By Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in MediaSaturday, February 10, 2007
Our pathetic excuse for a national press corps wants the public to believe that the same organization that gave us the oil-for-food scandal can be trusted on its dire predictions of calamity from alleged man-made global warming. Sooner or later, journalists will be advising us to give homage to the earth spirit called Gaia in the U.N.'s Meditation Room so we can understand the rationale behind its latest climate change report. Unfortunately, as I have pointed out in a previous column, the science behind the latest report has not yet been released and may not even exist.
The mass hysteria that passes for coverage of global warming has now infected Anne Applebaum, who used to be a moderate voice on the Washington Post's editorial page. In her Tuesday column, as the answer to global warming, she endorses a "simple" carbon tax to hike energy prices and adds that "If a future American president wants to rally the nation around a patriotic and noble cause, then he or she has the perfect opportunity." Is this a plug for Al Gore?
If so, it seems inevitable that Applebaum will be stepping down from her post as an adviser to the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, which supports smaller government, private property rights, and economic freedom.
Higher taxes is the typical knee-jerk liberal response to a perceived problem. She writes that a carbon tax "should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things," such as balancing the budget or fixing Social Security.
Did it ever occur to her that taking a "big chunk of money" out of the economy would slow economic growth and throw people out of work? That it would hurt the poor?
Her column includes such gems as, "If the Chinese see that such a tax has produced unexpected benefits in America and Europe, they'll follow." But Applebaum, being a scholar and writer on the evils of communism, has to know that the communist Chinese government is pursuing its own national self-interest economically and militarily and that the regime's increasing production of greenhouse gasses is among the least of its worries.
This kind of analysis goes beyond silly. It reflects emotion, not reason, and wishful thinking, not serious argument. But that is what is driving much of the coverage of this issue.
She tips her hand when mentioning the "apocalyptic climate change rhetoric" that she accepts and believes should spur action at the national and global levels. These people really believe that we are on the verge of the apocalypse. For the acolytes of Al Gore, the apocalypse will come not because an Islamic terrorist or nation will use a nuclear bomb on the U.S. or the world, it will occur because Americans and Chinese are driving too many cars. They believe that a carbon tax, preferably at a global level, has the potential to save the world.
A new website, from an organization devoted to promoting a carbon tax, the Carbon Tax Center, points out that the New York Times and the Washington Post are among the leading news organizations in the country in promoting higher energy prices through carbon taxes. "The Times has six regular editorial columnists, four of whom have supported a carbon tax," it says. At the Post, the paper has editorialized in favor of a carbon tax, and columnist Sebastian Mallaby has endorsed it. Applebaum can now be added to the list.
One of the co-founders of the Carbon Tax Center is a leader of a "bike-advocacy" organization.
We will be anxiously waiting for Applebaum, Mallaby, Washington Post editorial writers and those New York Times columnists to announce that they are personally combating global warming by riding bikes to and from work. But like Al Gore, whose "big fat carbon footprint" and frequent airplane travels have been thoroughly documented on You Tube by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I somehow doubt that we'll see the global warming alarmists cutting back on their luxurious lifestyles.
Exposing their hypocrisy won't stop them because, as I pointed out in my report on Al Gore and the Cult of Gaia, while this is a political movement that wants to control our lifestyles through government taxes, it is also religious in nature. Though presented to the public as a Southern Baptist, their leader Al Gore wrote a book entitled Earth in the Balance, in which he wrote sympathetically about the Gaia hypothesis of an earth spirit. One chapter is entitled, "Environmentalism of the Spirit." Gore believes the Gaia concept is able to "evoke a spiritual response in many of those who hear it." In this context, he adds that "...the simple fact of the living world and our place on it evokes awe, wonder, a sense of mystery--a spiritual response--when one reflects on its deeper meaning."
Some of the leading global warming "scientists" involved with the U.N. also believe in this approach. Gore endorsed a book by Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist who cited the Gaia theory in his own book on global warming. Schneider asked, "...is there a Goddess of the Earth?" He is one of several scientists who contributed to the 2004 book, Scientists Debate Gaia. A description of the book declares, "Despite initial dismissal of the Gaian approach as New Age philosophy, it has today been incorporated into mainstream interdisciplinary scientific theory, as seen in its strong influence on the field of Earth System Science."
This "Gaian approach" demonstrates why the "science" behind the man-made global warming theory, if it exists, has to be considered extremely questionable. What is driving the acceptance of the theory is not science but a mystical or "New Age" view of the world. It is their religion. Like those who claim to have experienced cosmic forces in the U.N. Meditation Room, it is their religious duty to advocate higher taxes.
This is a delusion that, in my opinion, requires nothing less than rehab. We have a media that have almost completely lost contact with reality. They don't even know that they are embarrassing themselves by passing off New Age drivel as science.
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