The days are long past when the Episcopal Church could jokingly be called “the Republican party at prayer.” But the environmental movement, now more than ever, does represent the American Left at worship. The green crusade is now crafting a new way for its own troubling religion to pervert traditional faith. Having fought in federal court to deny its religiosity — and thus continue its life-sustaining flow of taxpayer dollars — the Down With People machine is donning religious vestments and teaming up with the Bush administration to tap the president’s faith-based initiative.
CNSNews.com reports that “EPA is informally seeking ‘ideas’ regarding how religious groups who promote green causes like climate change and pollution controls, can qualify for the White House’s faith-based funds.” The very idea of green evangelizing infecting Bush’s faith-based initiative should raise alarm, since the movement has far more in common with pagan themes than with traditional tenets of faith.
The White House explains: “To strengthen the work of what President Bush terms our nation’s ‘armies of compassion’ — civic, social, charitable and religious groups — he created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) on January 29, 2001.” President Bush seeks to buttress governmental efforts “to battle social distress, [as] too many of our neighbors still suffer from poverty and despair amidst our abundance… [Americans] want to see their federal dollars making a real difference in the lives of the disadvantaged. And they believe that government should help the needy achieve independence and live responsible lives.”
Incredibly, EPA sees green activism fulfilling this mission. Can the EPA really be blind to the green agenda of limiting the availability of affordable energy — a move that would be most devastating to seniors and the poor? “Giving society cheap, abundant energy… would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun,” says green godfather Paul Ehrlich. Oh, the horrors of subjecting millions to affordable heating, lighting and cooling, transportation, and other freedoms. Onward, Kyoto soldiers!
Did EPA also miss the greens loudly affirming their agenda at the August World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (also expertly documented by CNS’s Marc Morano)? Among their projects: impeding technology that increases agricultural abundance, even the shipment of food to famine-stricken countries like Zimbabwe; lamenting the pernicious influence of indoor plumbing; and complaining that the poor shouldn’t want (or get) such comforts as electricity because there are larger, Gaia-centric considerations at play.
Just feel the love in the Earth Island Institute’s September 14, 2001, green tantrum: “U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance.” Steeped in self-righteous arrogance, this bilge denied that the September 11 attacks represented an act of war. Rather, it was “an act of anger, desperation and indignation.” We asked for it.
“This was not an ‘attack on all American people,’” fumed EII — because those who died were mostly Pentagon and “multinational financial empire” types. Plus, we should get over it because “[t]his was not the sort of flat-out terrorism that targets random innocents at a disco or a beach.” And who is “Earth Island Institute” but the parent of the “Bluewater Network,” publicly credited with orchestrating California’s recently enacted stab at limiting SUV availability as a step toward implementing the Kyoto Protocol.
Let us now visit the voices of greens past, present, and future revealing their “people are pollution” philosophy:
“To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.” Lamont Cole (as quoted by Elizabeth Whelan in her book Toxic Terror)
“This is as good a way to get rid of them as any.” Charles Wursta, Chief Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, commenting on the likelihood of millions dying from a global ban on DDT (also quoted in Toxic Terror)
“I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.” Paul Watson, founder of Greenpeace (quoted in Access to Energy, vol. 10, no. 4, Dec. 1982)
“The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.” Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept (quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)
“The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species [man] upon the rest of the natural world.” John Shuttleworth, Friends of the Earth manual writer
That anyone should invoke religion or appeal to people’s faith in order to advance an agenda fundamentally driven by beliefs that are wildly inconsistent with dominant religious principles is extremely disturbing.
The greens are patently anti-growth and anti-wealth. Yet, ironically, wealthier is healthier, and cleaner. But wealth means the ability to provide for large families, live suburban lifestyles (i.e., commute), and otherwise act in ways that have been deemed inherently wrong by the anti-people crowd.
These activists find the current global population unacceptable by a factor of three. They seek to limit those technologies that facilitate modern life by pleading an artificial scarcity. Yes, opposition to any initiative styled as “environmentally friendly” is easily mischaracterized. But the green charade must be fought, for it is intolerable that taxpayers should be asked to fund such objectives under the guise of aiding the poor and disadvantaged. The greens’ philosophy has nothing to do with Judeo-Christian — or even simply humanitarian — principles. Their projects have no place in President Bush’s Faith Based and Community Initiative.
— Christopher C. Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition.