An Inconvenient Truth: Enviros’ Doomsday Rhetoric Breeds Eco-Terror

by Christopher C. Horner

In the wake of yesterday’s terrorism outside Washington, DC by Discovery-network hostage-taker James J. Lee, let’s consider the position articulated by, say, radio host Glenn Beck to not attribute responsibility to Al Gore’s eco-ranting. The latter is of course larded with assurances of a certain eco-catastrophe brought about by dark forces impeding salvation, and disturbing utterances like “the tide in this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join in an all-out effort.” (Earth in the Balance, p. 269)

gore_fraud

Any sane person knows that such exhortations for an all-out effort to stop urgent danger are merely calls to get involved, say with direct mail campaigns and bake sales.

Now, both Fox News and CNN have reported that Lee attributed his radicalism to the writings of two men — Daniel Quinn and Al Gore. The Washington Post carried a fairly lengthy article exploring the former, who dismisses any connection. That piece and the main news feature are both silent on the deceased’s giving equal credit to Gore (although a pop-up ad for China’s solar industry does accompany one of them). This is true of the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, among others.

Beck’s (somewhat backhanded, I understand) rationale for exculpating Gore of partial responsibility is that the terrorist was not a sane person. Yep. But the two — culpability by Gore and other radical green imams, and acting out by mentally unstable members of their targeted demographic — aren’t mutually exclusive. We know that individuals bear responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, both the instigator and the instigated.

One might not like the connection, what with environmentalism being as chic as a Che Guevara handbag, but you can’t deny it. Take the quiz, “Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?“. I dare you to score better than 50%. That should make you uncomfortable. Then read Lee’s manifesto, and really squirm at the similarities.

This isn’t Jody Foster somehow recklessly taunting John Hinkley. Al Gore dressed up quite nicely to stand on a stage and…show a near-term swamping of much of America, with massive loss of life, unless people are stopped. He vows there is no disagreement of this “truth” except for a few crazies and those in the pay of the oil industry causing the planetary crisis, what Gore calls “the most serious threat that we have ever faced,”[ (EITB, p. 40). Gosh. What could possibly go wrong?

I made the connection on Washington, DC's WMAL morning radio show this morning, to the distress of one of the hosts who responded with the obvious counter that, erm, the Tea Party used the word "target" in their rhetoric accompanied by a scope-sight in graphics showing targeted races. Ah. I suppose that reasonable minds can differ whether assassination is a logical or reasonably foreseeable consequence of this repetition of the long-standing use of "target" in the political context. No rash of actions has borne this out, however.

But yesterday's hostage-taking is just the latest "isolated incident" of eco-nuts engaging in "all-out efforts" that “we must make the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." (Gore, EITB) And it is the logical, foreseeable consequence of the green movement's perspective and rhetoric.

In my first book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)", I serially lay out quotes by establishment greens reflecting Lee's eco-driven revulsion at population (as always, the peril of this mostly white, middle class movement is other people being born, other people building homes, other people getting wealthy, etc.), and a whatever-means-necessary attitude.

These remarks are too numerous to cherry-pick one or two. In short, environmentalists think people are pollution. And they must be stopped. Just like Lee writes in his manifesto.

Also difficult to ignore are the examples cited backing up the title of my second book, "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed": attempts and threats on the lives of those who...dare disagree, and oppose the eco-agenda.

There is a reason an astrophysicist who oddly suggested the sun might have a somewhat larger  influence on the Earth's climate than Man should be subjected to having her picture circulated with the accompanying charge "Mass Murderer". Again, what could possibly go wrong? Possibly the same thing in mind -- or, negligently not considered -- when Greenpeace widely posted a picture of me, with bold letters convicting me for their followers' knowledge as "Climate Criminal". Why they want people to know what I look like, I can only speculate. But it did lead to them even finding and staking out my house, taking my trash on a weekly basis while they were there. I got off lucky.

Environmental rhetoric regularly consists of gross exaggeration, claiming certainty about looming catastrophe, calling for radical campaigns to stop those dark forces assuring our destruction. As I write in RHL:

"But as global warming alarmism continues not merely to spin further into the land of the rabid it is actually encouraged in its mania by the establishment media and politicians. Barbara Boxer, senator and chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, employed on the Senate floor employed a variant on Al Gore’s protect-the-baby metaphor at about the same time as [a murder in Australia by a man angered over another's thoughtless eco-waste: watering his lawn], ‘We would never leave a child alone in a hot, locked car, and I believe the [committee] will not leave this issue of global warming burning for another generation to address.’  As one commenter noted, ‘When the notion takes hold that humans are little more than scavengers and parasites on Mother Earth, we shouldn’t be surprised when a fanatic weighs the life an old man against a little water, and finds the former to be of less value.’” (citations omitted).

Sound familiar? If not, read yesterday’s terrorist’s manifesto.

Politics hates uncertainty, and the “global warming” agenda in particular demands so many privations and sacrifices of liberty that it cannot withstand scrutiny. So it, and its proponents, relies upon wild exaggeration of knowledge and catastrophe as a means to avoid debate. It’s past time we recognize this and shame those who shriek of catastrophe to advance a political agenda. At minimum, you are taking advantage of and encouraging those of sensitive, tenuous dispositions, with proven dangerous consequences. As I also detail in RHL, they are particularly terrorizing children, leading even to psychiatric commitment.

Eco-terrorism is terrorism. Stop waving it away as a different kind of terrorism, each incident in the pattern of behavior merely an isolated one. Willful or not, these incidents are the logical consequence of the doomsday rhetoric.

Environmental radicalism has been mainstreamed, the latest poisonous “radical chic”. But there are consequences to this indulgence. Stop Gang Green before they harm again.


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Posted Sep 2nd 2010 at 8:41 am in Culture, Environment, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 100 Comments