BreakPoint

BreakPoint: Everyone Stop Breathing

Too bad the baseball playoff game between the Phillies and the Rockies was postponed last weekend...because of snow. It was kind of a cool summer, wouldn’t you say? And those folks enjoying the early snows out west this fall, well, they might actually be praying for a little global warming. OK, global warming is no laughing matter. But it is also not a scientific fact, as the new movie Not Evil Just Wrong makes clear. But that’s not stopping leaders in wealthy Western nations from pushing radical “solutions” to this dubious problem. Not Evil Just Wrong does a great job of clearing the air over some contentious issues. Take the hysteria over CO2 emissions, for example. CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s an odorless gas that every living being gives off when he or she exhales. As Patrick Moore, once a founder of Greenpeace, says in the film, “Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that carbon dioxide is the most important nutrient of all of life. It is the currency of life.” Therefore, as MIT’s Richard Lindzen says, we must distinguish between pollutants and CO2. He says, “When you see smokestacks in this country, it is very rare that you see black soot. We have tons of environmental regulations designed to control real pollutants.” Notice that he says “in this country.” Global warming activists would be happy to slap moratoriums on the building of coal burning plants here in the U.S. Even better, they’d like to see existing plants eliminated. This would crush American industry—maybe 7 million American jobs are associated with coal alone. And, ironically, it would boost industry and production in China and India, were there are virtually no environmental regulations, and where they use “dirtier” coal than we do in the United States! The unintended consequence, of course, is that by shutting down coal and coal-based industries here, we end up increasing global air pollution, which comes from dirtier plants overseas.

The film also questions another global warming proposition—that is, that even slight rises in global temperatures would be catastrophic. Well, it would be catastrophic if you consider increased global food production and human flourishing a bad thing. Europe, for example, thrived during the Medieval warm period. In the latter Middle Ages, when temperatures dropped dramatically, crops failed, malnutrition and disease was rampant—millions perished, and the human “herd” was culled, if you want to put it that way. Which raises another issue addressed in the film. The proposed “solutions” to global warming are, in many ways, profoundly anti-human. The wealthy can afford expensive power. The poor and working poor cannot. Patrick Moore says, “The idea that Al Gore has proposed that we can stop using fossil fuels in 10 years is completely reckless...85 percent of global energy is fossil fuel today, and we depend on it for our survival.” Lord Lawson, a member of the economics committee of Britain’s House of Lords, puts it plainly: “The people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reductions are the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.” I urge you to see the film Not Evil Just Wrong, being distributed by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Visit BreakPoint.org, and we’ll show you how you can get a copy for yourself, your friends—or maybe even for your congressman.

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION

Watch the Trailer, or Purchase Not Evil Just Wrong Cornwall Alliance ‘Not Evil Just Wrong’: What’s Really at Stake with Global Warming Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Commentary | October 15, 2009

10/16/09