I was extremely disappointed to see this from Rod Dreher today. Apparently, because the Young Conservative Coalition and some of my colleagues are holding an Earth Day event tomorrow at which they are commiting the sin of handing out granola bars, they cannot be serious about promoting “alternative environmental solutions that really work.” This is anything but “frat-boy sneering,” and to try to present it as such is the real sneering. The fact is that the policies the event is protesting are not just harmful to the economy, but will represent real harm to millions — perhaps billions — around the world by stifling innovation, cutting off the most acheivable route to development, and miring the most vulnerable in poverty. There is a genuine moral case against Dreher’s favored policies and I find his attempts to try to present that as equivalent to hard-left feminists jeering at the Catholic church offensive. It has always been my suspicion that the so-called CrunchyCons on both sides of the Atlantic have never made any attempt to understand the deep moral principles behind free-market environmentalism. If they did so, perhaps they would realize that they have far more in common with FME-ers than the anti-human deep greens they have to all intents and purposes thrown their lot in with. I hope and trust Rod will make an effort to see past the granola bars and comprehend what we are really trying to do. We have attempted to visualize a small part of that message for Earth Day here.