In the South, there’s a funny expression: “you’re greening me”. It means you’re taking me for a dope; it seems to come from assuming someone is a greenhorn. These days, there’s a whole lot of greening going on. Over at PJM, there’s a pretty good article, The True Meaning of ‘Go Green’. And over at Reason, Green like Me.
I detect a turning point in the talking points. With CRU and the IPCC in tatters, climate is no longer a viable buzztopic. Time to “MoveOn”, as they say. So now “green” is in. From the PJM article:
It’s omnipresent now, appearing in every form of media, in grocery stores, on any sort of product. Smiles and earth tone images greet us as we are told over and over again to “go green,” it’s the right thing to do. Don’t be left out, everyone’s doing it! Green is in, save the earth. It’s in all the schools — green is good, kind, and moral. Green is our future. Without it there will be no future.
Notice that they’re no longer talking about anything tangible. Greenness is simply holiness. You would never question your clergyman on whether holy is good would you? Horn goes on to make a critical point:
To “go green” is a metaphor for a cause, but the cause is not the one you might think it is. Green is not about saving energy. It is not about conservation or living more efficiently by recycling. It’s not about electric cars or hydrogen power or solar panels.
Green is not about you. Green is about saving nature. From you.
In other words, it’s no longer, as it was in the case of the climate emergency about saving us and our progeny. It’s about saving the fish. And the bears. And all kinds of other animals who would just as soon eat you as not.
The phrase “go green” seems harmless enough — what’s so wrong with being more efficient and looking for new ways of producing energy? It’s true, there’s nothing wrong with looking for new energy sources. But going green has been promoted as the answer to all of our energy needs, the idea being that if we “go green” we can save the earth and still produce plenty of energy and create new jobs. This is part of the lie.
What you must always keep in mind is that the only goal of the environmental movement is to save nature from you. There is no other reason for its existence. The environmental movement does not care what happens to your job, your family, your future, the future of your children, this country, any country.
But they package it as good for you. Thus……Green Jobs!!! From Reason:
While the phrase “green jobs” evokes organic farmers and wind turbine repairmen, there is no clear, common definition of what a “green” job is. Without one, special-interest lobbying will transform even well-intentioned programmes. Consider corn-based ethanol, a technology with no redeeming features. Corn-based ethanol is bad for the environment, placing unsustainable demands on water supplies and increasing harmful farming practices. It is bad for people, raising corn prices for some of the world’s poorest people. It provides little, if any, environmental benefit, with a net energy gain often close to or even below zero (the exact amount depends on the weather during the growing season, among other things). Yet corn-based ethanol has received billions in taxpayer support and continues to be favoured in so-called “green” energy legislation….
First issue: no clear way of measuring the greenness of a job. This is guaranteed to lead to a lot of the same kinds of shenanigans that this administration plays with “jobs saved or created”.
Second issue: Real life choices, like the wind or ethanol examples listed above are mixes of pluses or minuses. Nothing (except death) is absolutely green, and nothing is absolutely without benefit. Even when you throw tires into the ocean, it creates reefs, for example. So greenness is basically a marketing claim, like new and improved.
“We found employers have a broad view of what constitutes a green job,” [an official] said.
Green jobs counted in the report include engineers and architects; farmers and fishers; salespeople and lawyers; carpenters and truck drivers.
And even though employers responded to the survey last winter, in the depths of the recession, they were forecasting green jobs would increase 14 percent between 2008 and 2010.
I think it’s pretty clear that green jobs are going to increase by those kinds of margins because existing jobs are going to be declared “green”. From the PJM article:
The opportunities of “going green” have not been lost on corporate America. Corporations have joined in a strange alliance of sorts with the environmental groups. Some very large companies are promoting “go green” in their ad campaigns — you can’t watch a commercial from General Electric without seeing a windmill. Insurance companies promote “going green” as a responsible and eco-sensitive way to insure your car or house. Solar panels are ubiquitous in advertising, lighting our way to a brighter future. Yet corporations could care less about the environmentalist goal of “going green” — the phrase is, again, meant to sucker, to make the consumer feel good about buying the product from the company. It’s no different than the use of words like “new,” “improved,” or “natural.” “Green” is just another marketing tool, and the act of “going green” in the corporate world is the same as it has always been, even if the color of money is not always green anymore.
Basically saying the same thing. Horn goes on:
“Go green” stands for reduced economic activity. The idea is to change the world — scale down the world’s economies to save the climate and the world from prosperity seeking humans. Why else would all these eco-groups demand we meet the now defunct Kyoto Protocol carbon emission reductions? Why else would they demand we reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050? Because they know the only way to meet those carbon reductions is to radically change everything. The environmentalists fully intend to beat down the economies of developed nations and to stamp out any hopes of the third world.
The next time you see or hear or read “go green” remember it means “go back” — to a time when people lived half as long as today. To a time when humans were at the mercy of nature.
Don’t fall for it.
They’re greening the public. They’re taking us for greenhorn dolts.
