By any means necessary [How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?]

National Post ^ | 2008-02-07 | Terry O'neill

[Clive]

By any means necessary

David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail. How did environmentalism become this totalitarian?

No one knows how many forests have been felled to print all the stories that have been published about David Suzuki, Canada's much-honoured but continuously controversial environmental crusader. The dead trees probably number in the many thousands, a (supposedly) global-warming-causing harvest so plenteous as to lead one to assume that preacher Suzuki might have begun moderating his apocalyptic sermonizing, lest he trigger yet another round of clear-cutting.

But no. Instead, Suzuki has lately pumped up his rhetoric with even more frantic language, apparently as part of an all-out, last-ditch attempt to persuade Canadians that the world is fast approaching an environmental meltdown. It's not clear whether he's changing any minds with his new bellicosity, but he has at least been doing his bit to keep the country's loggers busy.

So what exactly has Suzuki, who is on the university-lecture circuit these days, been saying? For starters, he told a University of Toronto audience last month that the next federal election ought to be about the environment. No problem there. However, as reported by a student newspaper, he then opined that government leaders who aren't acting quickly enough to save the environment "should go to jail for what they're not doing right now … What our government is not doing is a criminal act."

His allegation of law-breaking was apparently no mere slip of the tongue. Speaking a few weeks later at McGill University, Suzuki again equated governments' alleged inaction on the environment with a criminal act; in fact, he is reported to have said students ought to find a legal way to throw politicians in jail for ignoring climate-change science.

The geneticist-turned-broadcaster had particularly harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta because of their alleged favouring of economic growth over environmental protection. "It is an intergenerational crime" -- there's that concept again -- "that, in the face of the work of scientists over the last 20 years, they keep dithering as they are," Suzuki declared.

Suzuki's alarmism is nothing new, and more-prudent scientists have long ago answered his hyperbole and exposed his faulty logic. And it's also long been abundantly clear from his speeches and books that his position is driven by both a quasi-religious zeal and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of humanity's relationship with the natural world.

On this latter matter, he told the McGill crowd there is actually no difference between human beings and the environment in which they live. "We are the environment. There is no distinction," he declared, thereby equating, for example, a newborn baby with a mud puddle. How heartening.

But this is old ground. What we haven't seen from him until now is such an incendiary call to arms. Taking to the streets to protest climatechange inaction is one thing. Calling for the jailing of politicians is quite another -- especially considering the fact that, the last time I checked anyway, there is nothing in the Criminal Code of Canada to prevent the Prime Minister from attempting to enhance both the country's economy and its environment. It's called balance.

We shouldn't really be surprised at Suzuki's latest tactic. Eco-pirate Paul Watson, formerly of the Sea Shepherd Society, has long argued that he answers not to the law of man, but to the law of nature. And we're not talking here about his need to take bathroom breaks while chasing down whaling ships on the high seas. Suzuki now seems to be adopting a similar philosophy: that human-written law should be subordinate to that of Mother Nature (except, of course, when it comes to incarceration; human-constructed jails are so much more reliable than caves or thickets). And, of course, it's only Watson and Suzuki's special hot-line to Gaia that allows them to interpret nature's law; the rest of us unenlightened ones need not apply.

We should also not be surprised at the intolerance that permeates Suzuki's "lock 'em up" rhetoric. After all, despite the multicultural mantra that we "celebrate our differences," there's a disturbingly illiberal tendency these days (as shown in the recent "human-rights" prosecutions of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, for example) to censor those with whom one doesn't agree. It's only a very small step to try to throw such disagreeable persons into prison, too. Perhaps U.S. author Jonah Goldberg ought to be thinking of adding a chapter to his high-profile new book, Liberal Fascism, to explore this subject further.

Actually, Czech President Vaclav Klaus (who, coincidentally, is up for reelection tomorrow) has already done a lot of thinking in this area and has concluded that environmental zealotry poses as great a threat to human freedom as did communism. Klaus, whose book Our Planet is Blue not Green will soon be translated into English, believes that climate-change alarmists persuade governments to launch costly and unnecessary programs that have the ultimate effect of impoverishing people, thereby making them less free.

"When we look at it in a proper historical perspective, the issue is -- once again -- freedom and its enemies," Klaus wrote last year. "Those of us who feel very strongly about it can never accept the irrationality with which the current world has embraced climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind, as well as the irrationality of [anti-globalwarming] measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."

Suzuki is actually supporting a more direct attack on freedom than that which worries Klaus. Suzuki's plan would lead to a loss of freedom, not though punitive economic measures, but through the incarceration of politicians with whom he disagrees. I have a better idea: Let the court of public opinion decide this at the polls. And if Suzuki doesn't like the democratic outcome, he can always show his displeasure by giving us back his Order of Canada medal.

oneills@telus.net - Terry O'Neill is a Vancouver editor and writer.

[Reeses]

The average CO2 content of our atmosphere is one third of one percent.

I think you are off by a factor of 10 times too high. 350ppm / 1,000,000 = 0.035%, one third of one tenth of one percent.

[Darnright]

Bump

[Halgr]

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559991/atmosphere.html

http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR032204.html

.03 is one third of one percent

[Squawk 8888]

what I haven’t quite figured out yet, is who is the real man behind the curtain.

Al Gore, Maurice Strong, Paul Desmarais and Jean Chrétien all stand to make a fortune off the global warming scare. They have substantial holdings in firms that engage in "carbon credit" trading.

[Squawk 8888]

Leftists have been trying to destroy their respective home countries for decades. You would think hey would be in *favor* of global warming(?)

Here in Canada, global warming is a good thing because it will improve crop yields and increase the amount of arable land. It stands to reason, then, that the Canadian left would hate it.

[The Great RJ]

Global warming is nothing less than a religious cult, that sees anyone who disagrees with their dogma as a heretic who should be persecuted and forced to submit to orthodoxy. Suzuki is just continuing the traditions of Torquemada, the head of the Spanish Inquisition.

[Reeses]

.03 is one third of one percent

1 / 3 ~= 0.3 not 0.03. You're off by 10.

[Halgr]

Thanks for that Info...interesting

You souldn’t happen to have a link would you?

And didn’t Rothschild write a book on the subject...and fund more than several organizations?

[Reeses]

There is a “tipping point” for real estate to dramatically jump in value and that is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. For every degree the global climate goes up the tipping point moves about 70 miles north. If GW really happens a real estate speculator could get very wealthy specializing in buying tipping point land.

[Quix]

How?

By globalist design—a deliberate part of their plans for decades.

[Squawk 8888]

Just a couple of degrees would turn the Lake Erie shore into a gold mine, not to mention the farmland in southwestern Ontario.

[gondramB]

>>Thanks for the perspective. You’re right, it’s not new. What is new is that, for some reason, it’s starting to gain traction with many many in the West.<<

The hard part for me is stay balanced in the face of extremism.

Environmental fanatics trying to undercut civilization - I want to say “screw them and the environment.”

But that’s not right either.

I try to use an area where I’m well grounded as a guide.

There are black leaders who want special rights for being black. There are feminist leaders who want special rights for being female. I know not to over-react - they get equal rights, no more, no less.

I just have to do that with the environment. We need clean air and water just as if the fanatics weren’t insisting on something crazy. We should what is sensible and affordable with the environment, no more, no less.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I think a powerful counter argument to extreme environmentalism lays hidden within this very article. It can be found in the words of David Suzuki himself.

“We are the environment. There is no distinction,”

If this is accepted as fact, then man made global warming is no more unnatural than increased sunspots or an El Niño condition. All the rest is just an engineering problem, as another Freeper once posted.

Post of the day!!!

If man is "part of nature," everything we do is "natural!" But don't expect the Lefties to be consistent. After all, in the name of "equality" and "we are all the same" they have been creating a hierarchical system for decades in which the groups representing the "antithesis" (the "counterrevolutionaries" or "oppressors") are treated very very very differently than the "oppressed, progressive" groups representing the "thesis" (the revolution).

[steelyourfaith]

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[Catholic Canadian]

Canada stands to benefit greatly from any warming, turning frozen land into prime real estate. What’s really going on is they are using the issue as an excuse to attack Canada’s eternal object of envy: the USA.

The Canadian Left is very envious of the US, and they hate themselves for it.

[Catholic Canadian]

As an Addendum, the Canadian Right admire the United States and would like to steer our country more towards being like the United States, but at the same time not operating out of envy. The left want the United States destroyed.