Earth Day 2010: More about blame, than conservation and stewardship.

Earth Day 2010 is here and it seems to lack the hype it once did. Gone is the weeklong celebration by the tree-huggers, Greenpeace and the multi-million dollar corporations that hope to nab a few of their dollars through green marketing campaigns. Today, it would appear that the self annointed enviromental cops have the people they want in leadership, so they can back off and let the government do it now. Or maybe it's because after 40 years of trying, the effort has accomplished nothing but hype. A Gallup Poll released on April 9 shows that Americans are today no more environmentally friendly in their actions than they were at the turn of the century. While more than three in four recycle, have reduced household energy use, and buy environmentally friendly products, these numbers have barely budged since 2000.

Excuse me if I don't act surprised. It is hardly news that everyone wants hard choices to be made, but very few people want to be the ones to make the sacrifices themselves.

When it came to wasteful spending former Senator Trent Lott once said "Pork is anything spent north of Memphis." The same mindset holds true for those who would otherwise be enviromentally friendly.

Case in point: The New York City sightseeing company Gray Line is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips that includes visits to “green spots” like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market. The fact that these tours will be taken on buses running on fossil fuels does not sit well with the first Earth Day national coordinator Denis Hayes who tells The New York Times what he thinks of such green consumerism: “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green. It is tragic.”

Even the Old Gray Lady can't help but notice:

At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business

So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.”

Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.

And then there is the left’s push for economy-killing energy taxes. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has found that cap-and-tax legislation pending in Congress would cost the average family-of-four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and a produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035. Losing that $9.4 trillion to appease the fragile sensibilities of the enviro-left – now that would be tragic.

Especially when one considers that studies clearly show that important indicators of environmental quality actually improve as incomes and levels of consumption go up.

I, for one, would be more than happy to stop increasing my carbon footprint if the government would get the hell out of my money. If I were able to keep more of it, I wouldn't have the need to be constantly burning fossil fuels to find more.

Finally, there is the growing sentiment that we've all been lied to. It's becoming hard to believe traditional media sources as they continue to hype the same old argument despite the 900-pound gorilla sitting behind Katie Couric.

It’s been a rough five months for the credibility of many of the “leading” climate scientists.

First, the ClimateGate e-mails appeared to show unethical or illegal behavior of high profile scientists and a potential conspiracy to distort science for political gain. These weren’t just a few renegade scientists; in the following months, damning information came to light about the world’s leading climate alarmists and their work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Stern Report, the U.S. National Climate Data Center and even NASA.

Even with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day coming up on April 22, Americans are skeptical about the threat of climate change. A March 2010 Gallup poll found that 48 percent of Americans think the threat of global warming is “generally exaggerated". That’s the highest in 13 years, according to Gallup.

The public’s receding fear of climate change may be related to the series of scandals and admissions that have been uncovered since Nov. 20 when e-mails from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were leaked. Those e-mails provided “ammunition” to climate skeptics about the authenticity and ethics surrounding the CRU’s work on global warming science.

Including this very damning email:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

As for me and my house, we'll continue to do the very things my family and my faith has always taught me to do; be good stewards of the resources the Lord has provided. At the same time, I will try to get away, hide and otherwise stop those who would take those resources away to give them to someone else who refuses to take the same responsibility for themselves.