The "Green Movement" Hurts the Poor

The so-called "Green Movement" which supposedly seeks to stop global warming and control climate change by limiting carbon dioxide emissions, or more specifically the use of "fossil fuels", (coal, oil, and gas), is hurting and will harm the poorest people first. These efforts raise the cost of everything we use, and everything we do. The world's poor will of course suffer first, and to a greater degree than anyone. Consider the following article. It really has nothing to do with "race", it is about politics, ideology, and the economy. Think carefully about who you vote for.
Peter

It Takes Green to Go Green
Are liberal environmental policies hurting poor black communities? Conservatives think so!

MSNBC.com
Updated: 6:29 PM ET Oct 7, 2008 (source)

Oct. 8, 2008--Failing schools, crime and single-parent households are just a few of the challenges facing urban communities. Now, thanks to radical environmentalists and their supporters, a bunch I like to call "Club Green," they must face soaring energy as well.
"Club Green" enthusiasts are everywhere these days; their ideology is part of the liberal orthodoxy, and I, for one, want nothing to do with them. They are against oil exploration in Alaska and off our coasts. They took a hit last month when Congress voted to end a moratorium on offshore drilling, ending a 26-year ban on new leases. But this boon to domestic energy production could be fleeting, according to House Appropriations Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin, who told reporters, "This next election will decide what our drilling policy is going to be."

Environmentalists and their liberal backers are also blocking the construction of new coal-fired power plants that produce electricity. Plans for 59 coal-based power plants were canceled in 2007, and plans for 50 others are now being challenged.

All this leads to higher energy prices and pain in the pocketbooks of those who can least afford it—poor, black people living in struggling neighborhoods.

According to the Census Bureau's 2007 American Community Survey, the annual median black household income was $34,001 and $40,766 for Hispanics—well below the $50,740 national median. Additionally, 24.7 percent of blacks and 20.7 percent of Hispanics lived in poverty. As energy prices climb, they lose a higher percentage of their take-home pay to increased energy costs—leaving less for things such as savings, education and health care.
Seeking empathy may be asking too much.

Al Gore, the environmentalists' spiritual leader, lectured in Washington, D.C. in July about phasing out fossil fuels. Despite his righteous talk about stopping the "catastrophic" effects of global warming, Gore can't seem to walk the walk.

He flies in private planes, and his Tennessee mansion surely uses much more energy than the average American home. As Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, pointed out in a recent blog post, Gore was chauffeured to his July speech in a gas-guzzling motorcade of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevy Suburban SUV. There's nothing wrong with enjoying one's wealth, but it's hypocritical when Gore asks others to sacrifice their standards of living but does not seem to do the same.

Powerful special interests such as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund—with operating budgets in the tens of millions of dollars paying for lobbying, ads and grassroots organizing—also part of the "Club Green" phenomenon. They are joined by celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sheryl Crow.

Businesses are also joining in, and sometimes for less than altruistic reasons. General Electric, for instance, makes wind turbines. It's therefore no surprise that GE subsidiary NBC Universal promoted environmental policies during its "Green Week" earlier this year by encouraging "…viewers and fans to go green with green-themed programming across all of its channels and affiliates aimed at entertaining, informing and empowering Americans to lead greener lives."
Despite the hype about wind power and boasts about other renewable energy sources, 85 percent of our nation's energy comes from fossil fuels. Energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar only currently provide about 7 percent of our power and cannot replace fossil fuels anytime soon.

In its September 2008 report, the federal Energy Information Agency predicteda 25 percent rise in heating oil prices and a 17 percent rise in natural gas prices this winter as well as a 9.5 percent projected increase in electricity costs in 2009. Adding to that, gasoline still hovers near $4 a gallon, and the public demands more domestic energy production. A recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters found that 67 percent supported new offshore fossil fuel exploration.

Our nation is blessed with an abundant supply of natural resources. The problem is that Congress, at the demand of Club Green, blocks access to these resources at the peril of families.

What's disturbing is that, like Gore, many of Club Green's leaders are among the elite. They are the wealthy, famous, politically-connected and largely immune to the sticker shock of high energy costs.

Something is terribly wrong because the wealth and the political access of a few are being used to dictate how everyone should live.

Deneen Borelli is a fellow for the Project 21, a national network of black executives.

More Quotes From The Green Community

DocNavy
Message #3 - 09/20/07 02:20 PM
Here's a QUOTABLE QUOTES section on what The Green Movement says about:
Anthropogenic Global Warming
"On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination…. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have…. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."--Dr. Wattenburg, Steven Schneider of Stanford University. DISCOVER magazine, Oct 1989, pg. 47

(According to the good Dr's, it's BEST that if one doesn’t have good science to support one’s conclusions, to scare the masses for the sake of the Earth and lie to them than it is to not say anything.)

"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." - Christine Stewart on AGW, Canadian Environment Minister, Calgary Herald, December 14, 1998

""In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality, and the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are."--Al Gore On AGW, 2006

What They said THEN:

"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."-Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000".-Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
"This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000".-Lowell Ponte in “The Cooling”, 1976

"The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population."-Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971)

"There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it."-Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. … This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."-Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

What they say NOW:
"As global temperature climbs to 3°C above present levels - which is likely to happen before the end of this century if greenhouse emissions continue unabated - the consequences will become increasingly severe. More than a third of species face extinction. Agricultural yields will start to fall in many parts of the world. Millions of people will be at risk from coastal flooding. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires will take an ever greater toll."-Michael Le Page, NewScientist.com, 16 May 2007