Earth Day 2013 AKA Radicals on Parade

I don't know if Earth Day has an “official” site, but Kathleen Rogers on this official-looking site billed Earth Day as “the largest secular event in the world.” I'd have to think about that one for a while. I don't know about the world but it's certainly not the largest, secular event in the US. I'm sure it ranks well behind Halloween, Independence Day, and probably even Cinco de Mayo. Still, it does get enough support that I could take a few moments to laugh at... er... I mean, write about it.

In the infancy of Earth Day, back in the 70s, the focus was on “over population.” It was feared that the earth did not have enough resources to support the three billion or so people who lived in the world back then so an early objective of Earth Day was to push for zero population growth. The idea of having children was booed by environmental advocates. Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb and an early champion of Earth Day made these radical statements:

“[T]he first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size.” [The Population Bomb, pp. 130-131]

Of course, abortion was also one of the big issues of the 70s and liberals used population control as another reason to support their argument to allow abortion. Liberals often defend their radical agendas by saying, “it's for the children.” In the case of abortion, that doesn't quite have the same effect so they instead said, “it's for the planet.”

We now have doubled the population of the planet since Mr. Erlich wrote his book so all of his dire predictions have been proven false. God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28) so He gave us a world capable of supporting many times the number of people who are alive now. The idea of purposefully limiting population growth is not only unnecessary, it's also a direct rebellion to God's plan.

Liberals also hate the free market and capitalism and so, over the years, they have used environmental concerns as a cudgel to beat down private property rights and for-profit endeavors. At first, radicals simply did things like chaining themselves to trees to prevent logging. I wonder if any of these nuts lived in houses built with lumber? Anyway, it's gotten worse over the years and now we are forced to save the environment or face criminal fines. We can't drill for oil in Alaska because there are caribou there. California farmers couldn't water their orchards due to the delta smelt. I can't buy a five gallon flush toilet or incandescent light bulbs because legislators believe these things are destroying the planet. Now the EPA even wants to fine (fleece?) cities and states for the rainwater that runs off of roads and highways.

Liberals have even used the environment to meddle in healthcare. For example, the Feds have banned over the counter inhalers used to treat asthma and have forced asthma suffers to buy more expensive, prescription-only inhalers. The reason: the over the counter inhalers contained CFCs.

On this Earth Day, the focus is “climate change.” It's simply a new spin on the old theme of forcing everyone to comply with liberal ideology by making everything seem to be about the environment. Liberals want to control everything that everyone does. Even something like eating meat is condemned because cow flatulence is supposedly destroying the ozone layer.

And I can't resist mentioning the evolutionary connection to Earth Day. A few years back, I posted this Oakland Zoo quote about their Earth Day celebration:

Bring the whole family out to the Oakland Zoo from 10:00am - 3:00pm for Earth Day 2009 Festivities! This year, the theme is "We're All Connected." All of the world is connected in a beautiful web of life, including you!

You see, Earth Day advocates want everyone to believe we're all connected via evolution: people, pandas, and petunias – we're all the same.

Finally, Kathleen Rogers includes this quote in her article:

More than one billion people from almost every single country on earth will take an action in service to our planet.

What probably bothers me about Earth Day more than the liberal agenda on parade is the not-so-subtle idea of earth worship that seems to be going on. What exactly does Ms. Rogers mean when she says talks about acting “in service to our planet”? The Bible says that God gave us every green thing to be our food (Genesis 1:29). God gave man dominion over the birds and the fish and the beasts of the earth (Genesis 1:26). In other words, the earth was made to serve us; we were not made to serve the earth!

God gave us a wonderful world because He loves us. On this earth day, let's be good stewards over what God has given us but let's not glorify the earth. Instead, give glory to God for His providence!

Have a Christ-centered Earth Day!

Oil and Obama's Bad Math

My economics teacher in college once said, “The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.” I'm fairly sure he was quoting someone else but the point was well made and I've used the same quote many times myself. Lately, however, I sometimes I wonder if liberals count on people being bad in math when they spout their rhetoric. Democrats use figures that are so misleading they have to be relying on their audience not being sophisticated enough to figure it out. Alternatively, maybe they themselves don't understand the bad math and are simply repeating an argument they don't understand.

Last week, Obama made the following remarks in a speech at the Daimler Truck Manufacturing Plant in Mt. Holly, NC:

“As a country that has 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, but uses 20 percent of the world's oil -- I'm going to repeat that -- we've got 2 percent of the world oil reserves; we use 20 percent. What that means is, as much as we're doing to increase oil production, we're not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices. Anybody who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they aren’t telling you the truth.”

He has since quoted the same statistic many times in various venues. Occasionally, he includes ridicule of Sarah Palin's slogan, “Drill, baby, drill” from the last Presidential election and each time he repeats the lie, he is usually met with frenzied approval. The obvious, intended impression is that our consumption far outstrips the puny amount of oil we have so drilling more won't decrease our dependence on foreign supplies.

Here's the truth: According to an extensive geological survey conducted in 2000, there are approximately 3 trillion barrels of oil underground all around the world. If President Obama is correct that 2% of that is located in the US, that means there are 60,000,000,000 (60 billion) barrels of oil that is ours for the drilling.

The President also said the US consumes 20% of all the oil produced each year. In 2009, the US oil consumption was just under 19,000 barrels of oil per day (source). Now, I'm not a math wizard but I do have a calculator on my computer. At our current rate of consumption, the US has enough oil underground to meet our demand for the next 8,600 years!! Even if we were to double or triple our consumption of oil, we shouldn't have to worry about running out. There's plenty.

Here's another thing I learned in economics, where there is a greater supply of something, prices go down. If we increase oil production here, prices will drop. I guarantee it. Obama, on the other hand, doesn't seem concerned with increased domestic oil production. No doubt this is due to his affinities toward environmentalism. His strategy thus far to reduce our dependence on foreign oil seems to be 1) don't drill in Alaska, 2) ban off shore drilling, 3) kill the Keystone pipeline from Canada, and 4) suck up to oil producing despots in the Middle East. The result of his 4 pronged approach is that gas prices have doubled during his term in office.

Now, I don't want to over simply this. Even though there's a lot of oil in the ground, there's a lot involved with getting it out of ground and getting it refined. That costs money and companies have to be sure there will be a profit in it for them before spending billions of dollars. They need to be certain of the President's and Congress's commitment to a several-years-long undertaking.

Obama claims to not want higher gas prices, but every move he has made during his presidency seems geared toward doing just that. We feel the effect of his failed (successful?) strategy in our wallets every time we gas up.

What was the rush?

As we close in on the 2 year anniversary of Obama's election, most polls show the President's approval rating isn't so hot. The upcoming elections will no doubt be a referendum on his presidency and it's funny to see how the Democrats are starting to spin. They probably sense their impending doom and are trying to soften the blow when it comes. I could list the many failings of Obama thus far but why bother? Everyone knows the economy is still struggling, people are still out of work, the Bush tax cuts are about to expire, and Obama is at war with banks, insurance companies, and BP. Everyone has also heard his oft repeated excuse, “I didn't make this mess.”

What exactly has Obama done to help create jobs? One of the first acts of his new administration was to push through a $1.5 trillion “stimulus” package aimed at keeping the unemployment rate under 8%. Obviously that was a massive failure since the unemployment later went above 10%. The funny thing about the 2009 stimulus was that most of the money wasn't earmarked to be spent until 2010. Well, here we are midway through 2010 and most of the money STILL hasn't been spent. What are they waiting for? If this package could truly create jobs and help grow the economy, now would be a good time to execute it! I think they're saving it for things like liberal, pet projects and political kickbacks.

The President and Congress are still spending money, of course, as evidenced by the runaway deficit. The budget deficit for this year alone is greater than the combined deficits of all eight years of the Bush presidency. It's just that they're not spending it on things that will help grow the economy. I know I'm just a business major so can someone explain to me how demonizing “big” businesses creates jobs? Aren't businesses the ones who hire people? Oh yeah, the President also has stopped off-shore drilling and is trying to raise our energy bills via cap-and-trade. Again, remind me how that creates jobs?

Now after 18 months on inaction from President Obama, I just remembered something funny. Right after the 2008 election, in the midst of the mortgage banking meltdown, liberal reporters like those on CNN were lamenting that Obama had to wait until January to take office. The fear was that the country literally might not last that long and they were discussing ways Obama might take the reigns sooner. So, what was the rush guys? Do you feel a little foolish because you could not wait for him to take office and start changing things only to see him take office and do nothing?

It's Earth Day Again

Well, another “Earth Day” is upon us. The mindset of liberal environmentalists is something completely alien to me. Maybe I'm just suspicious of their motives. I can never be sure if environmentalists are acting out of genuine concern for the planet or if ordinary liberals are exploiting environmentalist concerns to advance their political agenda. Perhaps the truth is that the liberals don't really know either.

One fundamental tenet of liberal ideology is that there is no personal god. To them, “god” is only a warm fuzzy feeling that one can experience any number of ways. If someone gets that warm fuzzy feeling in church, that's fine but if they can get the same feelings at home then church is optional. This is usually expressed in some ambiguous attitude of tolerance; “I might believe this but if you believe something else that's fine because all beliefs are equal.” There are also those people who get the warm fuzzy feeling about nature. I don't think they consciously “worship” nature (though some do) but rather experience the same satisfaction from their belief about nature that liberal theists experience from their belief in their impersonal god.

I guess they don't realize how jealous their god is. It's not enough that they become one with nature, they want everyone else to treat nature with the same reverence that they do. To many of them, it's blasphemy to want to cut down a tree to build a house or to clear rain forests to make room for cattle. Nature is like some holy relic that must remain undefiled by human hands. To that end, they have no problem forcing their “religious” views on the rest of us. Nothing is too extreme if they do it “to save the planet.”

Do you think I'm going too far? I assure you I'm not. Consider the very recent example of the delta smelt. The San Joaquin Valley is a dust bowl but we will not pump more water there because the Natural Resources Defense Council successfully sued to protect a fish that's less than bite size. This fish is endangered so we don't even eat them but we protect them only for the sake of preserving them to look at.

The liberal elites have gotten in on the act too. President Obama has spoken often about his “green jobs” agenda. Oil and coal are bad but wind and sun are good. Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we get oil and coal out of the ground? Wouldn't that make them part of nature too? I guess the problem is that oil and coal are produced by “big” oil and coal companies and anything with a “big” in front of it is bad. They need to be replaced with solar energy produced by some small company that doesn't actually employee anyone. The simple fact of the matter is that folks like Gore and Obama are using the environment as a tool for social engineering. Gore doesn't really give a whit about the planet or else he'd stop traveling in his private jet and limo to give speeches on how everyone else needs to use mass transit. Do you remember also how Obama defended his stimulus package? He said it would help the economy by creating green jobs. It doesn't matter what the policy is, liberals will bolster it by saying it's good for the planet.

On this Earth Day, I would remind people that God made this planet for us; He didn't make us for the planet. He commanded us to have dominion over the earth and to subdue it (Genesis 1:28). The earth is bountiful and plentiful. God has really blessed us with so many resources and we should feel free to use them. To me, environmentalists are like that slothful servant in Matthew 25:24-30. He was given stewardship over a talent but rather than put the talent to work, he buried it. When his master returned, he told him (I'm paraphrasing here), “Here's your talent, just like you gave it to me.” Environmentalists do the same thing; God gave us the earth to use for His glory and they want to preserve it untouched.

The HR2454 Republican Hall of Shame

The Cap and Trade bill (HR2454) passed by a slim, 7 vote margin in the house late Friday evening (6/26). That’s bad news. It’s made worse when you realize that 8 Republican turn-coats – I mean, “Representatives” – voted for the measure. Since the bills passed by only 7 votes, these 8 RINO’s can be held directly accountable for the bills passage in the house. All I can say is shame on them all.

Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330

Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165

Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361

LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572

McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611

Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761

Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

If any of these are your Representatives, I would suggest you let them know how you feel about their vote. Especially don’t forget in 2010!

If this bill is ever enacted into law, Obama himself admits that energy bills will necessarily “skyrocket.” I’ve heard varying estimates between $175–700 more each year on the average utility bill. Of course, that’s on top of the already high utility rates foisted upon us over the last couple of years.

Besides higher utility costs, the bill will necessarily make us more energy dependent. There will be no more power plants built in the US. I’m sure Obama and his partners in crime are hoping we don’t remember that he said cap and trade will bankrupt the coal companies who try to build more plants. In the same clip, Obama says that cap and trade will raise “billions of dollars” that we can invest in solar and wind technology. Let me translate: “We will collect billions of dollars from every American family and use it to force them to live in caves and read by candle light.”

There are no two ways about it. This is a big government grab for more money and more intrusion, which is fueled by more costs and higher unemployment for the average American family.

We must stop this bill in the Senate. Contact your Senators now and tell them to vote, “no.”

Biden on Coal

In my last blog, I gave you Obama - in his own words - saying that if coal companies wanted to build new power plants, it would bankrupt them. At the very end of that clip is Biden saying he wants no coal plants in the US. Here is the entire Biden quote.

It's clear these guys are not interested in using coal to help our energy independence. What's not clear is why Obama supporters don't care if their utility bills skyrocket.

Obama will Bankrupt the Coal Industry

I’m sure you’ve all seen it by now but just in case, here it is again. In his own words, Obama is not interested in more coal burning plants in the US. Listen for yourself. Obama is more green than red-white-and-blue. He doesn’t care if the coal industry goes bankrupt. He doesn’t care that 1/2 the energy used to light our homes comes from coal. He doesn’t care if our utility bills skyrocket.

Why didn’t we hear about this in January? Why didn’t anyone challenge him on his energy plan to fund “clean coal” technology? Why did Obama lie to us about wanting to make us more energy independent?

I grew up in KY and my grandfather worked in the coal mines. Coal is a way of life there and the back bone of the Appalachian economy. The same is true for VA, WV, and PA. I hope the people in these states get the word before the polls open tomorrow. Obama is more interested in polar bears than Pennsylvanians.