RICH TRZUPEK REVIEW AND INTERVIEW WITH RALE JEAN ISAAC, AUTHOR OF “ROOSTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE”
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11758/pub_detail.asp
Exploding the Myth Eco-Puritanism Is Harmless Rich Trzupek
“All and all, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read. The chapter entitled “A Climate Rooster Becomes President” should be required reading for every voter. Isaac outlines President Obama’s multi-pronged, all-out war on fossil fuels, which is sure to continue to have serious economic repercussions far into the future. Still, she remains hopeful that the wave of this particular apocalyptic movement has already crested. Indeed, fewer and fewer Americans profess to worried about man-made climate change every year. “Roosters of the Apocalypse” explains why.”
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World, is available from the Heartland Institute.
One of the difficulties inherent to combatting the excesses of environmental activists is that their message sounds so innocuous on the surface. Who can be against a cleaner world? How can anyone not want to protect the wonders of nature? And, if the green crowd may take things a tad too far at times, what’s the harm? After all, better safe than sorry, right?
Author Rael Jean Isaac explodes the myth that eco-puritanism is harmless in her new book Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World, published by the Heartland Institute. It’s a devastating take-down of the excesses of the environmental movement past and present, in the form of a well-reasoned, easy to digest analysis that packs equal parts reason and entertainment into a surprisingly compact package.
Isaac uses the tragedy of South Africa’s Xhosa tribe as the backdrop for her tale. In 1856 the Xhosa willingly destroyed their own economy, killing half a million cattle, destroying grain stores and ceasing to plant new crops. After a year tens of thousands of Xhosa – about a third of the population – had starved to death before British authorities intervened. Why would a society willingly destroy itself? Isaac explains why:
“The Xhosa had acted on the prophecy of a 15-year-old girl who promised that if they destroyed all they had and purified themselves of “witchcraft” (including evil inclinations and selfishness), the world before the white invaders came would be restored; The British oppressors would flee, and the Xhosa ancestors would return, bringing with them an even greater abundance of cattle and grain.”
Some of the parallels between the Xhosa tragedy and modern-day global warming alarmism are striking. For example, Isaac points out how both are essentially matters of faith, not science. As real-world evidence that challenged the young-lady’s prophecies mounted (for the tribes ancestors surprisingly failed to re-appear leading a ghostly cattle drive) true believers doubled down in their commitment to the cause. So it is today with alarmist crowd. The more actual data continues to diverge from alarmist predictions, the more intransigent alarmists become.
Just as cattle and grain were the life-blood of the 19th century Xhosa economy, fossil fuels have powered the engine that has driven western economies to higher and higher levels of prosperity for over one hundred years. By demanding that we voluntarily abandon the use of fossil fuels and have faith that some other form of cheap, abundant energy will magically appear, environmentalists would lead us down the same kind of self-destructive path as the Xhosa.
Isaac ties in Boston University historian Richard Landes work Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience, persuasively arguing that global warming alarmism displays virtually all of the characteristics common to apocalyptic movements that Landes describes. Such movements pit two groups against each other, according to Landes: “roosters” who try to whip up panic and hysteria among the populace by any means possible, and “owls” who calmly appeal to sound reasoning. Isaac goes on to describe how roosters cannot abide the existence of owls, no matter how many or how few in the latter group. She writes:
“As the ancestors failed to appear and the Xhosa believers began to starve, they blamed the stubborn owls who had kept their cattle. Arguing it was their disbelief that delayed the return of the ancestors, they believers began to kill the cattle of those they called the amagogotya, the selfish hard ones, those who “eat alone.”
In the global warming apocalypse, every effort is made to banish climate change owls, no matter how distinguished their scientific record, to the outer fringe. The owls are flat-earthers, patsies for big oil, “deniers” (as in Holocaust deniers), analogous to racists (Al Gore’s contribution), “people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder” (this from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). James Hansen says CEOs of fossil energy companies should be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”
All and all, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read. The chapter entitled “A Climate Rooster Becomes President” should be required reading for every voter. Isaac outlines President Obama’s multi-pronged, all-out war on fossil fuels, which is sure to continue to have serious economic repercussions far into the future. Still, she remains hopeful that the wave of this particular apocalyptic movement has already crested. Indeed, fewer and fewer Americans profess to worried about man-made climate change every year. “Roosters of the Apocalypse” explains why.
1) In the book, you say that the apocalyptic wave of global warming alarmism is receding in scientific circles and may be doing so in the public and policy spheres. But, with so much money at stake, the climate change crowd isn’t going to go quietly. How do you think they are going to change their message in order to try to stem the tide?
RJI: They’ve already changed their message–from global warming to climate change. Global warming is at least a scientific theory subject to disproof. According to the theory, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions raises the earth’s temperature leading to increased water vapor in the atmosphere making the temperature rise further (so-called positive feedback). Most people don’t realize the real villain in the global warming scenario is water vapor–perhaps even to the global warming crowd, it sounds too silly to say we have to regulate water vapor. If the computer models are wrong about the extent of feedback, as already seems clear–for the last decade the global temperature has been stable, even as carbon dioxide emissions have gone up sharply–the theory is in trouble. On the other hand, climate change is not a scientific theory; it’s a constant in world history. Under the rubric of “climate change” every instance of “extreme weather”, from tsunamis to tornadoes, can be laid at the door of man’s “carbon footprint.”
And if “climate change” starts to make people roll their eyes, as Senator Kerry recently complained was the case even among his Democratic colleagues, the climate change crowd can change the rhetoric entirely–switch, as some are already doing, to “energy independence.” If we rely almost exclusively on sun, wind and algae we won’t need Middle East oil. Trouble is, we won’t have a functioning economy either.2) Senator John Kerry recently acknowledged what you pointed out in your book: the United States has been and is reducing Greenhouse Gas emissions. Kerry bemoaned the fact that those reductions are happening as the result of state and regional initiatives rather than through a federal program because – according to him – unless the federal government “places a value on carbon” they’ll never be able to “cash in” on those reductions. How typical do you think that rather cynical thought process is among the various breeds of roosters?
RJI: I think it’s hard to separate out altruistic from venal motives. Leaders in the global warming movement will see themselves as doing well by doing good. Al Gore is the most obvious example, with his heavy investment in renewable projects, including carbon pricing. While some might see this as profiting from global warming hysteria, he calls it putting his money where his mouth is.
Clearly there’s a lot of money to be made from cap and trade programs and that would apply to state and regional programs as well. The former head of the Chicago Climate Exchange predicted in a 2009 interview that carbon dioxide would become the largest commodity traded in the world market. Not oil, not gold, not copper, but carbon dioxide credits, which have an intrinsic value of zero. Their only value comes from government legislation rationing emissions. And even if prominent roosters have the highest motives, sooner rather than later, cashing in on carbon is going to provide a field day for crooks. Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, estimates as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades involves fraudulent activity. Such trading is highly susceptible to fraud because it’s complex and it’s often not even clear what’s being traded.
Regional initiatives by the way are a backdoor way of instituting the same practices the federal government has fortunately thus far failed to pass into law. Twenty nine states now have renewable energy mandates that require utilities to purchase a certain proportion of their electricity from renewables. Consumers in those states pay more without knowing why. That’s because their monthly utility bill doesn’t separate out what they are paying for fossil fuels from what they are paying for sun and wind. Consumers should be demanding a breakdown in their bill, particularly since under these mandates the proportion of renewables they must pay for goes up from year to year–as will their electricity bills.
3) Even though polls clearly show that fewer and fewer Americans believe that anthropogenic global warming is a threat each year, the Obama administration has carried out its promise to make it too expensive to build any new coal-fired power plants in this country – largely through a series of EPA actions. Do you think there is any chance of reversing this policy in the future?
RJI: As you pointed out in Regulators Gone Wild, the EPA is out of control. And they have gone even more out of control in the brief period since your book was published. It may be, as your book suggests, the only long-term solution is to abolish the EPA and turn its functions over to the individual states, each of which has its own environmental protection agency. If some states go overboard–think California, for example–industries can relocate to more rational neighbors. But again, as you have pointed out, abolishing the EPA would set off a hysteria in the environmental industry that few politicians, Republican or Democrat, would be prepared to endure. The situation may have to get worse before it can get better”: until, at some point, the public recognizes that the choice is between economic prosperity and environmental zealotry, and one or the other has to go.
4) Why do you think it is that the mainstream media and the left always seem to assume that big corporations and business people are motivated solely by cynical, self-interest, but big environmental organizations and environmentalists are never so motivated? As you point out, organizations like the NRDC and Sierra Club have a huge financial incentive to perpetuate apocalyptic myths, but no one in the MSM ever calls that out. Are journalists that blind?RJI: This goes back to the rise of the public interest movement in the late 1960s under the aegis of Ralph Nader. Its assumption is that there is a single public interest obscured by the demands of “special interests.” Those who understand the public interest must step forward to rescue it from the special interests. And that meant most especially the burgeoning environmental organizations representing “the people” against polluting big corporations concerned only with the bottom line. The environmental organizations have become huge money-raising machines, dependent on endlessly fostering public fear, but the mainstream media, as you say, won’t call them out on this. I don’t think it is so much that journalists are blind as that they have a similar perspective. Numerous surveys of the media over the decades bear this out. Back in 1971 the publisher of Look Magazine (then a rival to the hugely popular Life Magazine) noted that with only a handful of exceptions the men and women who produced Look “detested big business” and “worshipped the ecological and consumerism reformers.” Opinion surveys since have consistently found that the media elite are well to the left of the American electorate.
You get the bizarre situation that those pointing out the cynical, self interested behavior of environmental organizations are more likely to come from the left than the mainstream media. For example Green Inc. is a book by a disillusioned former environmental organization staffer who accuses the big outfits of becoming self-satisfied bureaucracies whose leaders get huge salaries (up to $800,000 a year) and of essentially selling out to the big corporations which are major contributors and whose members serve on their boards.
While the author of Green Inc. cries “sell-out,” the corporations that fund environmental outfits are more accurately described as donating the rope with which they are hung. For example, Shell Oil and British Petroleum both fund the Natural Resources Defense Council. With its army of lawyers, the NRDC is probably dollar for dollar the most effective antagonist to the fossil fuel industry in which Shell and BP play such a prominent part.
5) If global warming alarmism eventually fades away, do you think another apocalyptic theme will replace it? If so, any guesses as to what the next wave might entail?
RJI: Ocean acidification is an up-and-comer. Or–don’t laugh– global cooling. In the mid to late 1970s there was an incipient global cooling scare. You got headlines like the one in the Christian Science Monitor in 1979, “New Ice Age Almost Upon Us.” It was replaced in the 1980s by what has become the vastly more powerful global warming panic. Should temperatures decline over the next decade or two, global cooling could stage a comeback. That may sound incredible but the public memory is short. Whatever replaces global warming in the environmentalist armory, you can be sure human beings are responsible and the solution is to cut down sharply on our use of energy. 6) What motivated you to take on this topic?RJI: Global warming is the most recent outgrowth of environmentalism. My husband and I wrote about the origins of the modern environmental movement as an apocalyptic panic in our 1983 book The Coercive Utopians. So my concern with the global warming apocalypse grows out of that long-standing interest.
In addition, the success of environmentalism over decades in shaping the public discourse more and more astonishes me. That’s because it is so inimical to traditional American values. This country used to be characterized by technological progress, dynamism, optimism; it placed a high value on abundance, prosperity, freedom. Environmentalists would have us pursue economic suicide. No, of course they don’t say that. It wouldn’t get past focus groups. You get instead buzzwords like “sustainability.” But look at how that’s defined. Maurice Strong, the long time head of the UN Program on the Environment, defined what is not sustainable–cars for personal use, air conditioning in the home, small appliances. Sustainable lifestyles are primitive lifestyles. In England they’re talking now about issuing ration cards for carbon dioxide consumption. In terms of daily life, the thing people hated most about World War II were the ration cards. Now the proposed cards would ration how many airplane trips you can take, how much gas you can buy for your car, how much electricity you can consume in your home. Consume more than your allotment and you pay a heavy tax. Global warming dogma takes us to the depths of pessimism and statism and paralysis. That’s where environmentalism has led us. Why don’t we rebel against this deadly regressive philosophy of life?
7) With gas-prices heading for $5 dollars, do you think that President Obama’s dysfunctional, pixie-dust reliant energy policy may prove to be his undoing in November? He has clearly gone “all in” with the roosters – will that tip the balance for a significant number of voters?
RJI: A year ago I don’t think you would have considered energy as the issue most likely to be President Obama’s undoing–you’d have thought of health care or the deficit. Those issues are still important but if gas prices stay high, energy may well be the most potent issue. The deficits are huge but they are abstract, hard for most people to grasp. The chief impact of the health care bill is a couple of years down the road. But $5 and up gasoline affects everyone in the here and now. And Obama’s commitment to climate change dogma, his relentless punishing of fossil fuels, the roadblocks he has thrown up to energy exploration, his pursuit of costly failed “investments” in the pixie dust of sun and wind are obvious for all to see, particularly if they are brought constantly to public attention by the Republican candidate. Going “all in” with the roosters was a very risky strategy. It may prove to have been a fatal one.
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Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World, is available from theHeartland Institute.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Rich Trzupek is author of Regulators Gone Wild: How the EPA is Ruining American Industry, New York, Encounter Books, 2011.
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World by Rael Jean Isaac (Feb 24, 2012)
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