By Alan Caruba
It is doubtful that most Americans and
others around the world know how vast the organizational structure of the
environmental movement is and how much wealth it generates for those engaged in
an agenda that would drag humanity back to the Stone Age.
If that sounds extreme, consider a
world without access to and use of energy or any of the technological and
scientific advances that have extended and enhanced our lives, from pesticides
that kill insect and rodent disease vectors to genetically modified seeds that
yield greater crop volumes.
Two of my colleagues in the effort to
get the truth out are Paul Driessen and Ron Arnold, both of whom are affiliated
with a free market think tank, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, CFACT, They have done the research necessary to
expose the wealth and the power structure of the environmental movement. They
have joined together to write “Cracking
Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine.” ($4.99,
available from Amazon.com)
The Greens are forever claiming that
anyone who disputes their lies is receiving money from big energy companies, but
my experience is that it is think tanks like CFACT, small by any comparison with
any major environmental organization, that support the search for the truth and
its dissemination.
“Big Green” was formerly known as the
Iron Triangle, “a mutually supportive relationship between power elites”
so-named by Mark Tapscott, the Washington
Examiner’s executive editor. It consisted of “government agencies, special
interest lobbying organizations, and legislators with jurisdiction over their
interests.” Today, it includes major environmental groups such as the Sierra
Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. To these add wealthy foundations
and corporations that fund them.
It will no doubt astound many readers
to learn that there are more than 26,500 American environmental groups. They
collected total revenues of more than $81 billion from 2000 to 2012, according
to Giving USA Institute, with only a small part of that coming from membership
dues and individual contributions.
“Cracking Big Green” examined the
Internal Revenue Service Form 990 reports of non-profit organizations. Driessen
and Arnold discovered that, among the 2012 incomes of better-known environmental
groups, the Sierra Club took in $97,757,678 and its Foundation took in
$47,163,599. The Environmental Defense Fund listed $111,915,138 in earnings, the
Natural Resources Defense Council took in $98,701,707 and the National Audubon
Society took in $96,206,883. These four groups accounted for more than $353
million in one year.
That pays for a lot of lobbying at the
state and federal level. It pays for a lot of propaganda that the Earth needs
saving because of global warming or climate change. Now add in Greenpeace USA at
$32,791,149, the Greenpeace Fund at $12,878,777; the National Wildlife
Federation at $84,725,518; the National Parks Conservation Association at
$25,782,975; and The Wilderness Society at $24,862,909. Al Gore’s Alliance for
Climate Protection took in $19,150,215. That’s a lot of money to protect
something that cannot be “protected”, but small in comparison to other Green
organizations.
“If that sounds too intimidating to
confront,” say Driessen and Arnold, “it gets worse. Our research found a truly
shocking blind spot; many major environmental groups get nearly half their
revenue from private foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund, and Wal-Mart’s Walton Family Foundation. Just the top 50
foundation donors (out of 81,777) gave green groups $812,639,999 (2010 figures),
according to the Foundation Center’s vast database.”
If you wonder why you have been
hearing and reading endless doomsday scenarios about the warming of the Earth,
the rise of the seas, and the disappearance of species and forests, for decades,
the reason is that a huge propaganda machine is financed at levels that are mind
boggling.
Allied with politicians in high
places, Big Green can count on them to maintain the lies. When the Earth ceased
to warming nineteen years ago, it changed its doomsday campaign to “climate
change” but the objective is the same, keep people so scared they will accept
all manner of restrictions on their lives at the same time the availability of
the energy on which they depend is reduced by a “war on coal” and other measures
to keep oil and natural gas in the ground where it cannot be
used.
“We will respond to the threat of
climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and
future generations,” said President Obama on January 21, 2013, in his second
inaugural address. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science,
but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought
and powerful storms.”
This may appeal to those who do not or
cannot examine these claims, but the reality is that the climate is always in a
state of change, is largely determined by the Sun and other factors such as the
oceans and volcanic activity. Humans play virtually no role whatever and Big
Green’s Big Lie, that carbon dioxide (C02) emissions influence the weather
and/or the climate has long been disproved and debunked. The problem is that
that the news and other media continue to tell the Big Lie.
For Big Green, science is not about
irrefutable truth. It is an instrument of propaganda to be distorted to advance
their lies.
The impact on their lives and on our
economy can be seen in “higher energy bills, disappearing jobs, diminished
family incomes, and fewer opportunities for better living standards for their
children”, all factors that played into the outcome of the recent midterm
elections.
For a short, powerful insight to Big
Green power and agenda, I heartily recommend you read “Cracking Big
Green.”
© Alan Caruba, 2014
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