GREENIE DOMINO STRATEGY

"Exactly 50 years ago, the idea of the "domino theory" first found its way into popular discourse in the context of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. While it sounds a bit like a Cold War relic today, the phrase remains useful to explain certain events. Consider the activist Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) recently concluded four-year campaign against Citigroup, one of America's most respected financial institutions.

In 2000, RAN accused Citigroup of loaning money to economic development projects that were purportedly destroying the world's "remaining old growth forests" and "accelerat[ing] climate change." When Citigroup disputed the charges, RAN strategists went to work. Over the next four years, RAN staged dozens of anti-Citigroup stunts, including student rallies and boycotts, anti-Citigroup TV ads, and street protests. RAN activists also hung banners in front of Citigroup's New York headquarters and demanded that Citigroup not make loans to economic development projects in undeveloped regions of the world, to ensure that they remain pristine.

Last January, Citigroup gave in— it sued for peace. In exchange for an end to RAN's campaign, Citigroup promised to "promote higher environmental standards through its business practices," particularly in the areas of "endangered ecosystems, illegal logging, ecologically sustainable development, and climate change." Translation: Citigroup will no longer help finance projects that environmentalists don't like. It will help NGOs start drawing what an activist once referred to as "green lines" around poor countries, setting them off-limits for conventional forms of intense development.

Now, having browbeaten Citigroup into accepting their agenda, will RAN activists put away their banners and protest signs, and retire from the field? Hardly. According to an article in the April issue of Peacework, the protest Left's self-declared "trade journal," RAN's Citigroup campaign is merely one battle in a very ambitious long-term campaign to turn businesses into instruments of green social engineering. Citigroup, you might say, was just the first domino."

More here:




ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC ATTACK ON GREENIE MYTHS

There are still plenty of real scientists around who are prepared to blow the whistle on Green nonsense. I have just put up here a review of the latest debunking book. Excerpt:

"Remember the science news story that bird eggs would not survive in the wild because of spraying DDT? Jack W. Dini, a materials engineer with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, exposes this and many other frauds and half-truths as nothing more than non-scientific myth in his book Challenging Environmental Mythology: Wrestling Zeus (2003). Dini writes that public environmental policy has turned into a movement of mythological proportions that believes it is impervious to scientific examination or criticism. Dini shows that much of what we have been led to believe is true about environmental conditions is actually myth."

*****************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

*****************************************