David Solway writes (read it all here):

Al Gore is among the most prominent of the ever-swelling herd of GW parasites and hypocrites. Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, notes that Gore “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year” (Townhall.com., July 29, 2009. ) Gore is a partner in the venture capital investment firm Klein Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has recently floated a $500 million special fund for “green investments” from which Gore will profit handsomely—this is the same firm, incidentally, that is behind Terralliance, an “oil wildcatter,” which is about as nongreen as one can get (Fortune Magazine, Brainstorm 2008 and VentureBeat Clean Tech, July 16, 2008).

But it doesn’t stop there. According to several news outlets (The Tennessean, March 17, 2000, The Wall Street Journal for June 29, 2000 and March 19, 2007, USAToday, March 18, 2007, and many others), Gore earned $570,000 in royalties from Pasminco Ltd. for a highly toxic zinc mine on his property. Quantities of zinc, barium, arsenic, chromium, lead and trace amounts of cyanide were released into the adjacent Caney Fork River—which served as a backdrop to his film An Inconvenient Truth. The river and surroundings are plainly not “as pure as they came,” as Gore had insisted in his book Earth in the Balance that “the lakes and rivers [that] sustain us” should be.

There are also trace elements of pure insanity in Gore’s hypotheses. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009, Gore suggested that the Earth was heading toward Venus-type CO2 levels. American Congressmen are obviously not aware that the atmosphere of Venus is made up of 97% CO2 while that of the Earth is .038%. But Gore continues to be coddled by the powers of officialdom…

But what is most distressing is the corporate and government resolve to monetize what we might call “climate consciousness” and to impose its radical agenda for increased social control, with all the power and profits that pertain thereto, upon the unsuspecting public. The totalitarian mindset, in whatever form and at whatever stage in its evolution, is a monstrous thing, and Climatocracy is one of its most arresting contemporary manifestations. Global warming, said Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, “has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices” (Global Warming Politics, May 18, 2009). As Vaclav Klaus brooded in an article for the Financial Times (June 14, 2007), we might one day find ourselves living under a regime that would in many ways resemble the Communist nightmare from which half of Europe has only recently emerged.

How much longer will  people tolerate the Green dictatorship?  How much longer will we permit human sacrifice on the altar of Environmentalism, one of the most sentimental and stupid cults of all time?

Among their many cruel ukases,  the Green pontiffs ordain that corn be turned into an expensive fuel called Ethanol rather than let cheap fuel be pumped out of the earth and sea, because the pumping process might harm some beast of the field,  fowl of the air, or monster of the deep. The result? Multitudes in Africa go hungry.

And now the destruction of food in America, as explained in this report by Ben Shapiro at Townhall:

In December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America’s vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they’re still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead. All because the federal government thinks that smelt — tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish — are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered. As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, “it is the Service’s biological opinion [! an intelligent opinion would serve far better – JB] that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project … are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt.” In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt… The prices of staple foods will rise all over the country as farmers plow the sun-scorched crops into the ground.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on this tyrannous economic outrage:

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state’s water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year’s government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley’s water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state’s farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years…

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that would supply the delta with water, or “otherwise, they would be on.” He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a “God Squad” is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor’s request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a “severe drought” in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth…

It’s like a bizarre story of some crazy nation that Gulliver happed upon in the course of his astonishing travels!

Now in the US, as always  in socialist states, the many, for whom the collectivist and redistributionist policies are ostensibly enacted, suffer; while the few who hold the the reins of power benefit beyond the dreams of avarice.

Tait Trussell reports at Front Page Magazine:

President Obama is adept at rewarding those who put him into office. And hard-left financier George Soros is emerging as a leader of the patronage pack.

A payback to Soros was due. As the chief moneyman behind left-wing political action committees like MoveOn.org, Soros, an early supporter of Obama, played an instrumental role in drumming up voter mobilization and political advertising on the novice candidate’s behalf. In no small part, Obama’s triumph in the Democratic primary over better-known rivals was a testament to Soros’s deep pockets and his political commitment.

Now it’s time for Soros to collect on his investment. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration has committed up to $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance oil exploration off of Brazil’s coast… The company just happens to be the largest holding in Soros’s investment fund. Soros’s connection to the company is no secret; he has been investing in Petrobras since 2007. A profitable venture, Petrobras has estimated recoverable reserves for the so-called Tupi oil field of between 5 and 8 billion barrels. With his billion-dollar loan, Obama has taken patronage politics to striking new level… The president has elected to help another nation with the same type of drilling that he opposes so vehemently for this country, and the reason seems to be Soros’s $811-millon investment in Petrobras.

The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil, but it is a bad deal for the US. The administration is prepared to lend up to $10 billion to a foreign company to drill off its coast, when it could bring in $1.7 trillion in government revenue, as well as create thousands of new jobs, by allowing drilling off the coast of the United States.

This is no empty speculation. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that oil exploration in the U.S. could create 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, as well as $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state, and local governments, all while fostering greater energy security. Federal data from the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior says the U.S. has enough oil and natural gas to fuel more than 65 million cars for 60 years, and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years. In fact, the government estimates that there are 30 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil on federal lands currently closed to development. But rather than investing in the country’s energy future, the administration seems to be offering an expensive kickback to a political ally in a time of economic recession and high unemployment.

The oil deal stinks for other reasons, as well. For instance, there is the rank hypocrisy of Soros – an enthusiastic proponent of global warming theory and environmental liberalism – investing in the fossil fuels whose use he otherwise condemns – and doing so in part with the aid of taxpayer funds. For years, Soros has urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would punish companies that contribute to global warming. But that didn’t prevent him from plowing money into Petrobras…

With his backing for a billion-dollar oil loan to a Brazilian company, the president has proven more generous to Soros than to the American voters who put him in office.

The question of whether or not there is anthropomorphic global warming has decidedly not been settled, no matter how many scientists and politicians claim that it has.

The Freedom Society of  York University, England, is to hold a conference on climate change. One of the organizers is our British editor, Sam Westrop, founder of the Freedom Society,who writes this:

Thomas Jefferson once said that, “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” And so, with that quote in mind, and the understanding that scientific theories must be falsifiable, the Freedom Society is hosting ‘Climate Week’, a five-day event from the 26th to 30th October at the University of York.

The week will question the politics and ethics of climate change science… We do not know if anthropogenic climate change is occurring or not, but in order for us to draw a conclusion – especially as non-scientists – it is vital that the science be liberal, objective and untainted by political pressure…

There have been many examples of ‘scientific consensus’. A useful illustration is the former fear of Global Cooling that gained momentum in the 1960s. The first paragraph of a New York Times article, from 30th January 1961, entitled SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD IS COLDER; But Climate Experts Meeting Here Fail to Agree on Reasons for Change, read: “After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.“…

There are a growing number of cries that the IPCC has negated the traditional scientific method. The climatologist Roger Pielke, despite believing in anthropogenic climate change, has criticised the IPCC for its ill-gotten conclusions and has accused the scientific body of subjectively choosing data to support a selective view of climate change science…

Furthermore, the House of Lords Economics Committee has recently stated that, “We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.”

The IPCC has not just become a body of political scientists, but scientific politicians as well. These people’s professions have become adulterated with the idealism of environmental morality.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York brought to light the “absolute horror stories” about how some scientific journals and political bodies have engaged in the suppression of climate-sceptic scientists trying to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals. This conference included many afflicted current and former IPCC scientists from all over the globe.

The IPCC is not the only culprit … Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist at NASA, resigned because of the agency’s lack of scientific freedom.

Miskolczi said he wanted to publish and discuss his new research that showed “runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,” but he claims that NASA refused to allow him. He recently said that, “Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

A consensus in one branch of science does not mean a consensus across all branches. For example, a recent survey of 51,000 scientists in Canada from the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists found that 68% of them disagreed with the statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.” The survey also stated that only 26% of scientists attributed global warming to “human activity such as burning fossil fuels.” …

It becomes only too apparent that there is a desperate need for …  free debate, given the drastic choices that Governments are prepared to make. Whether such decisions involve the complete overhaul of our energy sources, or the (ethically questionable) prevention of industrialisation in developing countries, the need to end scientific censorship is vitally important…

The University of York Freedom Society’s ‘Climate Week’ will not try to cover the complicated and vast subject of the science itself; instead it will highlight the dangers of academic suppression and weigh the ethical questions involved when dealing with such proscription. …

Climate Week will see many scientists, politicians, journalists and environmentalists, from all over Europe and ever further afield, come together for the first time in the UK …

It promises to be an interesting event, where debate will be lively.

A little brightness on the time horizon is discerned by Mark Steyn, the wittiest writer in the West – or anywhere. He foresees that  liberal environmentalists  may be a dying breed. (Read it all.)

Perhaps the environmentalists are right, and the best way to preserve the planet for the next generation is not to have a next generation. But somebody will. Germany’s Turkish Muslims drink less beer than their Teuton compatriots, but is their carbon footprint otherwise significantly different? I would doubt it. The British Medical Journal’s rebuke of English motherhood is already unnecessary: Britain has a below-replacement fertility rate; its population increase depends entirely on immigrants and their children. If Scots and Ulstermen and the like are despoiling the planet, you can tie their tubes. But their place in the maternity ward will be taken by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and even some virtuous Ethiopians: As Europe already knows, no matter how fast you self-extinguish, First World infrastructure does not stay empty. Ethiopia comes to you: Abyssinia in all the old familiar places.

As I usually say around this point, the future belongs to those who show up for it. The Germans, Italians and Spaniards have upside-down family trees of the type the biens pensants are commending to the Anglo-Americans. But a people without grandchildren cannot grandfather in their environmental fetishism for all eternity. The health of the planet will be determined by those who stick around – like the Ethopians. I’m chary about predictions but I’d be willing to bet that by the end of this century the anguished western liberal environmentalist will be on the endangered species list.

From The Washington Times:

The House-passed climate change bill, if enacted, would expand the federal government so much that it would take billions of dollars and thousands of new employees to implement.

Now-obscure federal agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would have to become mini-behemoths in order to handle their expanded responsibilities. Congress would have to appropriate billions of dollars for more bureaucrats, much of which is not reflected in the House bill…

The [Commodities Futures Trading] commission, which would police the new futures market for allowances, apparently would need to expand its work force by at least 31 percent initially to fulfill its obligations under the bill. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which would oversee the day-to-day trading of allowances, has estimated that it would have to expand by 20 percent or 30 percent.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which would oversee pollution regulation, also would balloon in size…

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the government’s expansion would cost $8 billion over a 10-year period. For the bill to operate effectively, nearly 1,500 regulations and mandates would have to be approved for at least 21 federal agencies. The rule-making process alone would take years.

And all to avert an imaginary disaster?

From an article by Alan Oxley in Investor’s Business Daily:

Environmental NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) Greenpeace and Worldwide Fund for Nature have just released the “NGO Climate Change Treaty.” It’s their wish list for terms of a treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol, and they’re pushing it this week at a U.N. meeting in Bonn, Germany.

Environmental activists have always believed governments should put the environment ahead of every other issue, including economic growth. The NGO Treaty is a blueprint for this.

In addition to soliciting the same sort of tough emissions targets they’ve demanded in the past, this latest document maps out a strict plan to restructure the global economy into their “Brave New World.” Yet it reads like an old Soviet 20-year plan.

The negotiators who inked the original Kyoto treaty envisaged that the agreement would create an open global market for emissions trading which would efficiently distribute the cost of reducing emissions among the world’s economies.

Under the NGO plan, a form of global government supplants national sovereignty, and a central committee of international officials allocates the proceeds from the sale of carbon emission, not the market. The activists lay out, in no uncertain terms, just who should bear the costs and how high those costs should be.

Worldwide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace also want industry in developed nations to pay $160 billion every year for the first five years. Their Treaty creates a “Committee” of backroom officials selected from parties to the Treaty which approves a plan by each member to reduce emissions.

If the plans are deemed unacceptable, countries would be forced to go before two other regulating bodies (the Facilitation Branch and then the Compliance Branch) to “correct” their strategies or be penalized for not doing so.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, demands world-wide redistribution of wealth and the curbing of economic activity in order to ‘save the planet’ from poverty, hunger, disease, and insecurity. This must be done within four months he says, or  else…

We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.

Any agreement must be fair, effective, equitable and comprehensive, and based on science. And it must help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change…

The science is clear… What is needed is the political will. We have the capacity. We have finance. We have the technology. The largest lacking is political will. That is why I will convey some meetings focused on climate change. I have invited all the leaders of the world … Two years ago, only a handful of world leaders could talk about climate change. Today, leaders of all the world, all the countries on every continent are aware of the threats we face now. This is great progress, for we need leadership of the very highest order. Awareness is the first step. The challenge now is to act. Since my first day as Secretary-General, I have spoken out about the grave climate change threat. My words, at times, have been blunt. When the leaders of the G-8 agreed in July to keep the global temperature increase within two degrees centigrade by the year 2050, that was welcomed and I welcome that statement. But I also said again, it was not enough. But leaders have agreed to cut green house gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. That is welcomed again. But that must be accompanied by the ambitious mid-term target by 2020 as science tells us to do. There I said, while I applaud their commitment, that is not enough. I called for matching these long-term goals with ambitious mid-term emission reduction targets.

Let me be clear about what we need to do.

There are four points [of] very important key political issues.

First industrialized countries must lead by committing to binding mid-term reduction targets on the order of 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels. Unfortunately, the mid-term emission targets announced so far are not close enough to this range…

Second, developing countries need to take nationally appropriate mitigation actions in order to reduce the growth in their emissions substantially below business as usual…

Third, developed countries must provide sufficient, measurable, reportable and verifiable financial and technological support to developing countries… Significant resources will be needed from both public and private sources. Developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, will collectively need billions of dollars in public financing for adaptation. I am talking here about new money – not re-packaged Official Development Assistance…

Fourth, we need an equitable and accountable mechanism for distributing these financial and technological resources, taking into account the views of all countries in decision-making.

Accomplishing all of this requires tough decisions. It will take flexibility and hard work to negotiate the most difficult issues. Trust between developed and developing countries is essential. When governments succeed in sealing a deal in Copenhagen, we will have shown the spirit of international solidarity. We will have shown leadership – political will…

Roll on, Copenhagen. Only, while they’re at it, why don’t they agree to make gold out of moonbeams? The science is clear.

Some years ago the Marxist-Leninists councillors who ruled the London Borough of Islington came up with an idea for getting rid of the rats that infested alleys, sewers, yards, dustbins, and the darker corners of unmodernized houses: they would pay the sum of one pound  for every dead rat brought to a certain council address. In  the wink of an eye, thousands of basements, garages, garden-sheds and even corners of kitchens and living-rooms were turned into rat-farms. Barrow-loads, car-loads, truckloads of dead rats were delivered day after day to the collection point. It took the brilliant brains of the council chamber weeks to realize what was happening and withdraw the offer.  They had not suspected that the spirit of free enterprise was still alive in the red borough.

This weekend in the pleasant American town where we sit and blog, signs are appearing on the windshields of hundreds – perhaps thousands – of older cars parked in the streets, in driveways, and even in open garages. They are offers to buy the vehicles. If the owners haven’t had the sense to exchange them for $4,500 and a new car under the Democrats’ cash-for-clunkers scheme, there are those who will.

It’s fun to watch the left encouraging entrepreneurship out of sheer stupidity.

Robert Murphy, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, writes in Townhall on the cash-for-clunkers scheme:

Every dollar the government spends comes from either taxes, borrowing, or inflation. In all cases, the citizens are ultimately paying for it. You don’t make the country wealthier by taking money from some citizens and giving it to others so that they can buy a car that’s too expensive for their budget…

It is because of government meddling that this recession has been so long and so painful. It is no coincidence that the two periods of the biggest power grabs in Washington—the 1930s and right now—coincided with the worst economies in U.S. history. Having the feds borrow a few more billion, to pay people to buy cars, does nothing to alleviate the underlying problems. The economy can’t return to normal when every business decision needs to consider what politicians might announce next week…

The cash-for-clunkers plan is a giant waste of tax dollars. It further distorts the economy, making industry even more vulnerable to the changing whims of D.C. politicians. To add insult to injury, the alleged environmental benefits are minimal. The only virtue of the program is that it steers billions of dollars into the pockets of those with friends in high places.