lane disapproves of Gore and his partners’ rent-seeking activities. “It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” He laments the fact that the United Mine Workers of America, a former Democrat core constituency, has refused to endorse Obama in 2008 and 2012. Mitt Romney has promised in Ohio that we will use our vast reserves of coal, keep the miners’ jobs, and re-open those coal mines shut down by Obama’s green energy policies.

In the end, the scam of green is affecting Democrat and Republican consumers alike. It just took Democrats four years to realize this obvious fact.

 

 

 

 

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