Josh First's Blog

Earth Day Myths

Earth Day…talk about climate change, the climate and meaning of this ‘hippie holiday’ has really changed since it was first declared. What began as a plea for help and attention as so American rivers were so polluted that when the Cuyahoga caught on fire, it was only slightly more fascinating than the huge fish kills in the lower Hudson, is today a sort of Mother Earth May Day Against Capitalism. Gone are the clear lines in the sand that modern industrialization had gone too far with its pipelines dripping green goo direct from factory floor work aprons to the local waterway. Now, today, Earth Day is not about fixing polluted waterways, but about “fixing” capitalism to death.

Somehow the people pushing this attack are conveniently forgetful that the greatest industrial pollution has occurred not under capitalist markets, but under rigid authoritarian socialist governments. But people like me are not forgetful, because to forget is to see freedom dry up and vanish; capitalism is fundamentally about human freedom and choice. Socialism being “green” is a myth, because socialism is never about choices, like the choice to be free of pollution. Rather, socialism is about top-down control and coerced obedience, at any cost. And in Russia and China, the environment was the very first thing to be sacrificed for industrial mass production.

Here are two big Earth Day-related myths.

Myth Number One: Environmental Groups are About Environmental Quality. Sorry, hate to say it, but most so-called environmental groups today are not about the environment or protecting environmental quality. Rather, most environmental advocacy groups are politically partisan about implementing socialism, and attacking capitalism, and the environmental issues they talk about are just one pathway. Have you ever seen an environmental group criticize Democrat Party officials? Like really get after them and hound them.

Nope, not like they demonize Republicans.

Some years ago, Pennsylvania had a Democrat governor, Ed Rendell. Like all good liberals, Rendell could not stay away from money to buy votes with, and so he dropped the natural gas drilling bomb on Pennsylvania public lands. Environmental groups were silent as our state forests went from quiet hinterlands to super industrialized moonscapes in just months. Crickets chirped and not a human voice was raised in opposition to this huge damage to our public lands.

However, literally the day Rendell’s successor took office, Penn Future and other environmental advocacy groups were out in force at the Capitol with bullhorns proclaiming Tom Corbett to be “Governor Corporate,” because of his supposed unhealthy commitment to….natural gas drilling. The guy hadn’t been governor for one minute and already the supposed green groups that had looked the other way while Pennsylvania public lands were criss-crossed with pipelines and drilling rigs were proclaiming him the environmental anti-Christ. Corbett had made zero decisions about drilling on Pennsylvania public lands, but because he was a Republican and Rendell a Democrat, the supposed environmental groups lined up and attacked Corbett and protected Rendell.

So don’t be fooled; the environmental groups are not so much about the natural environment as they are about shaping the political environment inside the US Capitol and state capitols around America. They are mostly fakes. I give land trusts and conservancies credit for actually doing real environmental work, but even they have become infected with the PC buzzwords and partisan political nonsense to the point where their credibility is often at stake.

Myth Number Two: Climate Change is About Environmental Quality. Human-caused climate change, as it is propounded by the various bullies supposedly expert in it, is based only on really lousy computer models and scanty data at best, faked data at worst. Other than these two weak legs, the notion of human-caused climate change stands on literally nothing. The climate change movement has been riven with scandals (East Anglia University, my alma mater Penn State’s Michael Mann etc) and scientists who are facile about jumping back and forth over lines separating science and policy and politics. These scientists decided the cash was greener on the side of climate alarmism, and so they went with the corporate foundation money.

Earth’s climate is changing. It has always changed. Volcanos, huge storms, meteors, tectonic shifts, glaciers advancing and receding and advancing again without any human intervention…Planet Earth is a really dynamic place. Its climate is a product of all kinds of factors, most of which are outside human control. But this reality does not diminish climate change’s usefulness as a vehicle for advancing big government totalitarianism.

My main objection to human-caused climate change alarmism isn’t so much that it is obviously and shamefully fake, or even that it is another evil effort to destroy democracy and gain absolute control over free people. Rather, climate change alarmism detracts from the very real and potentially solvable problems of invasive species, ocean overfishing, surface water pollution, forest fragmentation, farmland loss, and other actual, verified environmental issues. That are not as sexy as the climate sky is falling message. Fake climate change casts its pall over all real environmental issues, and undermines their claim on people’s attention.

If the conservative movement is overly skeptical about environmental anything, to the point where deriding even real environmental issues has become its own form of conservative political correctness, it is because the very fake environmental advocacy groups gave up their integrity and believability, by polluting real environmental issues with fake climate change nonsense. Their adherence to evil climate change religion did it.

As scary media-creation child activist Greta Thunberg admitted, climate change isn’t really about the environment; it is about gaining political control and force-implementing socialism and changing a whole array of policies in Western Civilization, at great cost, while China, India and Pakistan move forward with their gushing pollution-based economies, at no cost.

What kind of normal job-holding American can really get on board with that?