Environmentalism on the Run

Way back when, in this case that means last year, global warming was an article of unshakable faith among the cognoscenti. And not just among the enlightened elites.

Children across the nation were being indoctrinated in the virtues of going green. They were even taught to turn turn against their parents when these unfortunates committed crimes against the Goddess Nature. My comments with links to the information sources, here.

Strangely enough, no one thought for a second about the notion that turning green... with envy or jealousy, for example... was generally not a good thing.

In passing, note what Iago said to Othello:

O, beware my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

Excuse the digression.

Environmentalism's decline began with the purloined emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. Said emails showed that the scientists had been fudging the peer review process, acting more like propagandists than scientists. Once this was revealed the wheels started coming off the green machine.

Further revelations have thrown other parts of the settled science into doubt, most recently with the discovery that the "science" supporting the prophecy about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers came from a graduate student paper filled with speculation.

Now, God has weighed in, not only with one of the coldest winters on record in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA, but with a snow storm that buried Washington DC in nearly three feet of snow. For those like Robert Kennedy, Jr., who were convinced that global warming meant that there would never again be snow in Washington, it was not good news. Link here.

Naturally, when the American people were polled about which issues they considered important, global warming came in last. How many people can still take Al Gore seriously?

Now, the environmental movement has met another form of Armageddon-- ridicule. It's one thing for the settled science to be revealed as junk science-- Wizard of Oz, anyone-- but it is quite another for environmentalism to become uncool.

Discredited science is one thing; ridicule is quite something else. And that is what Audi gave us yesterday in its Super Bowl ad for its new green car.

I do not know whether or not it is going to sell cars, but the ad is surely not going to sell environmentalism. Link to Audi ad here.

The ad shows a community invaded by the Green Police. These forces of oppression are intrusive and invasive, arresting people for using plastic credit cards, for drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups, for overheating their hot tubs, and for using incandescent light bulbs.

If you think that this is an over-the-top Orwellian fantasy, reread my post on the Green Wars, linked above.

Yet, the ad's message, that you can avoid the Green Police by driving an environmentally friendly Audi seems to recommend a level of acquiescence, even surrender to oppression. How can you sell cars when you define the act of buying the car as a way to cave in to the forces of fascist oppression?