Source:  SPPI  

by Paul Driessen

Anti-pesticide activists falsely blame new pesticides for bee colony problems

Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new.

Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. “If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, “they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria. (more…)

Source:  The Hill

Source:  No Frakking Consensus

Here in Canada, David Suzuki’s recent decision to remove himself from the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation has been a hot topic. Suzuki is our version of Al Gore. Actually, that’s not quite fair. Gore has no scientific background. The 76-year-old Suzuki, on the other hand, is a trained geneticist.

Source: Townhall

By now, anyone watching the political debates over the Keystone XL pipeline is aware of the massive misinformation campaign that opponents of the project have used to delay that critical project. From disputing jobs that will be created by this needed asset, to hoisting an inflatable tube around the White House and shipping Hollywood’s B-list to the nation’s capital to get arrested in so-called “civil disobedience actions,” opponents have certainly made a lot of noise.

While the talking points used by these groups have been refuted time and again, several have penetrated the public narrative surrounding the project. The project will kill jobs, not create them (untrue – it will create 20,000 jobs directly and 100,000 indirectly). The pipeline will be unsafe and prone to leaks (also untrue – the Obama Administration’s State Department has found it will be the safest pipeline ever built). Oil sands crude will increase greenhouse gas emissions (blocking Keystone XL will lead to higher GHG emissions and no reduction in the use of oil).

But perhaps the biggest whopper of all is the claim that Keystone XL will raise gasoline prices. The idea that the construction of a pipeline carrying 700,000 barrels of oil per day from the United States and Canada, thus reducing our reliance on OPEC and providing a more stable supply of petroleum, will somehow increase prices is an interesting proposition. It almost requires an individual to abandon logic and rational thought altogether. (more…)

Source:  American Thinker

By Norman Rogers

Imagine that you are a climate scientist and the Earth is threatened with a climate disaster.  You need to warn the people of Earth and lobby Earth’s governments.  If you are tired of poring over boring computer printouts, you may be only too ready to accept this mission of transcendent importance.

On the other hand, maybe you have lost touch with reality.  Maybe you have become a true believer fighting a dubious battle.  Maybe you are Dr. James Hansen, high civil servant, recipient of cash awards from left-wing foundations, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  Hansen was arrested in front of the White House, dressed up to look like J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 1950s scientific martyr.  Hansen wants CEOs of energy companies to be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.” (more…)

Source:  Think Progress Green

By Bill McKibben

Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built. (more…)

Source:  The Blaze

“Do we need a militant movement to save the planet (and ourselves)?”

That was the question posed in recent article on the left-wing site Alternet when it interviewed a group of radical environmentalists who are allegedly endorsing “Decisive Ecological Warfare.” And in order to realize their goal of ridding the planet of industrial civilization — even modern agriculture —  the group intends to employ tactics “of both militaries and insurgents the world over.”

One of the activists, Derrick Jensen, allegedly even believes those who destroy the environment should be summarily executed:   “If it were up to me, all the people associated with the Gulf oil spill, which is murdering the Gulf, would be executed. That would be part of the function of a state,” said Jensen. (more…)

Source:  Slate

For do-gooder NGOs in Cambodia, accommodation with the regime is very profitable.

By Ken Silverstein

On a typically warm, muggy evening in Phnom Penh earlier this year, I asked a twentysomething British woman for directions to Titanic, a restaurant overlooking the Tonle Sap River.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I heard the food was good,” I said, somewhat confused.

“Oh, because there’s a massive party there tonight for the Westerners!” she breathlessly replied.

Yes, it’s always a fine time to be an expatriate aid worker in Cambodia, where several thousand NGOs and aid organizations operate. By day, swarms of foreign do-gooders clog the streets of Phnom Penh in their company-provided SUVs, and by night they fill bars, restaurants, and nightclubs. Collectively, NGO workers represent a privileged caste, isolated and detached from the people who serve as the objects of their benevolence. It’s all reminiscent of those clueless young GOP zealots sent to staff the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, except the NGO workers in Cambodia aren’t peddling Republican philosophy and the American way, but rather the ideology of altruism. (more…)

Source:  Numbers of the Month

Numbers watch

by John Brignell

The way to bring down a modern state is to attack its energy, manufacturing and transport systems, hence the dam busters and the bombing of German railways and factories during the Second World War. Nowadays, however, developed nations are under attack from the Enemy Within, the neo-Marxist Greenies. Greenpeace, which in its inchoate form was a fairly straight environmental campaigning group, was soon taken over by political extremists and after its conversion to an apocalyptic vision lost original members such as Patrick Moore; but over time this has also happened to other mainstream parties. The UK is the world basket case in this respect (witness the passing without comment of the destructive carbon tax, which is being strongly resisted in other western countries) and almost the entire British political class have become true believers. Nevertheless, countries far apart in both distance and character, such as Australia and Germany , are manoeuvred relentlessly by their green parliamentary minorities in the direction of economic suicide. (more…)

Source:  Heritage Foundation

In November 2009, a dozen protesters triggered a traffic jam in an intersection of Chicago’s financial sector by laying down in a circle in the middle of the road, locking their arms together inside pieces of pipe. They were protesting the city’s climate exchange, part of a scheme to regulate CO2 emissions through permits. Ironically, it was a case of a left-leaning plan being attacked by the far left.

After a few hours, the activists were arrested, including among their ranks members of groups like the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). According to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website, about six months later, the agency awarded LVEJO a $25,000 environmental justice grant, which was to be directed to “…work[ing] in coalition with their partners to implement 3 areas of Climate Change Mitigation…” The first “area” is to “…conduct a grassroots Clean Power Campaign in the Chicago Region to address coal power plant emissions…” (more…)

Source:  Washington Times

Radical green James Hansen pushes Chinese war on American economy

Imagine if a former military officer, a traditional-values conservative now an attache at the State Department, wrote for a largely foreign audience to urge an international boycott of U.S. goods. The aim was to ruin the American economy to protest the new policy of allowing open homosexuality in the armed forces. Media outlets and politicians would be screaming for his dismissal. Free speech is one thing, but nobody on the taxpayer dole in a position of responsibility would be allowed to call for the destruction of our economy. One way or another, the man would be forced out.

Now consider James E. Hansen, director of the taxpayer-funded NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Last week, blogger Marc Morano discovered a Nov. 24 blog post by Mr. Hansen calling on China to lead an international effort to impose fees on carbon-dioxide emissions, then lead the World Trade Organization to allow import fees on goods from any county – with the U.S. being the target – without such fees. The goal would be to punish America, causing “continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being,” until the “fossil-money- ‘democracy’” no longer “rules the roost in Washington.” Mr. Hansen also praised communist Chinese leadership for “tak[ing] the long view … in contrast to the West with its [lamentably] short election cycles.” (more…)

Last week, Michael Ignatieff and 142 other Members of Parliament voted in favour of a motion to ban oil tanker traffic on the north coast of British Columbia. This week, Liberal MP Joyce Murray from Vancouver Quadra introduced Bill C-606 to put that motion into law by amending the Canada Shipping Act to prohibit oil tanker traffic on the north and central coast of British Columbia.

Ms. Murray and every single one of those MPs played right into the hands of the U.S. foundations seeking to block oil tanker traffic. Whether intentional or not, these actions will also stop oil exports to Asia. On the surface, this is about oil, Canada’s single most important export. More important, this is about the sovereignty of our country, which should be decided by Canadians, not foreign-funded campaigns. (more…)

Source:  Canada Free Press

by Paul Driessen

“China’s control of a key minerals market has US military thinkers and policy makers worried about access to materials that are essential for 21st-century technology like smartphones – and smart bombs,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Plus stealth fighter jets, digital cameras, computer hard drives – and wind turbine magnets, solar panels, hybrid and electric car batteries, compact fluorescent light bulbs, catalytic converters, and more.

China’s dominance in mining and processing 17 “rare earth” metals “has raised alarms in Washington,” says the Journal. These unique metallic elements have powerful magnetic properties that make them sine qua non for high-tech, miniaturized and renewable energy equipment.

China currently produces fully 97% of the world’s rare-earth oxides, the raw materials that can be refined into metals and blended into specialty alloys for defense, commercial and power-generation components. However, the Middle Kingdom has slashed its rare-earth oxide and metal exports. (more…)