Fresh from controversial, unuttered racist remarks that
spurred sports businessman Dave Checketts to drop him from his
bid to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, talk radio magnate
Rush
Limbaugh last week steamed environoiacs
with a riff about New York Times global
warming alarmist
Andrew Revkin.
The king of EIB expounded on a theme suggested by the
editors of Investor’s Business Daily,
who
wondered — based upon Revkin’s
comments at conference panel discussion about “the population
part of the climate and energy challenge” — whether we are
headed toward a “cap-and-trade for babies.” Revkin
explained his remarks at his “Dot
Earth” blog:
So I mused on whether the next logical step, in a world
increasingly fixated with carbon markets, would be carbon
credits for avoided kids. This is something particularly
relevant in the United States, which — nearly unique for rich
countries — has a
fast-growing population and very
high rates of emissions per person….
As I put it…: “Should you get credit — if we’re going to
become carbon-centric — for having a one-child family when you
could have had two or three. And obviously it’s just a thought
experiment, but it raises some interesting questions about all
this.”
It’s just unfathomable to propose carbon credits for
avoided children, if we are to believe Revkin. Too radical an
idea for him, you know…heh, heh…but hey, somebody
else might just propose it! It’s just a
“thought experiment.”
And what a beaker in that brain! To come up with such
crackpottery you need to start with the following premises: that
CO2 is pollution rather than a life-giving gas; that
human-generated CO2 is more destructive than that of the rest of
the mammal population; and because of the first two premises, a
reduction in the number of humans is needed to solve the
“pollution” problem. While
The Amazing Revkin may dismiss the last
idea as a mind exercise, he certainly embraces the first two
principles. In fact, he’s
written books that
support the idea.
That’s where Rush comes in. After a long monologue Tuesday
about the philosophical beliefs about overpopulation by
environmentalists, including some in the Obama administration,
the battered (by some) yet beloved (by others) talk host
said:
This guy from the New York Times,
if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet,
humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their
natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on
earth, Andrew Revkin, Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill
yourself and help the planet by dying?
Isolating that out of context, as
Media
Matters for America and the Center for
Environmental Journalism’s Tom
Yulsman intentionally did, and you’ve got
red meat remarks for leftists. But Limbaugh’s point was simply an
“align your actions with your beliefs” challenge — part
of
a long monologue — to hypocritical
environmental activists:
See, liberals always come up with these laws, these
plans, these solutions, and they’re always for everybody
else. You go and limit the number of kids you
have. You go drive a Yugo. You go get rid of your big
house. You go turn your thermostat up or down, you go do
this, you go do that….
If I may get serious with you for a moment, the left, if
you believe them, believes that there’s one species on the
planet destroying it. Now, all mammals exhale carbon
dioxide. But somehow only man, only human beings’ carbon
dioxide is destroying the planet. It’s only man in all of his
endeavors, particularly Capitalist Man, Western Culture man.
Those are the culprits! We are the real culprits. We are
destroying the planet. We are the one species on the planet
that’s destroying it.
While Revkin hoped Limbaugh’s “kill yourself”
suggestion was itself a “thought experiment,” the
Times reporter gave other evidence that his
own views on child cutbacks were more than just an idea. For
example, Revkin’s
response characterized a
Worldwatch Institute blog post as
an appropriate context for his statements:
At a Wilson
Center discussion on Wednesday, New
York Times reporter Andrew Revkin considered this idea and
stated that having fewer children was one of the best ways that
individuals could reduce their carbon footprints. Humans
reproduce exponentially, and having two children instead of
three could reduce energy consumption that would otherwise
occur for generations.
Was it just an idea, or something more? Then there’s
this nugget from Revkin in
September:
I recently raised the question of whether this means
we’ll soon see a market in baby-avoidance carbon credits
similar to efforts to sell CO2 credits
for avoiding deforestation. This is purely a thought
experiment, not a proposal. But the issue is one that is rarely
discussed in climate treaty talks or in debates over United
States climate legislation. If anything, the population-climate
question is more pressing in the United States than in
developing countries, given the high per-capita carbon dioxide
emissions here and the rate of
population growth. If giving women a way to limit family
size is such a cheap win for emissions, why isn’t it in the
mix?
Conclusion: Revkin may have a lot of thought experiments,
but he sure is pushy about them.
