COP-15

Chavez (and Marx) a hit at Copenhagen

by Fran Smith on December 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, Personal Liberty

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez couldn’t resist another opportunity to bash capitalism — and the COP15 Copenhagen Conference on global warming gave him a perfect setup. Protesters against globalization, capitalism, energy use, and other aspects of modern life thronged in the streets, while in the conference center, leaders from rich nations that want to “level the playing field” for CO2 emissions and poor countries looking for massive handouts gave Chavez a warm response.

In his harangue posted on YouTube, Chavez hit the “group of countries who think they’re better than us” and that provide a “world imperial dictatorship.” He, of course, made reference and deference to his hero Karl Marx:

There’s a ghost lurking…and Karl Marx said…a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen.  And I think that ghost is silent, somewhere in this room…amongst us…coming thru the corridors and underneath.  And that ghost is a terrible ghost.  Nobody wants to name him or her…it’s capitalism.  Capitalism is that ghost.  (applause)

Chavez got a lot of applause here too. He tied capitalism to the degradation of the earth: “the destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life.”

President Robert Mugabe, credited with destroying the economy of his own country,  Zimbabwe, also railed against Western countries and capitalism:

“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

And this is the conference where “world leaders” are supposedly coming together to plan the world’s energy future?  It’s a scary thought.

GW alarmists continue their exploitation of children

by Fran Smith on December 9, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, International

This, I think, has to go down as one of the creepiest “editorials” written by global warming alarmists recently. Clive Hamilton, ABC News in Australia’s public “intellectual,” has an open letter to the child of someone who works for the fossil fuel industry. Here are some selections:

“Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore.

The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people. And your dad is helping them.

. . . . .

I am sure it’s hard for you to hear these words, but there is something you can do to help. Why not sit your dad down and have a good talk to him. Tell him you want him to stop helping the big companies that are spoiling the future for you and all the other kids at school. Tell him that the family would rather have less money if he had a different job, one you could be proud of.

Tell him that you know he will feel much happier inside if he is doing something to make Australia and the world a better place, instead of going to work every day to make it a worse one.

Your dad has lost his way, and you might be the only person in the world who can help him find it again. So talk to him.

Yours sincerely”

This is on par with the official opening video for the  COP15 meeting in Copenhagen –  full of nightmare visions of a child caught in a global-warming-produced  catastrophe – producing earthquakes, no less.  (It’s very well-produced, of course.)

Do these people have any idea what their fear-mongering is doing to the minds of children – other than making them terrified, anxious, and sleep-deprived?

LibertyWeek 72: Champagne Wishes and Climate Change Dreams

by Richard Morrison on December 7, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your host Richard Morrison teams up with collaborators Jeremy Lott and William Yeatman to bring you Episode 72 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin with UN climate hypocrisy in Copenhagen, presidential arm-twisting on health care and a cloudy look at government transparency. We conclude with the end of the tobacco road in Virginia and scandal of banking and nepotism in Venezuela.