It's a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming — at least that's what some would have us believe.
Tough, national-security language is borrowed from the former and applied to the latter to make the case: "I really consider this a national security issue," celebrity activist and "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David said, and hoped the film would serve as a "wake-up call."
"Truth" star Al Gore calls global warming a "planetary emergency" and speaks of a clash between "civilization and the planet."
Likewise, Bill Clinton's "first worry" is climate change. "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it," the reputedly intelligent ex-president told a World Economic Forum audience earlier this year. Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, says we're in the "11th Hour."
No wonder that while Islamic terrorism claims lives by the thousands every year, Hollywood churns out movies about the menace of Joe McCarthy, the Crusaders, Israeli Mossad and Richard Nixon. Freud called it displacement.
Let's be honest: people fixate on the environment when they can't deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives the non-hawks a chance to look tough. They figure, "Let's flex our muscle with this Mother Nature thing. Let's take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Let's show 'em we can be tough too." So they play up climate change like it's as urgent as terrorism, which they claim is overstated.
Before "An Inconvenient Truth" came along, we were treated to "The Day After Tomorrow," which foretold of an imminent warming disaster and was being used to promote signing of the Kyoto Treaty. Forget the Patriot Act — who needs it — it's Kyoto that'll save you. These people worry about junk science that may or may not kill them in a thousand years instead of the people who really are trying to kill them the day after tomorrow.
In fact, the more menacing terrorism becomes, the more they worry about the weather. Scared out of their wits and at a loss for how to fight terrorists — which requires testicles — they confront "climate change," which doesn't actually require doing anything aside from spending other people's money like a bitch. Yes, let's spend trillions of dollars on something that may not be real, may not need fixing, or may not be possible to fix. No wonder some of these people chain themselves to trees — they think money grows on them. (One plausible theory posits that this whole global warming scare is just another scheme to bankrupt the American economy, so that the socialists can turn around and say, "See? We told you capitalism doesn't work!")
Meanwhile, a real solution to a real problem — say, missile defense — is regarded as a joke by these types. So while the hawks among us worry about preventing the Armageddon that's coming, our modern-day hippies just want to make sure the planet is in pristine condition when it does.
Why are these people so worried about the environment, anyway? It's not like they're living on this planet. Speaking of which, scientists have recently discovered global warming on Mars. See that? Martians need to stop driving those damned SUVs!
Interestingly, even Gore can't resist an apocalyptic tone when preaching the gospel of doom: "The Book of Revelation [says] God will destroy those who destroy his creation." He notes that "Noah was commanded to preserve biodiversity," and asks audiences to believe that we have less than 10 years before we "cross a point of no return."
He also says we "have to think differently about war" — a reference to war's environmental consequences (and a handy excuse to not fight the enemy). Mind you, this comes from a man who has compared the U.S. military to a totalitarian regime. Yeah, I'd prefer to talk about the weather now too.
For some reason, Democrats are commonly thought to be better for the environment than Republicans. But it's liberals who are polluting our water supply with all their anti-depressant medications. That's not Republican Prozac in the water (Republicans can function in reality; they don't need to create an alternate universe for themselves like Hollywood or academia). Perhaps if Democrats were less liberal, they wouldn't need so much medication? They might even be able to face their enemies.
"We have a short time in the life of the planet to turn this around," Bill Clinton told a July audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, adding that if Democrats hoped to win in November, they should focus on climate change — which he called a much more important issue than he thought when he was in office. Note that this grave warning comes from a man who declined to bring bin Laden to justice when Sudan offered him on a silver platter and instead allied us with bin Laden in Kosovo and Bosnia; from a man who didn't respond to the 1993 World Trade Center attack or any of the other attacks against us on his watch; and from a man who quashed the FBI investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing despite evidence pointing to a Middle Eastern connection. Sure enough, Clinton says Democrats should stress the national security angle of clean energy, according to the Vail Daily newspaper.
Memo to the Left: That heat you're feeling isn't global warming. It's global Islam. It's real, and it's getting closer.
But having found a warm and fuzzy cause to snuggle up against in this big, bad, scary world, the enviros pick a fight with the one guy they're not scared of: America. Notice that the undercurrent in all the doomsday rhetoric is America as chief culprit in the axis of enviro-evil (just as it is in all the world's turmoil). Some even want to hold the U.S. legally liable for rising sea levels in other countries because of our carbon dioxide emissions — even though an awful lot of people from those countries move here to do their emitting. (Can we be legally liable if half of them come here illegally?)
Whether human-impacted global warming is real or not, we shouldn't worry about the distant future. Using an enviro-doomsday computerized weather model, I calculated that our catastrophe-to-be should befall us soon after the caliphate has completed its takeover. Just in time to put the planet out of its misery.
