Monday, November 17, 2008

Have An Abortion For The Environments Sake!

Many of you who know me know that I watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” read the summary to the U.N. report on human factors on Climate Change and it pretty well freaked me out more than any movie I had seen come out of Hollywood for the last, well, for my entire life. I am sure this is because “An Inconvenient Truth” was meant to freak us out into action. Because of that reason alone, assuming a good cause at the back end, I was willing to endure a little alarmism created to call us to action. As long as the majority of facts are right, then I will give the claims the benefit of the doubt. Right? Who wants to damage the planet for lazy selfish reasons, right? How in the world does anyone benefit from saving the planet, except for the obvious benefit of, well, saving our planet, right!?

Since that time I watched a few documentaries on climate change from the antagonists perspective, challenging not the concept of global climate change, but the science about human factors versus other factors. There were a few videos out of the U.K. on the origins of human “CO2” contributions arguments. I watched a few national geographic videos and read NASA studies.

Why would I do this!? (You might ask) If all of our best scientists are declaring the threat (are they all? Who's on that list? Are they the best? Who isn't on that list?), why waste time reading up on it especially from an antagonist’s perspective rather than just doing stuff to help? In a word, marketing! A short while back I wrote about the concept of “greenwashing,” which in quick summary is the act of a company (or politician or government) “marketing” various ideas about how environmentally responsible their goals / products / taxes are and will positively affect this need to save our planet. The problem, it seems to me, is that “going green” is expensive, but more importantly all efforts to “go green” aren’t close to equal. Some efforts are completely effective and helpful and responsible while some are nothing short of snake oil being sold to an attentive public!

What I find is that non-alarmist global warming science reading has helped me to see and understand global warming better (not completely, only better), but at the same time helps me differentiate between the science of global climate change and the mythical fog that has descended on the topic of human causes of global warming. This is important if we as individuals are going to do the responsible thing and be good stewards of our planet.

Back to marketing. I mention marketing because of the first paragraph above. If I am going to be fair then I want to know if and where the benefits of fighting human causes of global warming rest. If a car company claims that they are environmentally more responsible than their competition because they make their seat cushions out of soy-based foams, I have to examine the enviro-benefit of driving a car that was manufactured in an eco-responsible manner versus are car with a smaller carbon footprint over the life of the car. It is less about “costing me more right now” and rather “costing all of us and the planet more in the long run.” But this isn’t easy to determine by reading a short three page article in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine (are they still around?) It takes a real investment. “Going green” isn’t about ideologically joining the “green club” but rather doing our part where it matters: less what we say (greenwash) and more about what we do (go green). Some might argue that being a proponent is at least an investment in the right direction. I completely disagree. It is literally no investment, to do nothing but just talk about it.

Recently I noticed a book at a local Border’s Bookstore and so I picked it up. The title was “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmist Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.” Again, this is an antagonistic book that helps to divide that line between real climate science and the foggy myth that creates unscientific momentum around human causes of global warming (for whatever reason.) I bought the book and am patiently reading through it. Responsibly enough, it contains analysis and appropriate references scattered throughout that validate its various points. It is a short history of the handling of the topic and anyone who wants to be educated on this topic would find this book to be a great reference for drawing a line between what is worth paying attention to and what is just alarmist.

This is the part where many bloggers would write stuff about propaganda of leftist media, but I don’t think the author (or I) believes that the media is so well organized or ideologically in tuned to a single well managed conspiracy. No. Rather I think that journalists and politicians are generally not well educated on environmental science and skim one report on a topic, highlighted by someone else for them, and then they perpetuate some new under-analyzed misunderstood perspective that gets even more distorted down the foodchain. This, coupled with watchdog groups (outlined in the book) that keep the climate change momentum spinning at full velocity by regularly contesting reports and statements that don’t seem alarmist enough (great examples in the book) keeps the public generally misinformed about not only the facts, but misinformed as to what we can truly do to help.

I think we generally want to help. My guess would be that if we were to ask a perfect stranger on the street, “If you could be given 5 proven things to do that would make a good contribution to doing your part to be a responsible steward of the planet, would you do it?” my guess is that most individuals would say “Sure.” Here lies the problem. The government seems to be the new clearinghouse on this information and what they are promoting is incredibly close to a greenwash. Let’s take an example that is very close to my heart. The global greenwashing of abortion.

First read this transcript from a TV news talkshow:
http://tinyurl.com/5cme9d

This is the author of the book I am reading. He shares that the world via the United Nations is already deciding how to hand out carbon credits. (The basic idea here has to do with “cap and trade”, meaning that countries will agree to put a cap on country-based carbon emissions and then if they exceed that cap as a country, then they can buy the right to “pollute” by purchasing carbon credits from a country that is doing so well that they have a surplus of positive carbon credits.) In this discussion the book author explains that China is likely being offered additional carbon credits because they are willing to “cap” their population (via abortion) and as a result would then have a smaller carbon footprint as a country because they are killing all of these future-people who would likely increase the carbon footprint. China argued for this, and European members of the Kyoto agreement along with the U.N. all agreed that China should get carbon credits because they are killing future polluters. So, in summary, population control is now a significant activity in reducing human factors for climate change enough that the U.N. is ready to cut virtual checks if countries endorse this sort of population control. What? So abortion is eco-responsible? Please! This is getting ridiculous and absurd. Did I mention that the U.N. is already implementing carbon taxes on a global scale and that America is already in debt to the U.N. in the billions of dollars at this point (remember that we get no say in how that money is spent… will it benefit the environment really?)

It seems clear to me that the government is little to no help in solving eco-responsibility issues outside of very local governments (i.e. your personal community government protecting the planet through local legislation that specifically targets unquestionably harmful behavior.) It seems that we will have to educate ourselves and “bailout” the government from their crazy solutions by getting involved locally and federally AND if we are going to save the planet, then we have to do it. Creating a new global-abortion-market-for-eco-credits is just a crazy notion and we have to save ourselves both from our politicians as well as save the planet as a result of this offensive line of thinking.

For those of you who advocate for pro-choice ideals or at least are not completely in agreement with me about the genocide that is abortion, consider the idea that when the U.N. creates this kind of eco-incentive that it isn’t happening in a vacuum. The U.N. Millenium agenda also outlines on-demand abortion as a part of their defense of woman (something Mexico is being harassed about by U.N. because their predominantly Catholic population doesn’t favor promoting on-demand abortion.) Put the two of these ideas together and (here comes a prediction) abortion could become less about “choice” in America and more about eco-responsible population control via abortion (once the U.S. demands the U.N. gives us our carbon credits for the 50,000,000 babies we have killed via abortion since 1973.) Abortion could become the next eco-fundraiser. If we can’t stop polluting, then maybe we can offset our carbon deficit by up-ing our abortion head count? The thought makes me sick!

Back on point. The book is not about abortion. That was just my personal rant. In any case, go buy the book and educate yourself. If you have ideas about how to “go green” in legitimate ways, I recommend writing those ideas here by making some comments or sending me emails. I will take a moment to blog out some of our ideas!

3 comments:

True Conservative said...

A well thought out commentary. It begs the question, why is President Obama so interested in supplying abortions around the world by executive order. Why did Nancy Polosi, responding to criticism, state "We will save our economy through family planning." I believe there is a plan already in the works to "catch up" to China's policy and grab a few of those abortion credits ourselves.

Bhaskaran said...

Hi Steve,

I too saw Inconvinient truth and was overwhelmed.

I was wondering why nothing is being done by the politicians.

China is a great culprit.

Now this Carbon purchasing credits have taken place.


All people who are simply adding to Global warming has to be at least punished so that they know what they are doing.

There are some who contribute to global warming out of neccessity and they can offset it by buying carbon credits.

Carbon offsets aim to neutralize the amount of Co2 emissions contribution by funding projects which should cause an equal reduction of emissions somewhere else, such as tree planting. Under the premise, first reduce what you can, then offset the remainder, offsetting can be done by supporting a responsible carbon project, or by buying carbon credits.

http://www.carbonadvicegroup.com/uk/index.php?affiliateid=1024

Thank you.
Bhaskaran

steve@enginpost said...

@odbhaskaran - No need to freak out at "An Inconvenient Truth." The most critical science associated with that presentation has been proven either to be non-scientific (falsified data) or the models used to "predict" future problems have been proven wrong (do a google search on "hockey stick graph problem".) The "inconvenient truth" about AGW political solutions is a sham to simply redistribute global wealth. Case and Point: Purchasing carbon offsets is neither regulated nor proven to offset atmospheric carbon distribution. Name one group that is truly monitoring and managing offsets? There isn't one. There are group selling the snake-oil that is offsets, but most of the offsetting and alternative energy technologies are still so infantile that their development efforts are barely offset by their carbon footprint. Carbon is the most prevalent element in our galaxy. The "truth" is that UN has now convinced us to simply tax the most commonly available material. What next? An Air tax? A water tax? Cows produce more CO2 than to automobiles!!! We need to stop drinking the cool-aide and focus on helping real people with real problems.