Common Sense Environmentalism

It seems like I can’t turn on the television or radio these days and
not get hit with some sort of environmental message. Don’t get me wrong - I think that keeping our environment clean is extremely important. I just have serious issues with direction in which the environmental movement is being steered.

When did we go from planting trees/protesting deforestation, reducing industrial pollution, and recycling to calling for worldwide carbon taxation? Seriously. I’m not joking. They want to tax your carbon output.

Their logic is as follows; Co2 is a “greenhouse gas“, a gas that stays
in the atmosphere for very long periods of time, trapping heat in the atmosphere which makes the Earth warmer. Therefore, if we are experiencing global warming then we need to reduce carbon emissions through taxation to stop the warming.

I have a few issues with this line of thinking. First of all, we need some greenhouse gases or we will all freeze to death. Hopefully, everyone reading this realizes that. In fact, multi-cellular animal life would probably not even exist on this planet if it were not for volcanic eruptions increasing atmospheric Co2 levels to 350% of todays levels, which warmed the Earth enough to make it hospitable. Currently, volcanic emissions equal about 1% of the carbon emissions from humans. I don’t agree with the “elites” much, but I do agree that this is a problem. I just don’t agree with what they are saying about the source of the problem, and I definitely don’t agree with the solution.

Once again, they are using their Hegelian philosophy against us. They find or create a problem with a solution already in mind. They expose the problem to the public in a way that makes us want their solution before they have even presented it. By the time that they do reveal their plan, we think that we came up with it and they are acting on our wishes. This system of “problem>reaction>solution” never works in our favor.

Back in 1991, way before Al Gore made his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” but after he invented the internet, a report titled “The First Global Revolution” was published by the Club of Rome, of which Mr. Gore is a member. This report contains the following statement:

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

This is one point that I definitely disagree with. Corruption and greed are the enemies, humanity is the solution.

Throughout Earth’s history, the planet has experienced some pretty extreme climate shifts. Only now, with the presence of humans can this process be knowingly effected, but to what degree? From 1750 (the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) to 1998, the amount of Co2 (by volume) in the atmosphere has increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm. Natural sources of carbon dioxide are more than 20 times greater than sources due to human activity. However, this is usually stabilized through the photosynthetic processes of plants. Or have you forgotten your elementary school teachings? Co2 is plant food. They take in the Co2 and they give us oxygen. Less trees equal more greenhouse gases.

We need to decrease our greenhouse gases, that is certain. The reason for this is not because of everyone’s gas-guzzling motor vehicles, though. The real culprit behind global warming is the sun. It’s not just this globe that’s warming; Mars, Pluto and others are heating up as well. It definitely wouldn’t hurt to end deforestation and start re-planting forests to balance this out.

Most people who have caught on to the carbon-tax scam seem to think that global warming in itself is not real. This is where we differ. I acknowledge that global warming is a real problem, but I think we are being lied to about the source and the solution. We definitely need to do something about our environment (and not just in areas that effect global warming either!) and cutting down on our fossil fuel usage would definitely help, but taxation is not the answer.

Remember what I said earlier about “problem>reaction>solution”? We are now leaving the “reaction” stage and entering into the time of the “solution”. The solution that is being sold to us is not the solution to our environmental woes, it is simply another way for our multi-national corporate masters to continue devastating the environment while shifting the blame and the financial burden to us. The people behind the idea of a carbon tax are the heads of companies like GE and DuPont. Do you really think that the financial burden will fall on them? No, because they are concerned with the pollution you are putting out, not what they are doing. They are urging governments to not only create a carbon-tax, but to create “carbon credits” which work as “allowances” that can be passed back and forth between major corporations. This means that they will continue on with business as usual, while we can barely afford to drive to the grocery store.

So who needs to be regulated more, us or them?

It turns out that around 14% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, with 11.3% coming from the retrieval and processing of those fuels. This means that, roughly 24-25% of Co2 emissions could be decreased from reduction on dependency on fossil fuels. So for that, let’s worry more about using the multiple sources of alternative energy that are currently available instead of taxing carbon emissions.

So if transportation accounts for only 25%, where does the rest come from? A whopping 51% comes from the combination of industrial processes, power stations, waste disposal, and land use (deforestation). You might ask yourself why I combined all of those figures into one. That is because those are all things that these corporate/financial elites who are trying to tax us can directly effect themselves. So if they are creating half of the problem and we are creating 25%, why are they trying to regulate us? It should also be noted that these people are also to blame for our dependence on fossil fuels in the first place, since they tend to sweep any alternative energy technologies under the rug.

So if the proposed solution of carbon-taxation is not the real solution, what is?

There are many things that we need to do to ensure a clean environment for our children, but the main thing we need to do applies not only to our environmental issues but nearly all of our problems as a planet. We have to start paying attention. We have to stop letting our governments, financial institutions, corporations and the media that they all own control our opinions. Do your own research, come to your own conclusions based on all of the information available, and demand that these people start serving our interests like they are supposed to. We are meant to control them, not the other way around.

I will be more specific about what we need to do in regard to the environment, though. It is pretty simple really. We must revitalize the environmental movement of old. We must become responsible for our own actions and stop relying on people in power to take care of our problems for us. We must put the blame for polluting the Earth back where it belongs. Namely at the feet of the multi-national corporations who are ravaging our forests and polluting our air and water. Also we cannot let the politicians and international financiers who make all of this possible to go unpunished either.

Regulate yourself and those who wish to regulate you. Reduce waste, recycle, and plant trees! The environmental solution lies in ending deforestation. Don’t let those polluting fat cats tell you otherwise.

This could turn it all around.