Death to the Environment: If we want to save the environment, we've got to show we don't care about it

A car dealer in Washington, Don Beyer Volvo, is offering a new promotion. If you buy one of their cars, the dealership will give you free tickets to Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Mr. Beyer is a Democrat in good standing, having been lieutenant governor of Virginia and national treasurer of the Dean for America campaign, so he must be down with the global warming program. But giving away movie tickets with the purchase of every climate-destroying luxury automobile (the 2005 Volvo XC90 gets 15 mpg in the city and 20 mpg on the highway) probably isn't, in the long run, the most effective way to save the planet.

Lots of businesses are trying to profit in the name of the environment these days. My personal favorite are hotels that ask guests to reuse dirty towels and sheets. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I stayed at the Monte Carlo, one of the themed monstrosities on the Strip. In the bathroom was a card asking me to "please join Monte Carlo's effort to conserve water by using your towels more than once." On the nightstand was another card imploring me to "please help protect our environment" by not having the bed linens changed during my stay. I was moved by these pleas, I really was. Except that outside the hotel are two gigantic fountains spewing precious water into the arid, desert air, 24 hours a day. It struck me that the Monte Carlo's concern for the environment might simply be an attempt to save on laundry costs

I'm normally a friend of Gaia, or at least a good acquaintance. I like hiking and being outdoors, so long as there aren't insects. Or mud. And I don't care for the way tall grass makes your skin itch. But even a nature lover like me has limits. When I'm paying $259 a night, I want fresh linens.

And it's not as if the hotels really cared about our Earth Mother. If they did, they'd give a discount rate to customers who put up with damp towels. What's happened is that Big Business has figured out how to use our environmental consciences against us. We greens who love the environment are now the unwitting tools of our planet's destruction. Hotels profit from our willingness to conserve, and car dealerships lure us into luxury SUVs under the pretense of supporting Al Gore.

It's an insidious plot, and the only way to foil it is to kill the environment. If the movie Speed taught me anything, it's that in a hostage situation, game theory dictates that you have to shoot the hostages to prove they aren't valuable. That's how you get the upper hand on the tree-killers or Dennis Hopper or whoever. If we want to save the environment, we've got to show we don't care about it.

It won't be easy, but I have a plan. For starters, when you check into a hotel, call maid service and tell them you want clean sheets every day. Then leave your used towels on the bathroom floor, indicating that you'd like a clean set. Then, take any unused towels and washcloths and put them on the floor, too. Just to show you mean business. It's also probably a good idea to take the extra soaps and lotions. A well-placed 2-ounce bottle of green tea olive oil moisturizing shampoo can wreak havoc on an ecosystem.

When you get home from vacation, go straight to the Internet. First, there's showerbuddy.com, where you can buy a Zoe triple showerhead. In 1992, the federal government passed a law requiring that "all faucet fixtures" have a maximum waterflow of 2.5 gallons per minute. The geniuses at Zoe noticed that the statute said nothing about putting multiple fixtures on the same faucet. Seven and a half gallons per minute sends a heck of a message.

Then there's the WC. Before he was crusading against global warming, Sen. Gore was lowering the flush capacity of American toilets from 3.5 gallons to 1.6 gallons. But the secret is that the toilet-makers manufacture bowls and tanks separately, and for each bowl they make a 1.6 gallon tank for the States and a 3.5 gallon tank for Canada. Our neighbors to the north sell the big-flush tanks on eBay all the time. You don't even need to feel guilty about this little act of defiance, since if the Canadians are doing it, it must be virtuous.

Killing the environment will take time. This big ball of mud is pretty resilient. But if we love our planet--and really, who doesn't? --then we have to show corporate America how little we care about it. Only then will it be safe to be an environmentalist again.

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BRITISH GREENIES ATTACK GOOD DINNERS

Distances travelled by aircraft and lorries delivering to supermarkets and restaurants have increased so much that carbon emissions are now at record levels, it was revealed yesterday. A combination of road and air "food miles" generated nearly 18,000 kilotonnes (18 million tonnes) of carbon dioxide in 2004, up 6 per cent on the previous year. The statistics, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, came after a 15 per cent rise in emissions over the decade to 2002.

Environmental groups have blamed the Government's failure to tackle emissions by the food industry while some experts in climate change have pointed to a lack of will within the retail sector, which is under pressure to provide fresh, exotic produce for the consumer all year round. Jermana Canzi, the senior climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We believe that the Government needs to do more to meet its climate change target. It has definitely neglected the growth of emissions for the food transport sector."

HGVs clocked up 8,986 million food kilometres (5,583 million miles) on British roads or travelling from overseas in 2004, according to Defra. While air transport accounted for only 0.1 per cent of total food kilometres in 2004, it generated 13 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions from food transport. In the 12 years to 2004, air freight underwent the highest growth rate of all types of food transport, when food kilometres by air nearly trebled.

The food industry was told in April to cut its carbon emissions, when Defra launched its Food Industry Sustainability Strategy. Ministers urged retailers to cut journey lengths and concentrate on the market for locally sourced goods. The Government wants the food and drink industry to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent within four years. Excluding transport, the food and drink sector accounted for 11 per cent of Britain's energy consumption in 2002.

Leading supermarkets insist that they are doing their utmost to reduce their food miles. A spokesman for Sainsbury's said: "We are making significant progress to address this issue. The mileage our lorries make has reduced by 5 per cent in the past year." A spokeswoman for Tesco added: "Over the past couple of years, we have reduced the miles travelled by suppliers to our distribution centres by 23 per cent and reduced fuel usage by 14 per cent. We are also investing in alternatives to road transport such as rail freight. "To ensure availability all year round we do import some fresh produce. Where we do, we use sea rather than air freight wherever possible - less than 3 per cent of our total imports are brought in by air."

"It is early days," a Defra spokeswoman said. "We are continuing to work closely with the food industry to help to decrease the impact that it has on the environment." Ministers admitted in March that Britain is likely to miss its target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2010, a much more ambitious commitment than the Kyoto Protocol.

Chris Huhne, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Our own research has revealed that supermarket lorries travel the equivalent of almost four return trips to the Moon every day. This highlights the need for government action to encourage them to use more local suppliers. "Supermarkets are a major part of our communities. With one supermarket for every 10,000 people, the big chains have a duty to provide environmentally friendly alternatives by supporting local producers."

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AUSTRALIAN BOOST FOR ETHANOL AS FUEL

Queensland scientists will attempt to create supercharged sugarcane crops designed specifically to fuel our cars. Others are working on a plan to create green fuel from algae grown in farm dams and lagoons across the state. The work is funded by national grants as the Federal Government attempts to improve our research into alternative fuels. Queensland has won the bulk of the $10.5 million announced yesterday under the Renewable Energy Development Initiative Program. CSR Sugar has secured $5 million for its work on "SugarBooster" - a program to develop high yielding sugarcane varieties increasing the amount of fermentable sugar.

Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who announced the grants yesterday, said the program could dramatically boost Australia's green fuel industry. Bardon company SQC Pty Ltd has received $200,000 to help commercialise the process which could utilise suitable farm dams and irrigation lagoons to grow the algae. Other grants include $258,000 for a solar collector in NSW and $2.3 million for a renewable energy grid connector in the Northern Territory.

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Drug-loving Australian Greens

By Andrew Bolt

The irrational cravings the Greens and other Leftists have for easier drugs runs so deep that we must conclude the worst. This month's "drugs, please" came from the Victorian Greens, who promised to scrap all criminal sanctions for drug users and give addicts free heroin. Last month's came from the Democrats' leader in South Australia, Sandra Kanck, who told Parliament that ecstasy (or MDMA) was "not a dangerous drug". In fact, she chirruped, "one of the best things you could probably have done for the people on the Eyre Peninsula who had gone through that trauma (of bushfires) was give them MDMA."

The federal Greens are no better, vowing at the last election to decriminalise drug use and consider free heroin for addicts. And three years ago its (now quietly deleted) policy was to make softer drugs "more freely available" because people need "the opportunity to achieve personal fulfilment" and that "may, for some people at particular times, involve the use of drugs".

I said this hankering for easier-to-get drugs was irrational -- but only if the Left's aim is to cut drug use. You see, make anything more available, and more people will use it. So when Switzerland pioneered "safe" injecting rooms, overdose deaths tripled. And when the Howard Government instead got tough on drugs, deaths dropped.

The sorry conclusion? These "more drugs" policies are clearly drawn up by people so selfish, unimaginative or arrogant that they can't imagine anyone who isn't exactly like they fancy themselves -- rational, and strong enough to take drugs without hurting anyone. I sure don't say they use drugs themselves, mind. But I can introduce them to plenty of junkies who once shared their lethal conceits.

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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