The latest trend among environmental wackoists (a technical term meaning “One given to wackoism”) is to propagate and discuss the idea that global warming may now be “irreversible”. We’ve gone too far. We’ve damaged, plundered, raped, mutilated and butchered this fragile planet more than it can take. We’ve sprayed one aerosol too many, filled our tank up once too often, cut down one more tree than we should have, burned a little too much oil for heating, a little too much coal for power, a little too much gas for barbecues. RIP Earth. Its too late to save Mother Nature now. She’s on her last legs. She’s knackered. She’s on borrowed time.

The planet is basically a write-off.

And the aforementioned environmental wackoists have done me a great service with this one. It isn’t often that they so blatantly expose themselves for the lamebrain cretins they are. This time they’ve offered us a glimpse of their idiocy like never before. The single question I ask most of environmental wackoists is this: can human beings really inflict so much harm within a couple of hundred years to natural processes that have been going on for billions upon billions of years? And with this “irreversible” talk, their answer sounds even more ridiculous.

George ‘Moonbat’ Monbiot writes in yesterday’s Guardian in an article entitled “A World Turned Upside Down” about the climate change denial of “fossil fuel lobbyists”. (By the way, it is not necessary to LOBBY for fossil fuel – we already rely on it for our entire way of life. Calling those who disagree with him “lobbyists” must make Moonbat feel so much better about being a minority.) He asserts that the latest stage of climate change denial is to “…concede that [the issue of climate change] would be cheaper to address than to neglect, but maintain that it’s now too late. [That it is too late] is their most persuasive argument.” Moonbat believes that the aforementioned wackoists may be correct – that it is perhaps too late – and, being an aforementioned wackoist himself, he is in a position to know.

But there’s one thing I’ve learned about Moonbat. Like other aforementioned environmental wackoists, he sounds more confident than he actually is. His combative, self-assured rhetoric would convince any reader that the science and political response he advocates is the Way, the Truth and the Life; ironclad. In actual fact he’s like the Wizard of Oz: lots of smoke, fire, lights and noise, but, behind the curtain, just a frustrating little man. And so this article did not surprise me, even though it represents a veritable change of position for him.

A typical leftist, George Monbiot has consistently rejected free market ideals as unfair. As a result, corporations have been viewed and construed as evil. They pollute (tsk-tsk), they are monolithic (gasp), and worst of all, they make profit (cue heart attack). If anyone is to blame for Just About Everything, besides the general consumer, its the corporations. They provide the means by which we blow holes in the ecosystem and therefore they are immoral and viciously sinister. This has been the tone of Moonbat’s prolixity through the years (at least the past eight and a half, since his earliest corporation-bashing article in archives dates to 1997).

But this new article changes everything. His cannon aim has been shifted. He now believes that corporations are crying out for government regulations, but the wretched politicians won’t give it to them! “A week ago”, he confesses, “I would have said that if it is too late, then one factor above all others is to blame: the chokehold big business has on economic policy. … But on Wednesday I discovered that it isn’t quite that simple. At a conference organised by the Building Research Establishment, I witnessed an extraordinary thing: companies demanding tougher regulations, and the government refusing to grant them.”

Moonbat has discovered that he’s been wrong about corporations. And, funny enough, he’s STILL wrong about them. What the companies have been saying is that IF government must interfere in the market, IF they insist on listening to Moonbats like Monbiot, then it would be a mistake to put some companies at the disadvantage of regulation and not others. The continual noise from the aforementioned environmental wackoists may even have some corporate leaders convinced that its in their own interests to ‘go green’, but only if everyone else is forced to also.

So, why worry at all, if its too late? Why even bother, if the process of global warming is now “irreversible”? Well, you see, Moonbat doesn’t think it is too late. Yet. “I don’t believe it is yet too late to minimise climate change. Most of the evidence suggests that we could still stop the ecosystem from melting down, but only by cutting greenhouse gases by around 80% by 2030.” We’re teetering on the brink! We could still turn back! This is our last chance! We’ve got to do something NOW! We are in the Last Days! How convenient for his position. This sounds almost biblical – there is a distinct air of evangelism in Moonbat’s message. “Come down to the altar tonight! This may be your last chance!” And yet Moonbat’s message is less believable.

Unfortunately, Moonbat isn’t the only scaremonger. The general public is being deluged by stories about “The End of Oil” and other such things – and as for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, if they weren’t caused by George W Bush somehow (perhaps by some form of remote steering), they were the latest examples of the ongoing and worsening effects of global warming (even though there is no statistical increase AT ALL in natural events of this kind; but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.)

Meantime, there is a flurry of activity that falls into the category, “Wow; maybe the market really does have the answer!” The highest-profile example of this is Tony Blair’s recently-publicised reservations about the Kyoto Accord, which left the impression that Blair now has more faith in the free market to provide the solutions than he does in any government treaties or pledges. There are interesting technologies coming from every sector which relies on energy consumption of some kind.

Even Moonbat, despite still insisting that government will have to push this stuff through (to meet his ‘End Of The Earth’ timescale), understands that private industry has the eventual answers to the problems: “The architects Atelier Ten had designed a cooling system based on the galleries of a termite mound. By installing a concrete labyrinth in the foundations, they could keep even a large building in a hot place – like the arts centre they had built in Melbourne – at a constant temperature without air conditioning. The only power they needed was to drive the fans pushing the cold air upwards, using 10% of the electricity required for normal cooling systems. The man from a company called PB Power explained how the 4 megawatts of waste heat poured into the Thames by the gas-fired power station in Barking could be used to warm the surrounding homes. A firm called XCO2 has designed a virtually silent wind turbine, which hangs, like a clothes hoist, from a vertical axis. It can be installed in the middle of a city without upsetting anyone.” Moonbat seemed to be actually excited by the innovations of the free market! He seemed to be enthusiastic about the endeavours of mankind, something that few of the aforementioned environmental wackoists ever experience.

And count me in. With the era of cheap oil coming to an end within a few decades (as explained in a wonderful article by John Dillin of The Christian Science Monitor), my generation will most likely have migrated to supporting our lifestyles in this age of peaceful capitalism by newer, better means within 45 years. But there is no imminent threat. There is no advancing calamity. This is not the end of Planet Earth as we know it. As fossil fuel costs rise, the free market is already beginning the next phase of modern industry, and liberty is the catalyst of change, not coercion.

What Moonbat and aforementioned environmental wackoists must learn is to sit back, enjoy life, and leave them to it.

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John Wright