Book shines a harsh light on “greenwashers”

Thank Gaia for Steve Milloy, who has for more than a decade fought to stem the ever-rising waters of environmental hysteria via his Web site, junkscience.com, and his personal activism. He has now written a book, Green Hell, that provides a jaw-dropping account of a society gone eco-mad.

How could you not love a man who, in 2007, rented an airplane to pull a banner over a Live Earth concert declaring “DON’T BELIEVE AL GORE.” Or who recruited students to hand out Earth-themed beach balls at the same event bearing the words “I’m more worried about the intellectual climate”?

How could you not admire someone who staged a virtual version of the debate that Al Gore refuses to have by interposing clips of An Inconvenient Truth with segments from The Great Global Warming Swindle and posting it all on YouTube?

How could you not laud an individual who exposed Ben & Jerry’s corporate humbug? In the summer of 2000, Mr. Milloy noticed a brochure in one of their stores titled “Our Thoughts on Dioxin.” He read that “dioxin is known to cause cancer, genetic and reproductive defects and learning disabilities…. The only safe level of dioxin exposure is no exposure at all.” So he had the company’s “World’s Best Vanilla” tested and found that a single serving contained about 740 times the level of dioxin considered “safe” for children!

Mr. Milloy also co-founded the Free Enterprise Action Fund, which peppers corporate executives not with questions on what they are doing about climate change (theyÂ’re used to that), but why they are pointlessly pretending to do anything!

Green Hell shines the harsh light of objectivity on the usual NGO suspects, who are all here with their tame media megaphones, their corporate shakedowns and their cozy backroom deals: the Environmental Defense Fund, The Natural Resource Defense Council, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the Rainforest Action Network, the World Wildlife Fund — the laundry machines of greenwashing.

Mr. Milloy notes that these organizations seek to validate themselves with the trappings of the science that they fundamentally reject. The “precautionary principle,” for example, is the very opposite of objective science, since it seeks to make policy not on the basis of objective facts but manufactured fears. Real science thrives on the challenges of skeptics, but Green science ignores or demonizes those who question its shibboleths.

He outlines how Big Business has largely bowed before the NGOs’ “Luddite morality” and bully tactics, which include shamelessly exploiting children. NGOs stress “corporate social responsibility,” which Mr. Milloy defines as “intimidating companies into capitulating to Green demands.” They apply pressure via public pension funds, and by strong-arming companies into signing busybody sets of “principles.”

But Mr. Milloy also notes that some major corporations will make out like bandits from restrictive legislation, which they thus actively promote. GE is keen to flog its wind turbines. Goldman Sachs will take a rake-off from carbon trading. Other companies, such as Caterpillar, join the parade in the hope of being “at the table rather than on the menu.” But they’re just serving themselves up anyway.

This is not harmless appeasement. NGO junk science kills. The movement has caused millions of deaths with its demonization of pesticides, and opposes the biotechnology that has delivered — and promises further — cheap food for the poor. Mr. Milloy also takes us through the symphony of unintended results attached to issues such as ethanol and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Some of Mr. Milloy’s stories are almost beyond satire. These include the U.S. armed forces having their arm twisted to use biofuels (CAFE standards for tanks?) and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s narrow loss at the Supreme Court in its suit to prevent the U.S. Navy using sonar, lest it harm sea life. Switzerland meanwhile has legislated to preserve “plant dignity.”

He catalogues the hypocrisy of the movement’s leaders and “useful idiots,” starting with the well-publicized personal energy use of Al Gore (although of course he buys carbon offsets for his eco-sins). Then comes President Obama, who “has drunk and completely metabolized the Green Kool-Aid.”

As a Senator, Mr. Obama chastised those who wanted to keep their homes at 72F, but then proceeded to crank up the White House thermostat to orchid-growing level.

Airline owner Richard Branson spouts climate alarmism even as he promotes “luxury eco-tourism” and plans to blast the super-rich into space.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have been praised for their “eco-sensitivity,” fly a wide-bodied “party” Boeing 767.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has claimed that the climate debate is “over,” but that doesn’t sop him commuting to work by Gulfstream jet.

Although it deals overwhelmingly with the United States, this book should be required reading for all Canadians, who will be unavoidably dragged into the insanity being considered by the Obama administration. That includes “carbon tariffs” and banning the oil sands.

Green Hell is far more than a catalogue of political and business idiocy and cowardice. It represents a wake-up call against a relatively small group of enormously powerful activists whose motivation appears to be much more the control of our lives than the achievement of a better world. But not if Steve Milloy can help it.