How the greens became mainstream

There are two aspects to green politics, the obvious, where they campaign to stop pollution and protect animals, which any sensible person would also want, and the opinion politics based on the extreme view humans are a cancer on the planet, so anything which flows from that is not based on looking after our planet but restricting the activities of human beings. These views are far from a conspiracy theory, as David Suzuki, the major green campaigner, compared us to maggots, while various authors and activists regularly quote the cancer meme, based possibly on James Lovelock’s Gaia theory of an angry earth wiping out the evil humans if they treat it badly, which he has now all but withdrawn, but still doing the rounds if you look around, including an entire book, Humans as Cancer by A. Kent.

Then you have the marginal policies, ostensibly for genuine reasons, but when analysed may do little more than those very restrictions the Soviets and Cuba have done so much to wreck the lives of their own citizens with absolutely no ‘green’ agenda but an extreme one. Restricting travel is the first weapon of a totalitarian state, and under the guise of ‘restricting pollution’ the green movement at its furthest end wants to ban personal transportation in the form of private cars altogether, and many want flying restricted to almost nothing for the same reasons. Now if they really caused so much harm everyone would suffer from respiratory problems in cities already, as a genuinely dangerous level of pollution has to cause symptoms by definition, but despite the gas masks worn in Japan this is not the case, but many people have suffered cancer from nuclear fallout when power stations melted down. But dragging a misanthropic view into politics with the claim people need their actions restricted as they can’t be trusted is the same argument Benjamin Franklin pointed out that trading freedom for security means you deserve neither. The idea economic and industrial development is a bad thing, one of the basic foundations of the green movement, was always considered an extreme view as it clearly is, but for those in power who want it, the Hegelian dialectic of cause a problem which requires the very policies you want as a solution, has arguably allowed these policies through the perceived threat of global warming, albeit beyond our lifespans in 2100 for the full scenario, which is not scientific in itself as you cannot complete an experiment set too far ahead.

Such policies are now mainstream, with huge taxes on flying and fossil fuel, both hitting the poor as whether essential for survival like heating or travelling for leisure, these activities become restricted to fewer and fewer people as the taxes continue to rise, while the EU plans to ban cars in cities altogether, beginning with age limits on cars in Paris and commercial vehicles in London (despite all passing the emissions tests required for all vehicles). I will now present the major official policies of the main green movements, the Green Party, Greenpeace and quotes from their supporters to demonstrate how many are now in place across the western world to one degree or another, none of which would ever have been considered without the threat of dangerous global warming were they not carried out.

Greenpeace (from their website):

“We’re working to create a world with zero deforestation. Will you join us?” (of course, why not, very sensible)

“Marine reserves are critical to the oceans’ future.” (who can argue with that?)

“We’re working towards a clean energy future.” (what?)

As the bible rightly points out, the devil, should he exist, can’t appear evil, but must actually look even better than the genuine good people, so gains people’s trust by offering more and then slipping in something nasty afterwards. I didn’t think it up, it’s in one of the oldest books in the world, not for religious purposes but to protect people from others. Continuing beyond their headlines:

We also campaign for no new nukes, chemical security, and sustainable agriculture.

We defend the natural world and promote peace by investigating, exposing and confronting environmental abuse, and championing environmentally responsible solutions

Those are some high flying statements, but pick them apart and look closer: no new nukes So the old ones are OK then? chemical security What? Even if people could understand that what have a pressure group got to do with health and safety? sustainable agriculture This is from UN Agenda 21, the green world bible, which is as mainstream as it gets, and directly or indirectly is designed to reduce the world population, some claim by up to 90%. Clearly this in itself is a very sensible view, as the land and resources are not expanding while the population is, but besides education there are no other ways to reduce the population, but their method is called ‘managed depopulation’. Work that out for yourselves. I will get back to Agenda 21 later, but if it is quoted by any pressure group you know what they are supporting directly.

As for their general statement, it does not specify yet the details or examples, as to return to my original point then who except the companies profiting from it does not want to defend the natural world, promote peace and confront environmental abuse, and additionally this is and will always be the job of a democratic government, who ought not to need much from pressure groups to do the obviously right thing, such as Britain’s Clean Air Act, which wiped out smog permanently in the 1960s.

Taking action

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 by a small group of anti-war protesters taking nonviolent direct action against US nuclear weapons testing. Today, taking action is as important as ever to the way we campaign for a greener, more peaceful and equitable world.

Solutions

Often, environmental problems – like climate change or forest destruction - are widely acknowledged, but governments, corporations and international bodies all duck or dismiss the solutions. Our solutions work promotes open, informed debate about society’s environmental choices, and involves industries, communities and individuals in making change happen. Whether the solutions are political, social or technological, we believe that they should be both environmentally responsible and globally equitable.

Analysing these statements begins with their history, clearly absolutely nothing to do with the environment at all but anti-war, another laudable and totally obsolete political movement, since most western countries both hold nuclear weapons and invade other countries on a regular basis. So they didn’t get very far there since 1971 did they? But the environment? That’s the exact other story. The rest is fairly general and can only be interpreted after the event looking at their actual activities.

The Green Party:

This is a worldwide party with few variations wherever they operate, and varying success in parliaments, holding the current (2013) balance of power in Australia, and having many of their policies adopted in Britain by all three of the mainstream parties, which they themselves acknowledge is far more important than political power for them itself. Besides the woolly liberal economic policies which are pretty much utopian pie in the sky suitable for parish councils at the most, here are the big ones which kick ass:

We will support cooperative, diverse and resilient local economies to meet our needs while “ reversing the status-seeking wealth concentration that is deepening social divisions and destroying the natural world. We will regulate, tax and invest to protect workers’ rights, support socially beneficial businesses and safeguard the ecosystems on which we rely

Here’s a good one- you have to imagine when you read paragraphs you highlight the important bits: “reversing the status-seeking wealth concentration” To me that doesn’t seem very relevant to the environment, but simply stating the standard socialist position common to all others. We will regulate, tax and invest to protect workers’ rights Straight from Das Kapital?

So now they’ve laid out their economic stall somewhere around Marxism, which is fair enough if enough people vote for it, as a perfectly valid social model, but I would argue marginal for many decades and designated to remain so unless there was a particular reason to raise it from the past Soviet history. But before they even reach the meat, the bread in the sandwich is already seen to be bright red, clearly setting out the political wing and foundation behind the party, and possibly the movement altogether.

How will they do it then?

 By nurturing low-carbon industries and community economies, and by making polluters pay, a prosperous and resilient Green economy will thrive in harmony with our environment.

There you go, the exact policies the EU and UN (and since the 25^th of June 2013, by executive order no less, the US) are now implementing. Along with half the remaining western world. Coincidence or what?

I don’t think I need go any further into their own details, as half way down the page what used to be a fringe pressure group recognised by most except their own supporters as way past the reasonable level of politics, and now these policies are growing by the day (look at the carbon floor price as an example). I won’t create an entire piece on UN Agenda 21 here as it’s all over the web, but being top of the pyramid, they are now running over 200 country’s policies worldwide who have signed up to it, carrying out pretty much all the above, and could be no more mainstream than that.

To summarise, the green movement shares the majority of policies to one degree or another, divided between the bleedin’ obvious such as not pumping chemical waste and sewage into the water system, to the marginal, to the politically way out. The usual list of quotes which drove the movement from the 1960s onwards may not represent the rank and file of the movement, but they did not make the policies, but accept the lot, from the lovely furry ones to the ones which only have one result, depopulation. Examples include biofuel, a great hobby horse of the entire movement, gaining an entire page on WWF’s page,

”We are delighted to provide biofuel operators with a truly comprehensive standard and a broad range of online tools to help streamline the compliance process from crop to tank.”

Bearing in mind biofuel is both many times more expensive than fossil fuel, and mainly made from the food crops palm oil and corn, wiping out huge areas of rain forest for its growth and pushing many farmers off their land, it is a proven disaster and could only ever be justified by trying to avoid an even worse problem (you know the one I mean). But no doctor would ever treat someone with a medicine with worse side effects than the illness itself. WWF were officially set up for exactly what it says on the tin (quite unlike Greenpeace), but have drifted so far from their original plans since being involved in such activities as land clearance for green projects, which a German paper discovered is often at the expense of the people who lived on the cleared land and are now refugees. They wouldn’t of course refer to this directly in their material as it may put a few (million possibly) of their followers off, but instead refer to:

Given limited resources, restricted funds and the fact that we’re running out of time, WWF is focusing its efforts on 13 Global Initiatives.

§         Amazon

§         Arctic

§         China for a Global Shift

§         Climate & Energy

§         Coastal East Africa

§         Coral Triangle

§         Forest and Climate

§         Green Heart of Africa

§         Heart of Borneo

§         Living Himalayas

§         Market Transformation

§         Smart Fishing

§         Tigers

Of course like the others this is a mixture of the obvious and dubious. Adding snippets afterwards, Arctic is clearly now a direct spinoff of the global warming scare, as until then it was ice with bears and seals and doing very well. So well in fact the polar bear population, despite a massive rise in temperature of about 0.2C, has risen from 5,000 in 1975 to 25,000. So clearly the bears aren’t bothered by the shrinking ice even if WWF are. Climate and energy. Now what exactly has that to do with wildlife? Yes, if the climate went tits up everything (including wildlife of course) would follow, but even if it was possible, it isn’t really the field of a wildlife group to concern themselves with promoting ways to control the climate. Unless I’ve missed something. In fact on the bullet points tigers is the only one directly relating to animals. Unlike the sinister sounding ‘Market transformation’ they slipped in, again, making a sandwich of love with a cockroach hiding inside. They put it in, not me, blame them.

Using their own argument, Trade and economic growth have improved the quality of life for millions of people around the world, but it has come at a high cost to the environment.

ie business is OK until you infringe on the environment. My original point, the governments in civilised (as stopping pollution is a feature of civilisation) countries already do this. Yes, it’s fine to encourage them, but. Today,

§         over-fishing

§         deforestation

§         species loss

§         pollution

§         water scarcity and

§         climate change

...are critical environmental challenges linked to the production and consumption of basic commodities that are both renewable (e.g. timber, crops, livestock and fish) and non-renewable (e.g. minerals, oil and gas).

Oh dear, we are in trouble. If you focus on it anyway. So you start by protecting animals, and then stray into politics and economics, ostensibly for the benefit of the animals. Despite the fact (I repeat) governments already do this in civilised countries so little point pushing the policies here. Preventing over-fishing is already a massive EU policy, sending many multi-generational family fisheries into unemployment, but at least the fish will not die out. Deforestation of course is one of the old ideas we all agree with, which is a given, as is species loss. Pollution again is something every decent person should care about, and more so every decent government. Water scarcity is an economic not an environmental problem, as given the money everywhere accessible in the world could have mains water. But when did climate change get in? As soon as it became the means to initiate many of their other less wildlife-related aims, such as the restrictions they clearly believe are necessary on trade and economic growth which would never have been carried out otherwise. Besides the ‘lunatic fringes’ (as they were previously considered to be), who else would ever want to restrict economic growth and development?

So, assuming the major also represent the minor and offshoots, before we even look at the direct quotes, it can clearly be seen that the climate is the string available to pull the policies they all want besides the environment (you know, the economic and political ones not connected with the environment at all, like Greenpeace’s “reversing the status-seeking wealth concentration”). We are talking about charities here, and political campaigns, based on opinion rather than helping those in need, are specifically banned from being charities. Technically that should mean being ordered to remove such clearly ideological views or lose their status. But looking now at some of the classic quotes from the 60s onwards, we will see how our lords and masters want these policies and have clearly used the environmental movement to promote them:

“...one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy, This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more...”

“Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalisation. The climate summit at Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War”.

Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the UN IPCC

“…’self-evidently’ dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth-seeking…scientists—and politicians—must trade truth for influence. What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy.”

Mike Hulme

“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Dr Stephen Schneider

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

report of the Club of Rome in 1991, The First Global Revolution :

“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

“…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable. A shift is necessary which will require a vast strengthening of the multilateral system, including the United Nations…”

Maurice Strong:

These quotes all have something in common. They want to reduce economic activity, and they are using the threats of environmental disaster, something we would all be aware of if present, to justify the resulting policies, which coincidentally belong to the extreme left/ green movement. I’d say it was a pretty open and shut case.