Dear W.A. My children are indoctrinated about global warming and saving the planet in school. They harass us constantly that we should reduce our carbon footprint. What should we do? Signed: Worried Mother.
Dear Worried Mother
Yes, it is very common these days that children are indoctrinated about the alleged global warming caused by humans. For instance, in the UK the government has distributed Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” to all high schools. In New Zealand there are people, trained by Al Gore, who are going round schools to “spread the message”. They are modern-day evangelists. No contrary views are allowed. Children are urged to pressure their parents “to save the planet” by reducing their carbon footprint.
Common suggestions for reducing one’s carbon footprint are:
Replace all incandescent light bulbs with so-called “eco-bulbs”. These are fluorescent bulbs that use less electricity for the same light output. That would be fine, were it not that these bulbs are filled with mercury vapour and become a health hazard when broken or dumped in refuge pits.
Electricity is being demonised as harmful to the environment. This ideology is highlighted by the annual Earth Hour action, when people are urged to switch of all electricity for an hour.
Use cars as little as possible. If you can afford it, buy a hybrid car (which are a lot more expensive than comparable petrol or diesel cars). This advice is strengthened by the Peak Oil scare. Environmentalists like to tell us that we have reached Peak Oil, meaning that from now on we will be using more oil that is being discovered. This is more ideological-political that real. There is still plenty of oil to last us one to two hundred years (some think even longer). Major new hydrocarbon field are still being discovered, like a huge oil field in Brazil and a huge gas field in Western Australia. This is not to say that we should not be prudent in the use of these resources. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming.
Don’t use air travel. Certainly not for long trips. Take your holidays close to home. Some governments are planning to impose an eco-tax on air travel. This was tried recently by the Dutch Government. But after a few months they had to abandon it. People just drove across the border to Germany or Belgium to board planes in those countries who do not have a compulsory eco-tax. The effects of this ideology is that the tourist industries in many countries will suffer, especially in poor countries that depend on the tourist dollar.
One of the most mindboggling and disturbing ideas is to do with food. People are urged to only eat food that is produced within a radius of about 100 kilometres. Food from further away is tainted by food miles. Deep greenies who are promoting this obviously do not realise, or couldn’t care less, that this would have a disastrous effect on poor countries that depend on food exports. How can they square this with their call “to make poverty history”? If this absurd idea is taken to its logical conclusions, people should stop drinking coffee or tea, stop eating rice, bananas, pineapples, coconuts, peanuts, etc, etc .
To really reduce one’s carbon footprint one should stop breathing. Every time one exhales one produces carbon dioxide. One should also stop using electricity. Return to doing the laundry in rivers and creeks. Stop cooking food - electricity is out, as are charcoal or firewood. Only eat directly edible food like our hunter-gatherer forebears did. Meat and fish can be eaten raw. The Dutch have been eating raw herring for centuries. Cows must be milked by hand again and sheep sheared with scissors. No tractors are allowed. Ox-drawn plows should be used. Dentists can use peddle-powered instead of electric drills. Modern medicines and anaesthetics are out as producing them emits carbon dioxide. What is wrong by pulling teeth the old way, as was done in markets in the Middle Ages?
What really would reduce emissions is to prohibit all scientists, politicians and environmental NGO’s (like Greenpeace) to continuously fly around the world to attend endless climate conferences. The annual UN climate conferences, for instance, have attracted between 8000 and 12000 people! It is expected that the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen will attract record attendances.
Dear Worried Mother - the only advice I can give you is to acquaint yourself as much as possible with arguments against the belief that your carbon footprint is contributing to catastrophic man-made global warming. IT AIN’T SO. There are plenty of good books explaining that this apocalyptic belief is the biggest scam in human history. This scam is based entirely on non-validated computer models.
Moreover, the planet has stopped warming for the last ten years. Many scientists expect the planet to cool over the next few decades.
A good book to start with is Ian Wishart’s Air Con. But the most authoritative and definitive book is the recently published Climate Change Reconsidered, by the Nongovernmental International Panel of Climate Change (NIPCC). It is a hefty tome of 868 pages. However, it reads easily and would give you all the information necessary to tell your children that IT AIN’T SO. Both books can be ordered from Amazon.com.
