Green Nonsense

I can't wait for this week to end. All the faux-environmental nonsense just drives me up a wall.

Mind you, I'm not a consuming hedonist. Watching CNBC this morning, I heard one on-air staffer's daughter lecture viewers on 'green' things to do, many of which the more common-sensible of us began years ago, if not a lifetime.

For example, one of the early memories of my youth was my late father walking by unoccupied, lit rooms, switching off the light and loudly proclaiming to anyone within earshot,

"What, do you own stock in the electric company?"

I long ago began using my own grocery bags. But not primarily for environmental reasons. No, I have always found plastic grocery bags to be too small and flimsy for my tastes. Paper piles up and tears easily. So nearly a decade ago, I purchased reusable nylon bags, to which I've added, over time, large canvas ones.

My thermostat is generally kept no higher than 64 degrees in winter, so I wear a lot of wool. Again, it's not an environmental decision. Rather, I don't see the point in needlessly wasting my money heating air when I can more economically clothe myself to the same warming point.

Generally speaking, when prices are set correctly, consumers will economize on resources. That's why vehicles with better gas mileage sell well in times of expensive gasoline.

It's sensible to economize on the consumption of expensive resources, or, for that matter, any resource that is not free. But that is an entirely different issue than claiming to 'save the earth,' or some other similarly pompous motivation.

The logical endpoint of unbridled, senseless eco-zeal is for us to go back to caves and eschew any energy source save, I suppose, dung. After all, when we return to our species' early lifestyle, the eco-terrorists will likely forbid us to burn wood or coal.

Despite the claims of leftist climate modelers, there is no uniform agreement on the cause or long term effect of greenhouse gases. One news channel anchor noted yesterday that only twenty years ago, on the first earth day, climate 'experts' forecast falling temperatures by the mid-1990s, along with a collection of other dire predictions, none of which have materialized.

Our planet is a living mass of elements. Watching just a few History Channel programs about "Megadisasters" should be enough to convince anyone that we cannot control the forces that really affect it. One good volcanic eruption in Yellowstone, which has become suspiciously active lately, and you can kiss most of the US midwest goodbye under eight feet of ash.

Where will EPA standards be, then? We'll be talking nuclear winter, global famine and a likely descent into misery not seen since the Dark Ages.

To me, most of the windbaggery and environmental hoohah stems from people falsely presuming to have predominant influence over dynamic changes in our planet that, in fact, can easily erase all life in less than a year, without our consent.

Humbling, isn't it?