Why I Hate the Global Warming Propagandists

Here is a typical example of what outrages me...

Thomas L. Friedman has been running a series in his N.Y. Times columns about his recent trip to Greenland. He is full of clucking over the changes wrought by climate change and full of worries for "his children" about a nightmare future caused by global warming. The articles are full of praise for "energy saving" and worries that we all need to "tighten our belts" to help save the world. Here's an example from the August 9 column "Flush with Energy":

I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

A day later, I flew back to Denmark.

Do you see what bugs me? It is the audacity of his moral hypocrisy. Here's a guy who is rapturous over the ecological "savings" of a two flush mode toilet, but sees no problem in flying 3,000 miles to and from to have this "experience".

Friedman is a moral hypocrite who makes the following lament in his August 5th column "Learning to Speak Climate":

We’ve charged their future on our Visa cards. We’ve added so many greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, for our generation’s growth, that our kids are likely going to spend a good part of their adulthood, maybe all of it, just dealing with the climate implications of our profligacy. And now our leaders are telling them the way out is “offshore drilling” for more climate-changing fossil fuels.

Madness. Sheer madness.

But he thinks nothing of jet setting around the world. And... he's still using his credit card.

This kind of hypocrisy drives me crazy. This guy urges us, the peasants, to tighten our belts so that he and his children can live in an air conditioned and centrally heated world of at-the-drop-of-a-hat jet flights halfway around the world without having to worry about global warming. He doesn't care that he is condemning us to a second-class lifestyle. Well, nuts to that!

I say develop the economy! Once I can afford to jet set around the world, then maybe I too will look out a jet window at 37,000 feet over a drought stricken over-heated world, and then maybe I too will have an enlightened vision that maybe everybody else should cut back on their energy use to help save me and my progeny. Nuts to him!

Nuts to all the eco-nuts who from their affluent lifestyles have decided "enough!" and want the rest of us to tighten out belts to preserve their world!

I probably didn't convince you. Let me try one more time with another quote from the August 5th column:

I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!

What bothers me about this? He admires the way the hardy Danes will take to bikes in rainy weather to be "energy smart". But Friedman -- ever so willing to sign everybody else up for belt tightening -- laments that he can't ride a bike and be "energy smart" in New York because there are no "bike lanes". What? The Danes are willing to suffer the rain and that is noble. But Friedman can't show equivalent commitment to being "energy smart"? Why? Oh, because there are no dedicated bike lanes. Yes, Friedman wants so badly to show solidarity, but unfortunately there are no bike lanes so he regretfully has to let others save the world with their "energy smart" ways. Instead, Friedman takes on the onerous duty of telling everybody else how to live their lives, i.e. do as I say, not as I do!

This is exactly the kind of hypocrisy that bugs me. He is a typical "moral reformer", i.e. full of advice & rules & demands for others to tighten up or cut back, but somehow he just doesn't have the time, motivation, or commitment to do the same. Hypocrite!