01 Jul 2009 Green Hell: The Environmentalist Devil is in the Details, by Devon Carlin

Green Hell: The Environmentalist Devil is in the Details by Devon Carlin

Americans are bombarded with save-the-earth pleas to reduce their “carbon footprint.”  In this latest environmental fad, Americans are urged to alter their lifestyles to combat global warming.

Reducing a carbon footprint can entail driving less or buying a hybrid-fuel car, using organic cleaning products or sorting recyclables.  Green crusaders promote wind and solar power as alternatives to natural gas, coal and oil.

It all seems simple enough, but it’s hardly the whole story.  As Kermit the Frog sings, it’s not easy being green.

In his latest eye-opening book, Green Hell: How the Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life (Regnery), Junkscience.com founder Steve Milloy exposes the agenda of the environmentalists and what it could mean for America’s future.  Green goals, Milloy says, are actually quite unfriendly to those who genuinely want to protect the planet while living a comfortable existence.

Milloy contents that if environmentalists (or “greens,” as Milloy calls them) had their way, the world would be a very different place.  Americans would be living in the close quarters of multi-family units in densely-packed cities, without cars and with restrictions on their rights to reproduce.  Energy use would also be regulated to the point of rationing – if someone exceeds his limit, he might find himself shut off from the power grid by bureaucratic decree.

Milloy notes: “You may be tempted to dismiss all this as a gross exaggeration.  But this is how the greens themselves describe their intentions…  Their words alone reveal their true intent: to curtail, to ration, to force, to deny, to compel and to squeeze.”  He stands by his contention with 492 well-researched footnotes.

It’s not just words, but deeds.  The green agenda already impedes Americans’ lives and liberties:

• Environmentalists once promoted bottled water as safe and healthy alternative.  Now greens are wage war against it in places such as San Francisco and New York City, with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome decrying the “waste and pollution” he says is created by bottled water.

• Canadian tar sands contain enough oil to rival traditional worldwide reserves, but 2007 regulations on “greenhouse gas” emissions prohibit tar sands-derived fuel from being used by the federal government (and, by extension, government contractors).
  
• A ban on oil shale development expired in 2008, but this promising alternative to traditional drilling, which has enormous potential, is stalled by legal challenges from environmental activists.

With Barack Obama in the White House, implementation of the green agenda could go into overdrive.  As a candidate, Obama said “we can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK…  That’s not leadership.  That’s not going to happen.”

He’s been even more blunt about the effects of  “cap-and-trade” regulations on energy derived from coal: “[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

There’s an enormous difference between someone doing their part for the planet by recycling or using public transportation and the excessive regulatory regime promoted by environmentalists.  Yet many express approval of environmental special interests without knowing the full extent of their agenda.  Green Hell exposes the difference between false perceptions and reality, and explains how the environmentalist agenda threatens the underpinnings of capitalism.

Milloy cites poll data showing Americans’ true beliefs about environmental priorities to demonstrate that these sentiments rarely match the rhetoric of the green movement.

In Green Hell, Milloy presents his skepticism in a cogent and compelling way while exposing the lesser-known and most radical facets of environmental movement.  The end result is a provocative and impressive resource everyone should read.