Liberty and Tyranny (13 page)

Who would have thought that the flush toilet would become controversial? It is not only an everyday convenience, which would be enough, but critical to human health. No matter. In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, outlawing the 3.5-gallon toilet and replacing it with the 1.6-gallon toilet. The purpose was to reduce the use of water. To this day, the mandated change requires users to flush the toilet more often, which hardly saves water. A government that is powerful enough to dictate the flow of water in a toilet is a very powerful government indeed. Some Enviro-Statists even advocate for dry toilets, which are basically dirt pits, especially for the undeveloped world. They claim flush toilets would be “an environmental disaster” if China and the Third World used more of them.
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Clearly the world’s poor are among the Enviro-Statist’s most victimized populations.

Today, almost 1.6 billion people use candles and kerosene lamps to light their homes, filling them with smoke and soot and risking fire. In India, where 600 million people live without electricity, Greenpeace campaigned against the incandescent lightbulb because it emits carbon dioxide (apparently forgetting the polluting effect of burning kerosene for light). The lightbulb, they said, is “a hazardous product to everyone,” and they dubbed Philips Electronics, India’s major lightbulb producer, a “climate criminal.”
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In much of the world where the Statist reigns, the nights remain dark. In 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld commented that “if you look at a picture from the sky of the Korean Peninsula at night, South Korea is filled with lights and energy and vitality and a booming economy. North Korea is dark.”
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Even in the United States, Congress banned incandescent bulbs, by 2014, replacing them with the costlier compact fluorescent lightbulbs—which contain highly toxic
mercury
.

Those without power in India and parts of Asia also suffer through sweltering heat, routinely over 100 degrees. In 2007, the
New York Times
wrung its hands because “the world’s atmospheric scientists are concerned that the air-condition boom sweeping across Asia could lead to more serious problems” with the ozone layer.
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The washing machine, which liberated mostly women from the arduous task of hand-washing clothes, is attacked for its consumption of energy and water and use with laundry detergent.
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Lawn mowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers, and barbecue grills are all environmental targets.
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But the technology most despised by the Enviro-Statist is the automobile because it provides the individual with a tangible means to exercise his independence through mobility. Starting with the Arab oil embargo of 1973, in which the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cut oil exports to the United States for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the automobile has been relentlessly demonized as the enemy of the environment.

Among the government’s responses to the embargo was the imposition of Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards on automobiles in 1975. Its proponents argued that more efficient cars would cut gasoline use, thereby reducing reliance on foreign oil and pollution. But this position was always counterintuitive. More efficient cars reduce the per-mile cost of driving, enabling consumers to pay less than they otherwise would for driving more. In fact, the CAFE standards have not reduced America’s importation of oil. In 1970, the United States imported about 20 percent of its oil, compared with over 60 percent today.
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And while better fuel economy produces more emissions resulting from more driving, CAFE standards were never going to make a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The Heritage Foundation’s Charli E. Coon has noted that “cars and light trucks subject to fuel economy standards make up only 1.5 percent of all global man-made greenhouse gas emissions…”
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Although CAFE standards have failed to reduce gasoline consumption or significantly improve the environment, they have succeeded in killing tens of thousands of human beings. The reason: the laws of physics.

In order to meet the per-gallon fuel efficiency standards set by Congress, the automobile industry has been forced to reduce the size and weight (mass) of vehicles. Consequently, automobiles and light trucks contain more plastic and aluminum than ever before. Their human occupants are more vulnerable to injury and death from most kinds of accidents. The evidence proves the point.

In 1989, analysts at the Brookings Institution and Harvard University estimated that 2,000 to 3,900 lives are lost and 20,000 serious injuries occur each year in traffic accidents resulting from smaller, lighter cars.
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The Competitive Enterprise Institute examined 1997 traffic fatality data and concluded that CAFE standards caused between 2,600 and 4,500 deaths in 1997.
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In 1999,
USA Today
analyzed the statistical link between CAFE standards and traffic fatalities and reported that “46,000 people have died in crashes they would have survived in bigger, heavier cars…since 1975.”
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In 2001, a National Academy of Sciences panel reported that the downweighting and downsizing of light vehicles in the 1970s and early 1980s, partly due to CAFE standards, “probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.
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More Americans are killed and maimed each year from CAFE standards than American soldiers have been killed on the battlefield in Iraq each year. Yet what is the Enviro-Statist’s response to this carnage? In 2007, Congress mandated that each automobile manufacturer’s passenger vehicles average 35 miles per gallon by 2020, about a 40 percent increase over current standards for cars and trucks. So ingrained in society is the Enviro-Statist’s agenda that the effect of this policy on human life was of no consequence to Congress.

For the Conservative, scientific and technological advances, especially since the Industrial Revolution, have hugely benefited mankind. Running water and indoor plumbing enable fresh water to be brought into the home and dirty water to be removed through a system of aqueducts, wells, dams, and sewage treatment facilities; irrigating and fertilizing land creates more stable and plentiful food supplies; harnessing natural resources such as coal, oil, and gas makes possible the delivery of power to homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses and fuel for automobiles, trucks, and airplanes; networks of paved roads promote mobility, commerce, and assimilation; and the invention of medical devices and discovery of chemical substances extend and improve the quality of life.

The Conservative believes that in the context of the civil society, progress and modernity are essential to man’s well-being and fulfillment, despite their inevitable imperfections. He rejects the paganlike, antihuman crusade of the Enviro-Statist, which leads to callousness, conformity, and misery. The Conservative also understands that when the independence and liberty of the individual are subject to tyranny posing as righteousness, his right to acquire and retain private property will no longer have standing.

John Adams cautioned that “the moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
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Today homeowners, farmers, and businesses are subjected to a host of government restrictions and prohibitions that reduce the use and value of their properties, including laws relating to wet-lands and endangered species. Among the most far-reaching Enviro-Statist strategies is “smart growth”—where urban planners develop comprehensive zoning initiatives that purport to bring man back into balance with the ecosystem by severely restricting private property rights. And their focus is typically “suburban sprawl.” The urban planner’s purpose is to force populations into increasingly limited, dense areas; drive cars off the roads and increase use of public transportation or bicycle and pedestrian paths; bring the home and office closer together; and establish a communal existence. This requires severely limiting alternative forms of development and growth outside certain prescribed areas.

But just how problematic is suburban sprawl or, for that matter, development generally? In 2002, the Heritage Foundation’s Dr. Ronald D. Utt examined the federal government’s land use surveys and concluded, “[A]fter nearly 400 years of unmanaged development and rabbit-like population growth, somewhere between 3.4 percent and 5.2 percent of land in the continental United States has been consumed….”
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But what of the heavily urbanized states, which include several of the original colonies? Utt looked at them as well. “In both New York and Virginia, which were settled in the early 1600s, nearly 90 percent of the land is still undeveloped, while in Pennsylvania the share is over 85 percent, and in Maryland it is over 80 percent. In contrast, both New Jersey and Rhode Island’s developed shares hover at around one-third of the available land—some of the highest shares in the nation but still leaving both states with about two-thirds of their land undeveloped or in agricultural use.”
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But the Enviro-Statist has only just begun. His most noxious assault on humankind and the civil society is presented as man-made “global warming.” Amazingly, not long ago “global cooling” was all the rage, with warnings of cataclysmic destruction from flooding, famine, and upheaval.

In 1971, Dr. S. I. Rasool, a NASA scientist, insisted that “in the next 50 years, the fine dust man constantly puts into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees.” Rasool further claimed that “if sustained over several years—five to ten—such temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” Incidentally, in arriving at his conclusions, Rasool used, in part, a computer model created by his NASA colleague and current global warming mystic Dr. James Hansen.
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The global cooling alarm was sounded throughout the 1970s. In 1974,
Time
magazine featured an article titled “Another Ice Age?” which cited evidence purporting to show the atmosphere cooling for the previous thirty years. “Telltale signs [of global cooling] are everywhere—from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.” The article featured opinions from climate experts who suggested that mankind may have been responsible for the earth’s cooling. Reid A. Bryson of the University of Wisconsin theorized that dust and “other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight.”
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In 1975, scientists again raised the specter of global cooling. A famous article appearing in
Newsweek
magazine, titled “The Cooling World,” concluded, “The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.” It continued, “[Meteorologists] are almost unanimous in the view that the trend [of global cooling] will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” The article cited a survey completed in 1974 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealing a drop of half a degree in the average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. NOAA scientists had also concluded that “the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3 percent between 1964 and 1972.”
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Of course, there was no new Ice Age. The “almost unanimous” opinion of weather experts about man-made global cooling was wrong. The Enviro-Statist then swung in the opposite direction, insisting that it is the “almost unanimous” opinion of scientists and other experts that rather than cooling, the earth is actually warming, and man is the culprit once again.

In 2008, the same
Newsweek
that gave weight to the false science of global cooling published an article titled “Global Warming Is a Cause of This Year’s Extreme Weather.” It wrote mockingly, “It’s almost a point of pride with climatologists. Whenever some place is hit with a heat wave, drought, killer storm or other extreme weather, scientists trip over themselves to absolve global warming. No particular weather event, goes the mantra, can be blamed on something so general. Extreme weather occurred before humans began loading up the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. So this storm or that heat wave could be the result of the same natural forces that prevailed 100 years ago—random movements of air masses, unlucky confluences of high- and low-pressure systems—rather than global warming. This pretense has worn thin.”
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There is no consensus that man has influenced the earth’s temperature or that the earth’s temperature is warmer now than in past periods. And even if there were a consensus, science is not about majority rule. It either is or it is not.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen classified “scientific consensus” respecting global warming as “unscientific.” He said, “With respect to science, the assumption behind consensus is that science is a source of authority. Rather, it is a particularly effective approach to inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science; consensus is foreign. When in 1988
Newsweek
announced that all scientists agreed about global warming, this should have been a red flag of warning. Among other things, global warming is such a multifaceted issue that agreement on all or many aspects would be unreasonable.”
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