The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Enviros on the Run

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Enviros on the Run

By Doug Bandow on 8.31.09 @ 5:10PM

The environmental lobby isn't doing well. And, surprise, surprise!, the lobby says it's all the fault of industry. Reports the Washington Post:

It seems that environmentalists are struggling in a fight they have spent years setting up. They are making slow progress adapting a movement built for other goals -- building alarm over climate change, encouraging people to "green" their lives -- into a political hammer, pushing a complex proposal the last mile through a skeptical Senate.

Even now, these groups differ on whether to scare the public with predictions of heat waves or woo it with promises of green jobs. And they are facing an opposition with tycoon money and a gift for political stagecraft.

Well, actually, the enviros are losing because of substance, not money. They are losing the political debate. Fewer people believe climate alarmists today than did last year. And most people understand that wrecking the economy is not a good remedy for anything.

It's quite simple: follow the argument, and the environmental alarmists lose.

View all comments (7) | Leave a comment

Dixie Pixie| 8.31.09 @ 8:00PM

The environmentalists are in trouble because now they and their buddy Obama is in charge.
When in out of power a movement has the luxury of spouting nonsense as dogma. When in power, a movement has to deliver on its dogma. When dogma is nonsense or fantasy the movement can not deliver, despisement among the membership will soon follow. No one likes to be taken as a fool by one's leadership.

owyheewine| 9.1.09 @ 9:15AM

It looks like the EPA is going to announce that CO2 is a pollutant. It will be interesting to see how many believe that the air they exhale is a deadly poison.
The answer to that question will determine who wins the enviro war.

Dixie Pixie| 9.1.09 @ 12:24PM

Thanks Deborah D. Your reply was appreciated.

Owyheewine, Consider if CO2 emissions can be subject to regulation and taxation, can a tax on breathing be far behind. Soon breathing will be a privilege granted by government. Good luck after that as a privilege can be pulled. Then where will you be????

Skip MacLure| 9.1.09 @ 12:36PM

The four 'I's'
It's not good science.
It's not good sense.
It's not good economics.
It's not something the American people are going to stand for...this is not Europe...and we are not sheeple.
Semper Fi
Skip MacLUre

Crmang| 9.1.09 @ 2:05PM

They are clearly getting caught up in the excesses of their own rhetoric. When the UN Secretary-General, addressing an environmental forum, states that we only have "four months to secure the future of our planet" a lot of people shake their heads at such nonsense.

There are enough dissenters now in the scientific community that it ought to make Al Gore re-examine (he won't) his belief that the debate about global warming is over.

Hallie| 9.1.09 @ 6:12PM

The finest and most esteemed scientists have said that global warming is a total fiction. The debate about global warming ought to be over, but in the other direction. There is no global warming. It wasn't too many years ago that alarmists warned of global cooling!

Donald M. Coder, MD, PhD| 9.7.09 @ 5:51AM

Global warming has become religious and political myth without evidence to support its claims. Gone are debate, evaluation of numbers, and even truth. A dark cloud is descending upon our once fair land as this tragic myth threatens to bring us poverty and tyranny.