The new last refuge of scoundrels

By Alan Caruba
web posted December 16, 2002

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," said Samuel
Johnson on April 7, 1775. If the great man of British letters were
alive today, he might amend that to say that, in America,
"environmentalism is the new last refuge of scoundrels." I surely
would.

I was reminded of Johnson's quote by two other quotes. They
were by aspiring candidates for the Democrat Party's nomination
to be president in 2004. The trigger was news that the
Environmental Protection Agency had decided to revise the rules
concerning how much "pollution" could be released by utilities
upon which we depend for electricity.

Actually, what the former rules did was make it impossible to
make any changes to curb "pollution" through various upgrades
of the facilities. Until the revision, a utility would not be able to
make incremental changes at a reasonable cost. Instead, it would
have to undertake wholesale upgrades costing a huge amount of
money. Naturally, the utilities opted to make only those
mandated upgrades they could afford.

Since coal is burned to produce forty percent of all electricity
generated for consumer use in America, the Greens have sought
to make the production of energy as costly a process as possible
for both the utilities and their consumers. Huge natural reserves
of high-grade coal in Utah were put off limits to any use by the
Clinton-Gore administration.

But I digress. Within hours of the Dec. 22 EPA announcement,
two leading Democrat contenders for the presidential nomination
immediately issued statements. By 3:19PM, North Carolina's
Sen. John Edwards said that Americans would suffer "more
smog, more soot, and more premature deaths." By 3:21PM
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said "To safeguard the
environment, we don't just need a new EPA administrator, we
need a new president."

If you want to know what Al Gore thinks just read his insane
screed, "Earth in the Balance." We are waiting to find out if he
will run again, but if you are as crazy as Gore, the odds are he is
already gearing up for another run. He will run hard on the many
bogus issues of environmentalism. In the midterm elections
Americans correctly perceived that Democrats have no idea how
to provide for the security of this nation, insuring sufficient energy
resources, or the general welfare of its people.

The Democrat candidates will, for the next two years, beat the
drums of environmentalism to remind everyone that George Bush
and all Republicans actually want to kill everyone with
"pollution." They have made these claims in the past and they will
do so again, and again, and again.

The problem with that is, like everything else the Greens say, it's
a lie. There is no global warming. The air in America is clean.
The water you drink from the tap is clean. Americans are living
longer, healthier lives than ever before.

In the voluminous body of quotations and literature that has been
spoken and penned by environmentalists, we are confronted by
the spectacle of the chronic scold, the person for whom enough
is never enough. This is particularly true of government laws and
regulations to "protect" the environment.

Earth and nature are never to blame for the ills they perceive. It
is always mankind. It is always industry. It is always technology,
chemistry or some other branch of science. It is always
innovation in agriculture, ranching, or forestry. It is always
capitalism. It is always prosperity. Mostly, though, it is always
freedom.
 
What this great, prosperous nation needs are more facilities to
generate the energy we require to keep our extraordinary
economy growing, to provide heat and electricity to the homes
and apartments of our growing population, to be less dependent
on oil from nations that hate us, and to extract the natural
resources this nation possesses in abundance.

Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs", a weekly commentary
posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). In January, Merril Press will publish a
collection of his columns. © Alan Caruba, 2002