Environmentalism — the religion where the elders are politicians and the priests are scientists

Part II of a two-part series

“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.” — Michael Crichton, the author of the bestselling novel Jurassic Park.

Last week I wrote Part I of a two-part series titled: The climate change boondoggle. Now I will demonstrate that environmentalism is like a religion. Understanding this will explain the blind loyalty of the Greens and their grandiose claims about man-made global warming.

The latest news on the environment was last week’s decision by the Obama administration to temporarily suspend the Dakota Access Pipeline until a determination can be made as to it effect on the environment. That was followed by a decision by the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals calling for work to cease until the court considers whether to order a longer delay or kill the entire project.

Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor, called “the aggressive and unexplained actions” by Obama’s Justice Department, “unprecedented in the annals of American environmental litigation.”

The pipeline, a $3.7 billion project, is at odds with President Barack Obama’s anti-oil movement. Thus, even as the ground has been broken, the politicians will not allow it to proceed despite meticulous planning to ensure safety and divert it away from Native hallowed lands.

The federal government’s United States Army Corps of Engineers has been completely transparent in detailing the path the pipeline will take. The 1,172-mile pipeline was to be constructed to transport American crude oil underground using the newest and safest pipeline technologies. Eventually the pipeline would be able to transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude per day from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois.  There it would be shipped to refineries and turned into usable fuel for Americans.

During the construction phase it would provide 12,000 construction jobs and would make America less dependent on Arab oil.

Environmentalism the religion

Native Americans protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline have been emboldened by the Green’s victory in stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline last year.  But a far more powerful group than Native Americans, the liberal left and their representatives are protesting this oil pipeline for a singular reason — they are waging war on petroleum and have in Obama a president sympathetic to his cause.  His co-conspirators are many, but include Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the former contender, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Last week while joining in with 500 pipeline protestors, Sanders said:

Our species will not survive if we continue to destroy nature, so today we stand united in saying, ‘Stop the pipeline, respect Native American rights and let us move forward to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels.’

The left has taken on a religious zeal for not just saving a species but for saving the planet.  Any true believer will proclaim that petroleum is poison. This despite the fact crude oil was the elixir that built the world.  Just five decades ago huge oil reserves helped the United States become the richest most powerful nation in existence.

Today the Environmental Elders — the politicians — tell us that 97 percent of scientists believe in man-made global warming. The 97 percent claim is 100 percent wrong as many scientists refuse to become priests for the movement even though it often results in losing tenure or sometimes their outright dismissal. Climate change arising from man-made CO₂ is a religion where outspoken doubters can pay a heavy price for intellectual honesty.

Michael Hart, a decorated professor at the University of Carleton, whom I quoted last week told LifeSiteNews said the, “poorly understood science of climate change to advance an ambitious environmental agenda focused on increasing centralized control over people’s daily lives.”

We have already reached a point where politicians are throwing money they don’t have at a problem that does not exist in order to finance solutions that make no difference. Instead, all this political energy could be used to defeat radical Islam, make America less energy dependent and bring some semblance of order to the Middle East.

Last week I took aim at Obama for saying climate change is “terrifying.” I got the typical response from Greens who said I am not a scientist and therefore cannot have an opinion on climate change — the type of response one would expect from the Roman Catholic Church which insists that only Vatican leaders can interpret God’s law and only they can dictate how we will find eternal salvation.

If you are well read, can reason and use logic, you have every right to give your opinion on the veracity of man-made climate change.  But the devoted take a leap of faith just as religious followers do.

If you are a believer, you better have blind faith.  That is what it takes because the entire argument in man-made climate change is dead wrong, as is its central contention that temperatures will rise dangerously high because of a minuscule increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Global temperatures have not risen this century despite all the man-made carbon spewing into the atmosphere.

From 1940 – 1975, a period when the Second Industrial Revolution was in full swing, global temperatures actually fell.  This was a period that had few, if any, pollution restrictions.  It was not until 1975 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency insisted on catalytic converters on cars.

The Greens are at a loss to explain major shifts in the earth’s temperatures before man could have an impact. During the Little Ice Age — 1300 to 1850 — temperatures fell so drastically that records indicate that the Atlantic ice pack became so large it almost exterminated the Vikings of Greenland and Iceland.

During this period, famine was a problem throughout Europe because the cold created crop failures, including in France where famine contributed to the French Revolution.  Paintings from that period show Londoners ice skating on the Thames River.

Previous to the Little Ice Age was the Holocene Climate Optimum, 9,000 to 5,000 BCE, where winter temperatures were 3 to 9 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.

As the chart below shows, global temperatures have been falling for millions of years.

These temperature variations happened over centuries when man was unable to influence climate.  It should give rise to questioning if man-made global climate change is much ado about nothing.

Ethanol the costly alternative to gasoline

Ethanol is not the panacea that the Greens hoped it would be.

It has long been accepted that ethanol is a cleaner fuel than gasoline.  Thus the government mandates to mix ethanol into gas at the pump.

Then lo and behold the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute research professor John DeCicco, Ph.D., said earlier this month that he believes ethanol is a dangerous gasoline additive.

DeCicco said that ethanol exacerbates the problem instead of curing it. Since I don’t even believe there is a problem, I believe that DeCicco is wasting his time, as is anyone lecturing on the positives or negatives of ethanol fuel.  It amounts to a debate on whether pixie dust is conducive to pleasant dreams.  What is not nonsense was the federal government’s tax subsidy of $6 billion a year annually for ethanol.  It finally ended in 2015 after decades of throwing taxpayer money away.

The future of ethanol doesn’t matter much for true believers. Their trip to utopia will be in an electric vehicle (EV). I have written extensively about it for Personal Liberty Digest over the past seven years. I have consistently said the EV is an idea whose time has not come and will not come until batteries are revolutionized.

Then there is the $64,000 question: where will the energy come from to charge the nation’s fleet of electric cars? Most likely it will come from burning coal.  All this hand-wringing, all this fear and propaganda and the reward will be a coal burning car.  At least it will be nostalgic because it takes us back to the steam engine locomotives of the 19^th Century.

If you are interested in reading more on my unchanging position on the EV I suggest these Personal Liberty columns that I penned:

The electric car and when the wheels of progress become stuck

Back to the future

The Obama car: Unaffordable, unreliable and ultimately dirty

Yours in good times and bad,

— John Myers

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