by Corey Matsumoto
There’s a storm brewing on the environmental front, and the turbulent topic is climate change. The reality of climate change can not be questioned—the evidence is in the receding glaciers and the extreme weather patterns of late. Indeed, this current winter season seems more like spring here on the coast. This debate, however, is not about evidence of climate change but about its cause.
Most of the world seems to have somehow finally agreed on something: Climate change is a serious problem that must be addressed, and that humans are the cause. President Obama, the "savior" of the world from the dark Bush days, himself said: “The threat of man-made global warming is undisputed….”
The Global Warming phenomenon has popularised environmentalism, serving as the basis of the greatest consolidated environmental movement in history and placing environmentalism in the mainstream with films like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. That film placed Global Warming in the forefront of our collective psyche. Hopping onboard the environmental movement is now a no-brainer: “Do you want the earth to survive, or to be destroyed?” Hmmm…not a tough decision for most—especially when the science has been all on one-side.
Environmentalism was once relegated to the fringe of our society, and passionate environmentalists were stereotyped as tree-hugging hippies. Now, Saving the world is a comfortable planetary cause for everyone, and those who aren’t on the Global Warming bandwagon may feel uncomfortable when labeled selfish “deniers”.
All was cozy on the Global-Warming front until an inconvenient truth arose from scientists who observed a global-cooling trend this past decade.1
Rather than question these new findings, the environmental movement simply adopted a shift in terminology to accommodate the opposing scientific data. Global Warming disappeared completely from the media’s vocabulary and Climate Change seamlessly took over as the new environmental buzz-term. Like a school of fish turning in unison, the mainstream environmentalist movement made a flash turnabout in direction. The movement was so fixated on the big carrot called Saving the world that this shift in thinking was hardly noticed.
Some scientists spoke out about such crazy notions as the sun’s being the major factor behind fluctuations in the earth’s temperature, rather than CO2 emissions. “What? The sun regulates the temperature of the earth? That’s just CRAZY TALK!” Alas, it seems that sunspot activity has been fluctuating since the sun’s birth, and global-temperature graphs align with the rise and fall of sunspot activity2 .
The recent “Climate Gate” scandal seems to point to collusion and fact-altering practices to exaggerate the threat of man-made global warming3. Apparently funds flowed more freely for research related specifically to climate change as it pertains to global warming, and scientists had been discussing, via email, methods of hiding global-cooling trends4.
These events begin to cast doubts on the effect of man’s industry on global temperature and threaten to put the human ego in its place—well below the almighty, powerful cosmic forces that rule our universe. But the burning question remains, “Why the deception and trickery?”
The environmental movement has been understandably slow to accept that humans may not be the root cause of climate change. Although there is an unspoken fear of deflating years of hard-won support for responsible emissions controls, the real problem is that the environmental movement has been hijacked by faux environmentalists at high levels.
There was a time when the environmentalist movement served primarily as the thorn in the side of big business—exposing dirty, polluting, money-saving practices of big industry while fighting for stricter environmental controls. However, big-business leaders are excellent problem solvers. They may also become skillful in seeking higher positions of power, as controlling policy is the sure-fire way of funneling profits in their general direction. The environmental movement proved an easy target for politicians and businessmen looking for a bullet-proof vehicle for profits, and work began to find ways to control the bothersome movement from the top down.
Al Gore, the politician-turned-businessman, whose Inconvenient Truth campaign is set to net him millions once the USA adopts the Cap and Trade system,5 is only following in the footsteps of Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, who made his fortune in the energy sector while clear-cutting a path for himself straight to the heart of the world environmental movement in the United Nations“Maurice Strong” 6.
Maurice has a resume boasting such positions as CEO of Petro Canada, head of Ontario Hydro, president of Power Corporation, and Vice President of Finance for Dome Petroleum. Despite making a fortune in the dirty business of oil, Maurice concurrently managed to establish himself as one of the leading players in the United Nations’ environmental programs. In 1971 Maurice commissioned a report entitled “Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet” which was presented to the United Nations’ Stockholm Conference and led to the establishment of the environment as part of an international development agenda (which led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme, headed by Maurice). He also sat on the World Commission on Environment and Development.
Maurice’s rise to the top of the world environmental stage should raise a lot of questions. Like a wolf dressed in a sheep’s skin, Maurice masterfully manipulated a world-wide movement by pushing the concept of man-made global warming. He essentially made free-thinkers enemies to the planet’s well-being—pitting environmentalist against environmentalist and convincing entire populations to actually welcome more taxes as a means of “saving the planet”.
What does Maurice’s influence over UN global environmental matters mean to the rest of us? The United Nations, while held out as the international authority on many matters affecting our daily lives, has a bad reputation for pushing policy that indirectly funnels billions of dollars to multinational corporations.
The United Nations’ World Health Organization falsely announced H1N1 as a worldwide pandemic, resulting in a worldwide expenditure on vaccines to the tune of several billions of dollars. Canada alone spent about $1.5 billion7 –enough to buy 50 CaT scan machines and cover the cost of 15 million full-body scans8.
Maurice was strongly tied to the UN’s Kyoto Accord, which led to the recent Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen—both of which were devised to influence governments on a global level while leaving the ordinary citizen out of the decision-making loop. Those in the know realise that Copenhagen was just a scheme to transfer billions of dollars from developed countries to developing countries—developing countries being the current hot-spot for investment opportunity, where multinational corporations are already stationed, poised for massive profit.
So all this time you’re saying to yourself, “What’s so bad about accords to reduce toxins in the air?” Admittedly I haven’t fully researched the emissions-reduction targets of Kyoto or Copenhagen, but it seems that the primary culprit is deemed to be CO2, which occurs everywhere in the natural world and is, in fact, vital to the survival of all plant life on earth. How does CO2 trump dioxides, monoxides, or other chemical pollutants that are clearly toxic to all life?
The Cap-and-Trade system being implemented in the States sounds great, but on a closer look, the proposed system blatantly allows large businesses simply to buy their way with carbon credits into business-as-usual practices with no or little environmental concern.9 It’s another system designed by money makers, for the money makers, providing nothing but a new category of trading fraud.
This is mass deception on a global scale, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the buzzword “terrorist” convinced the entire North American and British populations to go to war against Iraq. Today, “CO2” is the controlling buzzword. What’s next on the list? Community? Organic? Freedom?
I believe pollution is damaging this planet terribly. I also believe that climate change is as natural as the seasons. One more thing also seems certain: Any big-business-sponsored “climate-change” initiatives will have results that favor only investors. Clean-energy solutions are already known but are not profitable in the current system. When we talk about a real solution to pollution—we had best first talk seriously about system change. Just imagine if North America spent as much money on clean-and-renewable-energy research as it does on the military—we’d already be flying clean, and free.
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