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Starting On The Road To Kyoto The Radical Left Takes Up Global Warming As A Club To Beat Down The Industrialized Nations Part V in a Series By Perry Hicks To be fair, the environmental movement has done much good work throughout its 107 plus year history. This is evidenced by the much improved air and water quality that we enjoy today. Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, wicked mid-summer temperature inversions would press auto pollution close to the ground and could not blow away. One component of tail pipe emissions called hydrocarbons, would make my eyes burn if I were caught in a summer traffic jam. Oxides of Nitrogen would create photo chemical smog in the larger cities, and with such density, that you could sometimes actually see the air. Yellow-brown in color, smog was probably the cause for the golden glow of mid-summer evenings I so fondly remember as a child. The Potomac River was unbelievably filthy; brown and almost oily. In many places, dead fish would lap the shore. This is remarkable in that Washington D.C. was not a manufacturing town. Rivers along those cities were worse. However, some dead fish and golden sunsets are not exactly the most egregious ecological problems. Consider these catastrophes: · 1908 Glasgow, Scotland winter inversions traps smoke that kills 1000 people. · In October 1948, 20 people were asphyxiated and another 7,000 were hospitalized in Donora, Pennsylvania, population 14,000. Known as the Donora Smog, it was described as a killer fog that “dropped dogs and cats in their tracks”. · December 1952 Killer London Fog was also referred to as the smoke “that ran like water” immediately killed 4000 and is attributed to another 8000 deaths spanning to February 1953. A similar incident happens at Liege, Belgium in 1930. · 1956 saw the first recognized instance of Japan’s Minimata Disease: a poisoning of the central nervous system. By 1965 the disease had spread to the Agano river basin. It wasn’t until 1968 that an official opinion was made that the diseased was caused by the ingestion of a heavy metal compound called methyl mercury. The compound is a byproduct of the acetaldehyde manufacturing process and found its way into the fish and shell fish where the rivers spilled out into the ocean. Sea coast inhabitants of these watersheds were victims of the poison because sea food made up such a large part of their diet. The U.S. Government was slow to respond to the air borne pollution threat, but after a number of state and local governments reacted with legislation, Congress finally passed the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. This act really didn’t control anything at all; it was principally concerned with research funding and provided 5 million dollars a year for 5 years to study air pollution. This bill was extended by amendment in 1960 and given some teeth for enforcement in 1962. The clean air act of 1963 recognized the contribution of motor vehicle to air pollution as well as high sulfur coal; the sulfur, of course, contributing to the formation of acid rain, The Crisis of the 70s and 80s. It should be noted that concern for air pollution in the form of smoky fog, or smog dates back at least to the 1200s when the depleted forests could no longer provide sufficient supplies of fire wood. Londoners switched to light bituminous “sea coal”. Thus by the 1600s the city of London was known for its filthy “aer”. Over the centuries there had been several attempts to ban coal burning without success. Wood was just too expensive for the average Londoner. The name smog was coined in 1905. Environmentalism is Born Thus, there was good reason for common citizens to self organize in order to preserve forests, improve air quality, clean up polluted rivers, and protect vital fisheries. Interest in preserving California’s natural wonders extends back to the 1870s with John Muir’s spiritual attachment to the Yosemite Valley. Muir spent his days wandering the valley and sleeping wherever he found himself at the end of the day. Even in 1870s, visitors found their way to Yosemite and consequently Muir. It was not long before Muir’s writings about Yosemite and the Sierra Mountains could be read in the New York Tribune and other publications. So romantic were his descriptions and pleadings that California’s natural wonders be preserved, an aged Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Yosemite and Muir in 1871. However, it wasn’t this meeting with Emerson that would impact history. It was Muir’s acquaintance with a University of California professor, Joseph LeConte Sr. LeConte, Muir, along with J. Henry Senger founded the Sierra Club in 1892. There were 182 charter members. At its founding, the organization was envisioned as a kind of “alpine club” that would explore and make accessible the mountains of the Pacific Coast, lobby support for the preservation of the forests, lakes, and other physical attributes of the Sierra Nevada and to these ends publish information about these natural wonders. Thus, the Sierra Club came into being in order to educate, conserve, and recreate in the great outdoors. It is ironic that the Wilderness Project’s goal (to be explored later in this series) is to close off from human contact the same natural wonders that the Sierra Club sought to make accessible. It underlines the sea change today’s environmental movement has undergone in 111 years. Other environmental organizations came into being for specific causes:
Read over the above list carefully. Notice that the early organization names were indicative of their principle interest; protecting wildlife, forests, waterways or cleaning up the air. The later organization names are revealing of an interest in socio-political globalism. The above list, which is by no means complete, shows that environmental organization was mature and quite extensive by 1980. This gives them tremendous advantages in fund raising, manpower, and stature with the media. More importantly, the older groups have extended their influence from the local and national stage to that of the world by achieving formal recognition, in the guise of non-governmental organization, in their advisory capacity to the United Nations. The problem the globalists had was that there was no real global issue that would bring their international agenda to the forefront. Bio-diversity had been tried, as was maritime issues, with only limited success in gaining public support. Air pollution efforts were well along nationally but, in a perverse way, were actually improving air quality and so could not carry the movement to the next level: chrisis. Saving the whales and other ocean issues did capture a large part of the public’s imagination, but as an issue, kept the crisis literally out to sea. What was needed was a truly world-wide threat. The “greenhouse effect”, a term coined in 1911, would be a perfect issue for the globalists, if just the planet would cooperate and empirically show a warming trend. Unfortunately, temperature data had actually been showing a cooling trend since 1940 and the computer models showed less and less greenhouse warming as the algorithms were refined! Then suddenly, beginning in the late 1970s, the thermometer mercury changed direction and the earth began to show the warming trend environmentalists had so long hoped. Needless to say, they wasted no time taking up global warming as a crisis and CO2 reduction as the solution.
Thus far in this series, we have exposed some of the inconsistencies in the environmental movement and have traced the path from conservation to socio-political globalism. But just what do the globalists want? How can global warming be used to aid the radical socialist cause? We will explore these questions in the next installment. Part III - Just What Temperature Should The Planet Be? Environmentalists Seek So Much Authority Over Our Everyday Lives, Fears Are Rising That The Real Agenda Is All About Power And Control - By Perry Hicks Perry Hicks is a former Mississippi Coast resident and was a correspondent for the old Gulfport Star Journal. He has appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Perry has also hosted his own radio talk show on the auto industry with a mix of politics, and is a former Ford Motor Company technical trainer. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Automotive Technology at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. Contact the Author: royalenfieldcrusader@hotmail.com |
