Green, I’ve heard people say, is the new Red. That is to say that the modern environmentalist movement is the latest manifestation of Communism and extreme Leftist political thought. Such statements are indicative of the fact that the Green movement fails to resonate with the thinking side of the political spectrum: the Right. Modern environmentalism is regarded by the right as nothing more than a tyrannical component of Left-wing political thought whose purpose is to impose more and more control on the proletariat, which is the goal of the Left. The debate about climate change, global warming, or whatever it’s being called today is an example of why the Right has these feelings.

That’s not to say that conservatives are “anti-environment” as the Left proposes. No one supports allowing people to litter, or businesses to pollute heavily. The effects of these are apparent to anyone who pays attention. Certain chemicals also need to be regulated so that their release into the environment is controlled or prevented. There aren’t many who dispute that.

The problem isn’t pro- or anti-environment, it’s how the extremists handle themselves, primarily by trying to scare us into believing in the impending doom that is inevitable if we don’t radically change course. The problem is their credibility suffers with those who employ even a token amount of critical thinking, and here are some examples as to why:

• Because every natural disaster anymore is associated with Global Warming.
  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. posited that Hurricane Katrina was not only the result of Global Warming, but that its landfall near New Orleans was nature retaliating against the US for President Bush’s refusal to send the Kyoto Treaty to Congress. Someone attributed the 2004 Tsunami to Global Warming. (Finding that reference is very difficult anymore, partly because even the mainstream extremists realize how ridiculous a proposition that is). Environmentalists even tried to attribute the relatively minor Hurricane Isabel to Global Warming.
• Because even most weather anomalies are attributed to Global Warming.
  Hot summers, cold winters, floods, droughts, more hurricanes than normal (2005, including Katrina), fewer hurricanes than normal (2006), all of these are examples of things that have been caused by Global Warming. If you pay attention to the news, any time there’s some unusual pattern to the weather, Global Warming is usually the culprit.
• Because they keep changing their story.
  This is a big one. In the ‘70s it was global cooling. Soot was going to collect in the atmosphere and block out the sun. They posited this because temperatures were falling at the time. Nowadays, the story is consistent about what’shappening, but not so much on when, or how much. If we were to believe the people who first posited Global Warming in the late ‘80s, we would already have seen 20-foot rises in sea level and millions of dead humans because of it. The catastrophe gets pushed back and the temperature curve gets adjusted to fit whatever is most politically expedient. 
• Because they ignore historical climate changes.
  Earth has been warmer in the past than now. Some estimates put the average temperature during the Jurassic period at something like 96° F. Much more recently, we had the Ice Age 10,000 years ago, and a “Little Ice Age” that ended somewhere around 1850. Furthermore there was a general warming trend before the early 1400s. Were these fluctuations the result of human activity? Of course not. Why, then, must any current warming be the result of human activity?
• Because the most vocal proponents of Global Warming are not scientists but politicians and entertainers.
  For all the scientific “consensus” it’s amusing that scientists rarely go in public touting Global Warming theory. The vast majority of those who support the theory in public are left-wing politicians and actors. None of these people are credible on such ventures because (a) they are not scientists, and (b) they have a political motive for wanting Global Warming to be fact. If it’s true then the politicians can increase the power of the government to intrude on the lives of the people. Furthermore, the ones who support the Global Warming notion the loudest are the ones who travel from one gigantic mansion to another in their private jet and take their Hummer limousine to and from the airport.
• Because the only solutions offered are politically motivated band-aids, at best.
   The Kyoto Accords, which would have affected the US disproportionately to its contribution to the problem, exempted third-world countries, and was rejected by the other two of the top three polluters (China and India), would, had they been put into full effect, have merely delayed the catastrophe something like 10 years past the 100 years it was expected to take. Moving extinction from 100 years to 110 years away is hardly worth wrecking the global economy, particularly since, within 100 years, the economy might be able to solve the problem, and without the economy running as it does now (even in its current recessed state) innovation and science will suffer greatly. On the other hand, economic disaster is often followed by more serious problems, like war, famine, and pestilence. What is needed is not some politically motivated “solution” intended to make the US economy worse and allow our adversaries to improve dramatically. What we need, if Global Warming is, in fact, true, is a real, permanent solution. It would probably be good to reduce fossil fuels even if Global Warming doesn’t exist. But taxes on energy, restrictions on energy usage, and other government mandates won’t help. Things like Water and Nuclear power (which don’t spit out “greenhouse gasses”) or workable solar and wind power (which don’t exist yet for large-scale applications) will help.
• Because they come up with some of the most idiotic theories on “How You Can Help.”
  So far, I know we’ve heard “inflate your tires to use less gas” and “Paint your roofs white to reflect the sun’s rays back into space.” That such ideas are patently ridiculous is obvious.

None of this is to say definitively that Global Warming doesn’t exist or that the Trifecta ((A) It exists, (B) it’s man-made, and (C) it’s inevitably catastrophic) is without merit. All I’m saying is that the presentation lends itself to people disbelieving it. If you want global warming to be solved, start offering real solutions, not just ways to move carbon emissions from one place to another.

August 16, 1977. On that day, Elvis Presley died, suddenly, at the age of 42. Elvis was, quite possibly, the most famous entertainer, perhaps the most famous human being in the world at the time. Even people who didn’t follow rock ‘n’ roll music at least knew who he was. He’d been performing for more than 2 decades, since he was 18, and his popularity was immediate and lasting. His distinctive baritone voice and signature dance moves brought him both acclaim and criticism from many corners, and his music essentially defined a genre. The Rock ‘n’ Roll sound of the 50s and 60s was greatly influenced by Elvis’s music and performance style. He lived in his massive “Graceland” estate, which was modeled to his liking. He was an icon of his age and was called, among other things, the “King of Rock.”

June 25, 2009. On that day, Michael Jackson died, suddenly, at the age of 50. Jackson was, quite possibly, the most famous entertainer, perhaps the most famous human being in the world at the time. Even people who didn’t follow popular music at least knew who he was. He’d been performing for more than 3 decades, since he was 11, and his popularity was immediate and lasting. His distinctive high-tenor voice and signature dance moves brought him both acclaim and criticism from many corners, and his music essentially defined a genre. The Pop sound of the 80s and 90s was greatly influenced by Jackson’s music and performance style. He lived in his massive “Neverland” ranch, which was modeled to his liking. He was an icon of his age and was called, among other things, the “King of Pop.”

I can honestly say that I do not count myself among the legions of either Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson fans. Neither man’s music is on my iPod. That’s not to say that I believe either man to have been untalented. On the contrary, both were very good singers and entertainers as attested by their lasting popularity, even well beyond the primes of their careers. I don’t dislike their music; it’s just not something I go out of my way to hear. Of course, I’m not here to act as a music critic, but to write about the loss of a cultural icon.

Michael Jackson’s and Elvis Presley’s lives have some very interesting parallels, which you should have noticed above. An immediate rise to world-wide fame. Staying power reserved only for the greats in entertainment. The famous mansions in which they lived. The drugs, the health problems, and the changes in appearance. The unflattering sexual reputations. The entourages of handlers. The eccentricity of their later lives. The suddenness of their deaths. The deserved appellations of “King” of their genre.

Fame has killed any number of entertainers, whether immediately by drugs or suicide, or longer term by the abuse through which they put their bodies. It seems that neither Jackson nor Elvis escaped the Grim Reaper’s diamond-encrusted scythe. We are right to mourn their loss and pray for their souls.

The King is dead, long live the King.

Another example of why not to emulate the European Left:  

In a perfect example of the Left’s disdain for private property rights, the EU parliamentary elections resulted in one seat being won by Sweden’s “Pirate Party.” The aims and goals of the Pirate Party, you ask? Well, the Pirate Party is to intellectual property law what the gay privileges movement is to marriage: take a long-established tradition and scrap it because your lifestyle doesn’t jive with conventional wisdom. Specifically, they want to loosen copyright law and do away with patents. Of course, the consequence of that would be disaster.

Here are the basics of intellectual property. Everything costs something to produce, whether it’s money, material resources, energy, time, or some combination. The value of the product is based not in what it cost to produce, but what its purchaser will pay for it. It could cost, say, $50,000 per unit to produce a 1987 Yugo, but no one would pay more than $5,000 to purchase that car. Therefore, not only is the value of the car only $5,000, but because of that, the seller would be foolish to try to market the car. It would cost him $45,000 in losses for each vehicle, and you’d be left in a situation where you lose more money by selling more product.

Intellectual property, whether copyrights, patents, or trademarks, work the same way. It takes time, effort, and money to write a book and produce it in sellable quantity. So much time, that fiction writers frequently do not have “day jobs” and rely on the proceeds from their sales to live. The best talent (that is, the ones who sell the most books) live very well off those proceeds. The same is true for patents. Individuals or companies invent things that may be marketable. Often, particularly in technology and pharmaceuticals, the purpose of a business is to invent new solutions to problems, and the research and development into new products costs money. Viagra, for example, costs $10 per pill, a cost the consumers will support, and an income level the producers can accept. The reason the price is high, though, is that it cost Pfizer a lot of money to research the drug, and they needed to recover the costs. In fact, marketing it as a vanity drug (as I call Viagra and its cousins), has kept the costs down for those who actually need Viagra for cardiovascular problems (for which it was originally intended).

Copyrights have been around for centuries. Copyright litigation is known from the 6^th century, AD. Modern copyright law began in Britain in 1709. This isn’t some new construct of modern man. Patent law is even older, dating from at least the 5^th century BC, with modern patent law dating from 1474. Again, not something peculiar to modern man. 

Human society is based on incentives, both positive and negative. Punitive law is intended to give a disincentive to commit crime. Free-market economies are based on the monetary incentives gained when a product is sold. If you sell enough product you make money. If nothing was gained in selling products. If you only sold products at cost, not making any profit, businesses would not exist. Patents and copyrights are a way for inventors and authors to make money selling their product. It is that income that provides the incentive to write or invent. Civilization existed for almost 6,000 years without the automobile, the airplane, the personal computer, the television, the DVD player, the refrigerator, the train, the radio, the electric light etc. Those contrivances exist not because of a need, but because they are profitable. Think about the “format wars” that have occurred in the last 30 years in portable media. Eight-track vs. four-track cassettes, VHS vs. Beta, HD DVD vs. BluRay. In each case the one consumers would purchase is the one that won, not necessarily the higher quality option. Without patents, none of them would exist, because the inventors would have no incentive to invent them.

The world the Left wants is a world where everyone gets everything they need and no one lacks for anything. “From each according to his talent to each according to his need,” as Marx’s saying goes. They want to eliminate incentive and ensure everyone gets an equal share (with the Leftist elites getting a “more equal” share than us proles). What they don’t get is that without incentive, nothing is accomplished. If you get the same result regardless of whether or not you work hard (or at all) at it, what’s the incentive to work? Sure, there are a few who do what they do because they love it, and would do it free of charge if their basic needs (food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare) were taken care of. But that small minority cannot support the other 99.5% of us who need something more than job satisfaction to get up at 0400 every morning to come in to work.

The elimination of patent and copyright law eliminates any incentive for innovation. Writers won’t write if they can’t expect to see the fruits of their labors. The same holds true for potential inventors. Businesses such as the entertainment and media industries would suffer greatly with a loss of intellectual property rights. The end result would be the government swooping down to fill the void of information dissemination and invention. The days of state-run media and entertainment, and state controlled inventions would be inevitable without patents and copyrights. That’s a world I’d just as soon not see.

Anyone who has read either my blog or my postings on Townhall knows that I am about as anti-abortion as it gets. I believe that abortion is a gravely evil act and I am sickened by the support it gets from some people who purport to be mainstream, including our current Commander in Chief. The problem is that killing abortion doctors and burning abortion clinics is also wrong, and should be treated as such.

For the Conservatives: Christians are not like Muslims. We are not instructed to carry out God’s divine justice here on earth. We are to leave that to God. We are also not to carry out man’s temporal justice unless we are duly commissioned to do so as police, attorneys, judges, juries, etc. Roeder’s alleged act (he has not been convicted, so we can’t say for sure that he’s the guilty party) should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and if Roeder was the culprit, he (or the actual perpetrator, if it wasn’t Roeder) should spend the rest of his miserable life in prison (whether or not the state hastens the end of his life sentence is inconsequential to me.) And he may be surprised to discover that he’s sharing a room with Tiller in the afterlife if he doesn’t make his amends to God. Those of us who are good, practicing Christians understand that what Roeder (or whoever) did puts his soul in mortal jeopardy of eternal damnation, and that’s reason number 1 not to go randomly killing abortionists.

For the Liberals, who don’t buy all this “immortal soul” garbage: Tiller’s murderer has done 3 things. He violated the law. He took a father and grandfather from a family that loved him. And he harmed the movement he purported to represent. On the first, murder is as serious a crime as it gets. That’s why we have death penalties in some states. Whether it was Scott Roeder or someone else, the perpetrator of this crime should be punished severely, precisely because a person was killed. It doesn’t matter what the person’s political beliefs, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, job, criminal record, or whatever, were. A person was killed and the law needs to come down heavily on the killer. On the second, killing someone always has consequences outside the immediate victim. The victim’s family is gravely harmed, and society as a whole is harmed because law and order are reduced whenever anyone commits a crime. The only solution is to punish the criminal. On the third, of course the Left will take this one isolated incident and paint all people who think like I do with the broad brush of bigotry. Every time something like this happens, the Left pulls out the stereotype card, calling those who support the restriction of abortion “extremists” and lending credence to Janet Napolitano’s memo calling conservatives “dangerous.” Far from saving the innocent unborn lives that Roeder (or whoever) intended to save, it will now be harder to get anti-abortion laws passed, and there will always be another Dr. Tiller. These sorts of things just make the abortion problem worse, because it makes martyrs of abortionists.

And that’s my final point. While the murder of anyone is tragic, I am frustrated by the media’s portrayal of Dr. Tiller as some kind of hero. The manner of his death aside, he still performed a great evil that under other circumstances would rise to the level of a crime against humanity. He was no hero in any sense of the word. Those he killed were truly defenseless. He killed them neither quickly nor painlessly. He, in fact, enjoyed a much easier death than did any of his victims. He did a great disservice to society by perpetuating the lie that abortion is OK, and like all other abortion supporters, the blood of countless millions is on his hands.

Yes, Dr. Tiller’s death was tragic. Yes, his killer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yes, his family is right to grieve for their loss, and we are right to grieve with them. But to call him a hero, to prop him up as a martyr to a good cause is to ignore the evil that he has done, and to ignore that evil is the final disservice you can do him. Because if you don’t realize the evil he committed, you don’t know to pray for his soul.