The American Spectator

That would be Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (“a dire, frightening call to action”) and disavower of all alarmists who promote the explosion of children to advance their cause. Today he writes ineptly at the Huffington Post about how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is unfairly (to him) exercising its rights of association and free speech:

In Beijing, they celebrate when they have a “blue sky day,” when, that is, the haze clears long enough so that you can actually see the sun. Many days, you can’t even make out the next block.

Washington, by contrast, looks pretty clean: white marble monuments, broad, tree-lined avenues, the beautiful, green spread of the Mall. But its inhabitants — at least those who vote in Congress — can’t see any more clearly than the smoke-shrouded residents of Beijing.

Their view, however, is obscured by a different kind of smog. Call it money pollution. The torrents of cash now pouring unchecked into our political system cloud judgment and obscure science. Money pollution matters as much as or more than the other kind of dirt. That money is the single biggest reason that, as the planet swelters through the warmest years (liar, liar) in the history of civilization, we have yet to take any real action as a nation on global warming.

McKibben, one of the most entertaining and melodramatic global warming alarmists on Urrrth, unintentionally made the point that free-marketers often make: that free, capitalist societies have cleaner, healthier air than do Communist ones. Thanks Bill!

But that misused analogy doesn’t stop McKibben from taking his shots at the U.S. Chamber, capitalism and free speech. Or from announcing his organization’s (350.org) plans to “[fan] out to canvass local businesses…asking for signatures on a statement announcing that ‘the U.S. Chamber doesn’t speak for me….”

Sounds like it might be almost as influential as the spectacularly successful 10/10/10 Global Work Party that 350.org held. What - you didn’t hear? On what planet was your birrth?