Radical Environmentalism: The "Imperfect Storm"

Liberals inadvertently delivered a telling message in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In essence, it is the same message they have sent on the heels of every major calamity, whether natural or man-made, to befall the nation during the past several decades. Let a heat wave hit or a bridge collapse, and their first impulse is to assign guilt, invariably among their political opposition. But by their immediate and hysterical finger-pointing, they telegraph their desperation to avoid any culpability for the real problems at hand.

Thus, we were told, the hardship and suffering resulting from Katrina was not to be blamed on the lavishly funded but totally corrupted local and state governments that did almost nothing worthwhile prior to the catastrophe, despite having received enormous supplies of money to prepare for the inevitability of a major hurricane. Instead, the negative attention was directed at the lack of a sufficient federal response once the area had been devastated by the thoroughly anticipated storm.

So, years of liberal/Democrat graft and misuse of funds in Louisiana suddenly metamorphosed into accusations of racially motivated indifference within the Bush Administration. Worse yet, the success of this heinous ploy meant that those truly responsible would escape any accountability, virtually guaranteeing that New Orleans will suffer a similar fate whenever the next major storm makes landfall there.

Likewise, in the horrific hours following the Columbine massacre, people were honestly asking what had so poisoned the modern culture that might have allowed such demented ideas to fester in the minds of the two young men who did the killing. Facing a real possibility that their morally bankrupt and humanistic indoctrination of the young might receive severe scrutiny, liberals began shouting loudly about the need for more "gun control," as if the two dozen laws already on the books were not sufficient to dissuade honest youths from killing their classmates.

Currently, with every ensuing statistical deviation in the frequency of natural disasters, unscrupulous opportunists are seizing on the latest event as a means of gaining political mileage of some sort, whether with respect to the lack of sufficient preparation or, as is increasingly the case, by invoking the convenient "bogey man" of global warming as the ultimate culprit.

This past spring has seen a profusion of tornadoes across the American heartland, much as is the case during most springs in recorded history. Nevertheless, any comparative increase in the number of violent storms is, we are told, a clear sign of "global warming," and ultimately, evidence of the need for the Congress to confiscate more of the nation's wealth in order to fund more pork barrel projects.

The ostensible "connection" between the event and the liberal political reaction is far from coherent, and in truth represents a criminal exploitation of misfortune, heartbreak, and loss of life. Nevertheless, dire predictions are invariably offered in the wake of each tragedy, complete with grim promises that the disasters will continue until Congress acts.

Yet even when weather patterns become more benign, as has been the case with the current lull in Gulf Coast hurricanes since 2005, nobody suggests that the weather situation is improving, or that perhaps government plans to encroach on Americans' freedoms need to be curtailed. Instead, some inane excuse is offered for the respite, followed by promises of even more devastating events if American citizens do not immediately heed the warnings, fork over their earnings, and elect Democrats.

However, all is not lost. The "playing field" appears to be shifting, as it almost always does whenever the devices of the left are allowed to advance unchecked for too long and people begin to feel their real consequences. Americans in particular, but also the rest of the world, are being exposed to a not-so-bright future that the current crop of leftists would impose on all of society if they get their way.

Even as recently as last year, when too few were sufficiently vigilant to notice all of the liberal/enviro meddling in their lives, it seemed entirely worthwhile and reasonable for average people to "save the planet" through the meager effort of purchasing and installing those funny little curly light bulbs. But the picture looks far more grim these days, with gasoline prices bolting beyond four dollars per gallon.

Worse yet from the perspective of the left, the general public is finally "connecting the dots," recognizing that surging costs of fuel results from the limitations in its supply. And this condition can itself be directly linked to the stranglehold the environmental extremists have on any exploration or drilling for new fossil fuel sources. The general public is beginning to grasp the hardships it could eventually face, once electrical power providers are forced to compete for a limited supply of kilowatts in the same manner that gasoline distributors now must contend for each available gallon of gas.

Meanwhile, the earth's climate has, in the past decade, stubbornly refused to cooperate with all those apocalyptic predictions. Absent from current weather measurements is any evidence of actual increase in atmospheric temperatures, an "inconvenient fact" that has forced many among the global warming alarmists to regroup. They claim now that any stark increases in global temperatures will be delayed until some time after the next two presidential election cycles.

According to Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Keil, Germany, although the International Panel on Climate Change predicts a paltry .3 degree C increase in global temperatures over the next decade, the current pattern suggests no ensuing changes until 2015, after which the scorching of the planet will ostensibly begin in earnest.

In other words, any reliable computer model or prediction has yet to be achieved, despite all of the emotion and money thrown into the effort. Indeed, the only grim expectation that has been consistently met is that with the passing of each warm season, each cool season, each dry season, and each wet season, entrenched governmental bureaucrats and shameless political opportunists will seek to exploit the earth's natural ebb and flow as a means of scaring the public into further subservience.