Every day, the Liberal American education system teaches about the global warming ‘crisis.’ Recently, a student friend of mine was presented with a 115 item list of things he could do to help ‘save’ the environment. Here are a few gems:

1. Use cloth diapers. Wonderful – now, instead of throwing away my baby’s diapers, I can wash ’em and reuse ’em. Welcome to 40 years ago.
2. Invest in well-made, functional clothing. Saving our environment, one pair of used overalls at a time.
3. Explore and learn about your community. I don’t stalk and am not a peeping Tom.
4. Learn where your waste and sewage goes. Yes, the journey of poop is a thrilling one. Tell it to be home by 11:00 PM!
5. Research socially responsible investments. Remember to kiss your money goodbye.
6. “Adopt a grandparent” from the local senior center. That’ll annoy the old chap.
7. Following on from the item above: volunteer to cook for senior citizens.
8. Sponsor a clothes swap. I hope that the clothes swapped are ‘well-made and functional.’
9. Educate yourself on global and ‘third world’ (their quotes) issues. May I suggest tyranny, mass murder, slavery, and starvation?
10. Spend time visualizing world peace. I can’t, can you?
11. Vote for candidates who support Green values. Is that a Liberal I smell?
12. Put toxic substances out of reach of children. Because children could potentially damage the environment once they enjoy a quick shot of Drano.
13. Communicate openly with your friends and coworkers. Gather ’round the water cooler for a heart-to-heart chat.
14. Work to unlearn cultural sexism and racism. Because everyone is sexist and racist. Except the racists, of course.
15. Ecotourism and ecoconsumerism. Yes, let’s enjoy two things that don’t even exist.
16. Decrease TV watching and increase creative learning. It’s been proven: sitting in front of a TV produces over 7 tons of CO2 per HOUR. Creative learning on the other hand, produces only 4 (or less if you buy carbon credits).

The packet ends with ‘have fun and be joyful.’ This to me is an invitation to get into my Hummer, put it in park, and hold the gas pedal down for a good twenty minutes. Nothing feels quite as good as a V8 revving up.

Have any of our readers encountered such Green ‘advice?’ Please tell us about it; it’s very entertaining.

 AP reports: 

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that … the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state. "No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study’s authors said.

This means that 85% of the people of the United States are religious. But does ‘being religious’ necessarily mean ‘believing in God’? Many attend church out of habit, as part of the pattern of their social lives, and feel no need to question philosophically the beliefs that their church is founded on. Some do question them, and are convinced if secret atheists, but still adhere to this or that ancestral religion for the sake of continuity. This is charade rather than hypocrisy, and if it makes for goodwill, neighborliness, and a general pleasantness of life, it cannot be a bad thing.

It is the new religion of Environmentalism, the belief in Anthropogenic Global Warming, that is the dangerous one now. Its devotees strive for totalitarian power to change the way we live, to make us poorer and take away our freedom.

 A report from Chad:

N’DJAMENA, 16 January 2009 (IRIN) – A government ban on charcoal in the Chadian capital N’djamena has created what one observer called “explosive” conditions as families desperately seek the means to cook. 

“As we speak women and children are on the outskirts of N’djamena scavenging for dead branches, cow dung or the occasional scrap of charcoal,” Merlin Totinon Nguébétan of the UN Human Settlements Programme (HABITAT) in Chad, told IRIN from the capital. “People cannot cook.” …

Unions and other civil society groups say the government failed to prepare the population or make alternative household fuels available when it halted all transport of charcoal and cooking wood into the capital in December in a move, officials said, to protect the environment. 

 Here’s a delicious article by Burt Prelutsky (from Townhall):

By this time, I don’t think it will shock anyone if I come right out and admit that I’m not a bleeding heart. When I read about a lava flow or an earthquake taking 500 theoretically innocent lives on the other side of the world, my first reaction is to ask myself if I knew anyone who might be visiting Sumatra or Mongolia. If the answer is no, my second reaction is to get on with my life.

There are, I’m well aware, many nicer, kinder people around – the sort of folks who immediately organize collection drives, so that blankets, canned goods and medical supplies, can be rushed to the survivors. Quite honestly, that would never even occur to me. In fact, when the giant tsunami hit Indonesia a while back, my initial thought was that, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, God was sending a long overdue message to a part of the world where the child sex trade is a major industry.

I do have a hunch, though, that a lot of the same people who are always ready to provide pajamas and peanut butter to people they don’t know are the same ones who hold candlelight vigils outside prisons when serial killers are being executed. Whenever I see them huddled outside in the cold, looking as if they’re posing for stained glass windows, I always find myself wondering how they treat their spouses and their kids when they pack up their candles and go back home.

All that being said, it should come as no big surprise when I confess that I am not in line to receive awards from the ecological zealots. That’s not to suggest that I wouldn’t offer bounties for the hides of spray-painting vandals (aka taggers, graffiti artists, public nuisances). But I certainly wouldn’t ban cigarette smoking in the great outdoors or even in bars and restaurants if the owners wish to encourage that sort of thing. If you don’t like cigarette smoke getting in your eyes, lungs or clothing, you eat, drink and get a job someplace else. If rolling out the red carpet to smokers is a really lousy idea, the place will go out of business. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a free society.

Something else I find irksome is the constant moaning over endangered species. I recently read an article that claimed the earth has gone through four major periods of mass extinctions. About 440 million years ago, give or take a month or so, 85% of marine animal species were wiped out. Roughly 70 million years later, many species of fish and marine invertebrates perished. Then, 245 million years ago, another major extinction of sea and land creatures took place. Finally, a mere 65 million years ago, 75% of all species – including dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers – took French leave. The causes of these massive upheavals have been attributed to volcanic eruptions, huge meteorites and climatic changes which obviously had nothing to do with human beings or the internal combustion engine.

When I read about all those species vanishing from the face of the earth, my immediate reaction is “So what?” But after due deliberation, my response changes from one of mild disinterest to one of jubilation. Imagine if every single time you went outside to collect your newspaper, you had to fight a tyrannosaur for it or had to worry that a pterodactyl was going to swoop down because its idea of fast food is you.

Apparently, there are presently 10 million different species of animal life on earth. Even though, according to this article I read, only a small percent of all animal life has been evaluated, the ecologists estimate that 750 species of fish, 290 species of reptiles and 150 species of amphibians, are currently at risk.

Inasmuch as dogs, cats, horses, llamas, bunnies, cows and guinea pigs, aren’t on the list, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn. I mean, how many different kinds of reptiles does anyone need to be really, truly happy?

Thanks to Al Gore and his motley crew, I’m willing to wager that a lot of you suddenly flashed on a mental image of a polar bear going down for the third time. My question is, who cares if polar bears disappeared once and for all? The truth of the matter is that nobody would really miss the vicious brutes. And, what’s more, baby seals would throw a party. 

 George Will asks:  

There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today’s politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, "saving the planet," and promising edicts to "require" entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign’s scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: "Where’s the outrage?" This year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?

Read his whole article on Obama’s airy-fairy, rather puerile promises and what they’d cost the tax-payer here.  

 … the US Navy must give up its training exercises. 

This story would be hard to believe if we were not already aware of the degree of idiocy some judges are capable of. 

Here is the nasty truth about the environmentalists.