These days, we’re always keeping an eye on important denier-y things happening at the highest level of the federal government. For example we could spend some time diving into this recent op-ed in which Cass Sunstein describes a recent government report showing the billions of dollars in benefits from regulations.
But sometimes we miss being able to dumpster dive for the whacky gems of the lowest denier blogs. So when we came across this post on Heartland’s blog by long-time coal guy Viv Forbes, we had to share with you. Take a moment, if you would, to bask in this glory and reminisce about the days when deniers worked out of their home offices, not the Oval Office.
It’s hard to convey just how paranoid and delusional Forbes is here. The post is a rant about “greens,” his catchall name for environmentalists, the UN, politicians, NGOs, concerned citizens, and really anyone who doesn’t just love fossil fuels. Forbes appears to feel under siege by his own strawmen of environmentalists that, per his opening line, “hate individual freedom and private property.” This nuanced and subtle motif runs through the piece: Forbes claims that “greens hate miners,” along with farmers and fishermen and foresters and suburbs and reliable power and free markets. Per Forbes, they think that even “fun, frills or luxuries” have no place in our sustainable world.
Apparently, greens “plan to expel farmers and graziers from most land areas” and instead produce food in factory farms and feedlots. To be fair, we can’t count the number of times we’ve seen greens campaigning for more factory farms and concentrated animal agriculture. But that’s only because you can’t count to zero.
Forbes fears that greens are coming for his beloved suburbs, using the common conspiracy catchphrase that people will be “stacked-and-packed” in what he calls “high-rise cubic apartments.” Now, we’re not sure what sort of non-cubic apartments he might prefer (spherical apartments? Conical? Dodecahexagonal?) people in urban areas live in, but this is a dog whistle for Agenda 21 paranoia about people being forcibly removed from single family homes and relocated into sustainable urban communities.
Forbes goes further than most though, and is so hamfisted in his attempts to make environmentalists into monsters that in the list of things about suburbs that greens despise, he includes ponies. Yes, we apparently hate ponies. Sure, the other things he lists about suburbs (SUVs, lawns, pools, parks and golf courses) have their eco-enemies, but ponies? Come on, man! Even Lisa Simpson loves ponies!
Ponies aside, we’ll give Forbes the fact that we “think it is ‘sustainable’ to uglify scenic hills with whining wind towers... and to clutter pleasant estuaries and shallow seas with more bird-slicing turbines… [and] keep smothering sunny flatlands under solar panels.” That’s only because, you know, it is. If folks want those hills to stay scenic and not burnt in a wildfire or parched by drought or underwater, and wants those estuaries and seas to stay shallow and not made acidic by carbon dioxide, we’ll need renewable energy. Perhaps a lifetime in the coal industry has made Forbes more comfortable with blowing up mountains to get at the coal rather than installing some turbines.
But which green group is he referring to when he writes that “they also favour compulsory recycling of everything, no matter what that process costs in energy or resources.” Who says we should recycle even if it’s costly and polluting? Show us, Forbes! Show us those greens!
And it gets worse: Forbes predicts that this green-mandated counterproductive recycling will be enforced by “surveillance cameras [that] will keep watch on our ‘wasteful’ habits.” Makes sense--we all know how many pro-surveillance, anti-privacy green groups there are.
Finally, in a panicked sweat with constant paranoid glances over his shoulder, Forbes delivers the final blow: “The Despotic Green New World is coming. Climate alarm is the stalking horse, ‘sustainable development’ is the war cry, and global government is the goal.”
And they call us alarmists!
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