Posted on 05/13/2007 6:59:49 AM PDT by Reform Canada
May 11, 2007
Unmasking Global Warming: The Case of Mikhail Gorbachev By Vasko Kohlmayer | View comments It is as paradoxical as it is revealing that the man who now parades as an angel of ecological salvation is by virtue of his actions at Chernobyl and elsewhere responsible for more environmental destruction than any other person alive.
The most remarkable aspect of the man-made global warming claim is the lack of solid scientific evidence for it. Yet there are those whose apparent goal it is to advance this theory at all costs. Blatant in their disregard of the facts, they try to convince as many as would believe of the real nature of this alleged danger. But since this activism does not rest on scientific evidence or hard facts, it must be driven by motives other than those publicly stated. This much at least should be obvious, but sadly far too many people have failed to make this inference. Blinded by fear, they have not considered the possibility that those fanning the flames of hysteria may harbor ulterior motives.
To see just what those motives may be, we need to go no further than Mikhail Gorbachev, whose remarkable political transformation offers a striking insight into the real character of the man-made global warming movement.
Formerly leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev is now one of the world’s most vocal global warming activists. This is an unlikely role indeed for a man who during his years in power showed no inclination to address environmental issues. This could not have been for lack of opportunity, given that he presided over a country which suffered from extensive ecological damage wrought by years of gross disregard and mismanagement. Had he had the inclination, there was much to do about the lamentable state of his country’s environmental condition. Gorbachev, however, not only did nothing, but brazenly continued the Soviet regime’s ecologically disastrous policies.
But nothing revealed his true attitudes more glaringly than the explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. His first reaction was not to launch a clean-up operation, but to conceal the fact. Initially he denied that anything happened at all. Then, when radioactive clouds reached countries hundreds of kilometers away, he claimed that it was only a 'minor' accident. It was only under the pressure of growing evidence that Gorbachev finally admitted the truth. While mounting the cover-up, the time and energy that could have been used to contend with the unfolding ecological catastrophe were irretrievably lost. But that was not all, for Gorbachev also decided to sacrifice the lives of thousands whom he refused to evacuate or even notify of the danger. Scores died and countless others suffered from diseases caused by exposure to radiation. Many could have been saved had Gorbachev done the decent thing. Chernobyl thus stands as tragic evidence of Gorbachev’s disdain both for nature and human life which, sadly, is all too often found in those who espouse the communist worldview.
Yet today this man is one of the world’s most prominent eco-lobbyists and an ardent proponent of global warming. The question is how we are to reconcile Gorbachev’s past behavior of environmental destructiveness with his present-day activism. We would do well to ponder this, because the answer sheds light not only on a wily personal reinvention, but also on the motives of those responsible for the creation and spreading of the global warming hysteria.
The many interviews and statements made by Gorbachev since the collapse of the Soviet Union offer important clues. What they essentially reveal is that despite the ignominious fall of communism, Gorbachev has not changed his basic ideological convictions. In other words, this life-long party apparatchik remains an unrepentant communist to this day. This should surprise no one, since people rarely change their thinking later in life, especially if they are as willful and ideologically driven as Gorbachev apparently was. After all, it was his ideological rigor that enabled him to successfully negotiate the dangerous waters of Soviet politics and emerge as his country’s supreme leader barely a week after his fifty-fourth birthday.
But ejected from power less than seven years later, he faced a challenge. Unwilling to retire, he needed to find a new outlet for his political energies. This posed a problem, because Gorbachev could not afford to openly fly the banner of his communist convictions, since a declaration of allegiance to this well-discredited ideology would have resulted in his marginalization if not ridicule.
To remain credible, Gorbachev had to look for a more respectable platform from which to continue his efforts. This he quickly found in environmentalism and less than two years after his fall from power he founded Green Cross International, a Geneva-based eco lobby group.
It is not at all surprising that Gorbachev – like so many others on the Left – has found environmentalism so attractive given that it in a furtive way tends toward the very essence of socialism. It is precisely this covert quality that makes this brand of activism so palatable to true believers in the post-communist era.
Environmentalism’s socialist tendencies are already inherent in its starting premise, which is that this world is headed for destruction because of the way modern societies conduct their life and affairs. The principal culprits are the business enterprise – whose relentless pursuit of profit has ecologically devastating consequences – and the masses whose excessive and irresponsible consumption exacerbate the already precarious situation. The only way to avert the looming catastrophe, then, is to rein in the greedy businessmen and direct people’s behavior in environmentally conducive ways. This naturally can only be done by a government properly equipped for the great task at hand. The net result of environmental activism is thus an empowered state exercising close oversight over the business and private spheres. In Marx’s parlance, the means of production – and indeed nearly all aspects of societal life – are placed under state control. This is nothing if not socialism rising, and since it also happens to be something Gorbachev has been striving for all of his life, it should come as no surprise that he has been an enthusiastic proponent ever since Marxism-Leninism became a byword for failure.
But while even the most basic forms environmentalism have proven themselves to be a potent vehicle for advancing socialist ideals, the potential of global warming has exceeded almost all expectations in this regard. All of the elements of the harrowing scenario it so vividly paints – its global scope, its imminence, its catastrophic potential – point toward the need for immediate and drastic measures on a wide scale. It should not take very long to realize that such a comprehensive response can only be mounted by a state armed with vast powers to decree, to regulate and to tax, powers which the devotees are only too eager to grant.
It is precisely for these reasons that the idea of man-made global warming so appeals to Mikhail Gorbachev, who never did anything for the environment when he was in the position to do so. It is as paradoxical as it is revealing that this man who now parades as an angel of ecological salvation is by virtue of his actions at Chernobyl and elsewhere responsible for more environmental destruction than any other person alive.
The case of Mikhail Gorbachev carries an outstanding educational value, because it shows what the global warming alarmism is ultimately about. The glaring deceitfulness and duplicity on display here could well serve as emblems for the whole movement whose real objectives are sharply at variance with its promulgated goals.
We can only regret that President Reagan is no longer around to admonish Gorbachev for his spurious activism in the same way he chastised him for his dictatorial high-handedness by the Berlin Wall. One can almost picture Ronald Reagan standing in Kyoto’s main square rebuking this old communist thus:
Mr. Gorbachev, if there is any honesty left in your heart, take off your mask. Do not exploit lies to further your devious agenda. Tell us candidly what your goals are so that we can have an honest debate. Stop erecting those bogus smokescreens and stop scaring the gullible with pseudo-science. Mr. Gorbachev, take off that ugly green mask.
And so should the whole man-made global warming lobby. http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/05/11/unmasking-global-warming-the-case-of-mikhail-gorbachev/
Global warming advocates know that there is a lot of money in it for them. They also realize that it is just another way of attempting to control the masses. If they get their way, not only will it make them millionares, like Gore and his movie, but they will be able to dictate what type of car you drive, what kind of home you live in, what type of building you will do your shopping in and the list goes on. Global warming advocates, like Al Gore, know that if they position themselves correctly, they will benefit financially and the tree huggers will follow by the millions, gladly giving them their money and allowing them to control their every move. Al Gore and people like him will play on “The sky is falling” idea and they WILL benefit from it and they know it.
A truly Reaganesque man could say to Al Gore-bachev today: Mr. Al Gore-bachev, “if there is any honesty in your heart, take off your mask. Do not exploit your lies to further your devious agenda. Tell us candidly what your goals are so that we can have an honest debate. Stop erecting those bogus smokescreens and stop scaring the gullible with pseudo-science.” Mr. Al Gore-bachev, “take off that ugly green mask.”
More than 100 emergency workers on the site of the accident on 26 April 1986 suffered radiation sickness, and 41 of them died.
snip
The report says other evidence of increases in radiation-related diseases is very limited. 'Intensive efforts to identify an excess of leukaemia in the evacuated and controlled zone populations and recovery workers were made without success. There remains no internationally accredited evidence of an excess of leukaemia.' There is also no evidence of an increase in other cancers, and there has been no statistical increase in deformities in babies. The only deformities related to radiation were among babies of pregnant women working on the site at the time of the explosion.
In the nearly 15 years since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe thousands of people have died and hundreds of thousands of births affected by its fallout. But the deaths are due to radiophobia, which caused extensive political fallout, and not from radiation-induced illness. According to UN scientists looking at the medical effects of Chernobyl, the real disaster has been psychosomatic disorders that were exacerbated by the mass media hysteria at the time. This hysteria encouraged inappropriate government actions in the former Soviet Union such as forced evacuations from locations that might have been contaminated with radiation.
Following the accident there was a small increase in radiation levels in Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus. Massive radiation screening programmes were established in these regions and in other countries such as Poland. Incidents of thyroid cancers (the form of cancer most likely following acute exposure to radiation) had not increased until 1996. Indeed the Brestoblast region of Belarus, the area with the second lowest radiation level, had the highest incidents of thyroid cancer. There has been an excess of 1,800 cases of childhood thyroid cancer in the whole of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, according to the recent report, but even this may be partly due to previous under-reporting.
According to a Swedish radiobiologist, Professor Gunnar Walinder, the LNT hypothesis, and not radiation, is the real health hazard. The belief that any exposure may be harmful leads to disproportionate policies to remove people from this hypothetical danger.
Jaworowski estimates that nearly 5 million people in the former Soviet Union have been affected by severe psychological stress, leading to psychosomatic diseases. The main stress was inflicted on those living in areas where the media and Government informed them that it was fatal to live. Forced evacuations of the 850,000 newly categorized "Chernobyl victims" was planned. In the end, 400,000 people were forced to move.
Many of these people suffered from gastro-intestinal, endocrinological and other non-radiation induced problems. Relocation occurred for over 5 years, causing the destruction of family and community social networks, and according to Jaworowski "exposed the relocated persons to resentment and ostracism in the new localities, where old inhabitants treated them as privileged intruders." Relocation started with those exposed to most radiation (levels about the sixth the background level in Iran), but soon people exposed to doses of radiation lower than in Cornwall were being moved.
Among those moved, morbidity and mortality rates were far higher than those who stayed behind. And the cost of the process ran into billions of dollars. One estimate endorsed by Jaworowski puts the cost to Belarus at $86 billion. Perhaps saddest of all is that as many as 200,000 abortions were conducted of wanted pregnancies in order to avoid non-existent radiation damage to the fetus.
The end result of government action, activist pressure and media campaigns has been the spawning of a victim culture, where half of the Ukraine says their health has been adversely affected by Chernobyl.
You will never see that happen.....it would have a negative impact on his wallet. One thing to remember about Al Gore....he spent his whole life, preparing for the office of the President of the U.S. When the American people rejected him, he just about lost it, mentally. Now he is attempting to get some control back by controlling how we live. I honestly believe that his plan is to punish the American people for not electing him to an office that, he believes in his own mind, he deserved.
Al Gore, Rudy Gulianni, Hillary, Gorbachev are all similar types, Fascists and Neo-Fascists.
>You will never see that happen.<
Somehow I have a very clear mental image of Duncan Hunter saying such a thing to Al Gore in a debate scenario.
Yup....I don’t believe that Rudy is the right person to run this country. I tend to lean towards Romney, F. Thompson or Newt Gingrich. I think that Newt would be the strongest when it comes to running and protecting this country but I don’t believe the people would elect him. They would be afraid of him because he’ll tell it like it is and they don’t want the truth. What is that saying? “You can’t handle the truth.”
Richard C Hoagland points out that for Pluto to be warming as much as it is by direct sunlight earth would be baked dry by the same sun. Nevertheless, the entire solar system seems to be warming. While human industrial activities contribute, most of earth’s warming is due to the same natural cause as Pluto, etc.
They don't need "evidence" they have "consensus".
You clearly cannot: you know too little about dictatorial regimes in general and USSR in particular. Neither Gorbachev, nor anyone else would address ecological issue when the world is on the brink of war: if a significant part of the kGB balked at his reconciliation with the west and ''letting go'' of the Soviet colonies, they would start a nuclear war, the plans for which have been prepared long before. That is what Gorbachev faced on one hand and starving (yes, literally) starving population.
Nor was he free in choosing his reaction to Chernobyl. Secrecy was standard, and that is what the Party and the KGB demanded from him.
Finally, whatever insight you get into Gorbachev, says nothing at all about Gore, for instance: the circumstances are so vastly different. The above-quoted statement is a logical fallacy.
Thanks for the ping.
What, they just found out about “follow the money?”
What is the emperor wearing today?
Bookmarked.
Actually, there is another theory of why marxists adopted environmentalism.
This theory holds that marxists still believe in their theory that the capitalists would force down wages until the common folks faced with starvation would revolt ushering in socialism. Their principal problem was explaining why the common folk standards of living increased under capitalism.
Marxists reached the conclusion that the capitalists ravaged the environment in order to produce the excess wealth used to raise the standard of living for the common folk. It follows then, that if the marxists can force draconian environmental measures on the capitalists, then the common folk will starve and revolt and usher in socialism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.