We critically need better energy dialogue, but that doesn’t mean we need to talk to degenerates

One day, when you’re at the local Compost Emporium, or Subaru dealership, or at the Mother Earth News Potato and Geranium Festival, and you see someone clomping around in rubber boots that have something brown on them that you know you don’t want to know what it is, and that needs a haircut that they will DIY at home when they get around to it, and smells vaguely like something really really natural, you’ll know you’ve found an environmentalist. A real one. One that cares about the earth, one that knows what soil feels and smells like, one that knows how to stake a tomato plant or hill a row of potatoes or make apple cider.

There are other kinds that stake claim to the word. In the news, you’ll read about “environmentalists”, but they are something else entirely. As in, Something Wicked This Way Comes. In this crazed world we live in, it is imperative that we learn to know the difference, to show deference to one and seek jail time for the others.

True environmentalists care about the earth. They care about their footprint, they wear warm sweaters rather than turn up the heat, and they perpetually investigate new ways to live naturally and organically. We can learn a lot from them.

The environmentalists that populate the news feed are a decidedly more sinister variety that has gone far beyond caring about the earth. As legendary environmentalist turned “environmentalist” and 350.org founder Bill McKibben put it on Patagonia’s lifestyle clothing website: “it has been a great pleasure to watch the climate movement, as it has grown, focus its attention ever less on the natural world and ever more on the injustice that is at the core of this strange moment in history… climate policy is immigration policy is poverty policy.”

What do statements like McKibben’s mean? They mean at least two things. One, as he clearly states, is that he is pleased that the climate change movement is less about the natural world – i.e., he is not as interested in pollution, emissions, waste, habitat destruction – as he is in the social aspect, meaning the climate fight is now a socialist/capitalist fight and all that entails. And what it entails is not just no solutions, but a grab for power.

But that’s the most benign part. The second thing that statements like McKibben’s mean it that these dangerously ideological monstrosities will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

Put it this way: Would you use children as puppets to promote political agendas? Who does that? Who in history has stooped so low as to use children as tools? Not just showing images of happy kids in advertising, but brainwashing them, grooming them, scaring them, then hiding behind them as these manipulated and used youths face a wall of cameras? And the cowards are hiding behind, using the very innocence and earnestness of their tools as a weapon against opponents, a strategy that is borderline evil.

Some people think we need to sit down with these people and converse, that we need to talk to them and show them facts about their energy usage, and the world’s energy usage, and reason with them about the challenges of converting the world’s unfathomably large energy systems to renewable energy.

For anyone that wants to negotiate with these people, or dialogue with them, look at what they do with children. Look at their standards. Do not imagine for a second that anyone capable of promoting such disgusting behaviour (McKibben, again, same article: “The great climate strike that will take place around the world this Friday has its roots in the efforts of junior high and high school students, with more than a few elementary school students thrown in. I’ve gotten to know many of them…”) is going to sit down and have a rational conversation about energy realities. Try it, and they will bite you in the face.

The great climate strike has its roots in cunning brains like McKibben’s, ones who have no problem planting seeds of fear into adolescent minds, then recruiting them to help fight their grown-up war for social justice.

There is no negotiating with these people, just as there wasn’t with the Khmer Rouge that slaughtered half of Cambodia, or any other evil regime that used children as pawns. We are living in a very sick era, bounded by the ultimate irony: The very fossil fuels that McKibben and his Sesame Street army are trying to wipe out are the very fuels that enabled their life, and keeps them alive every day.

Sadly, these trust-destroying geniuses have won several big battles. They are gearing up to win the war. The irony that they will wipe themselves out if they wipe out fossil fuels presents a very chilling spectre: Either they are dumb enough not to see what is going to happen, or they are smart enough to see but don’t care. Because at the end of the day, winning their climate war by attacking fossil fuels means that tens of millions have to die. It is truly frightening to see the poker game that these people are willing to play. I guess when it’s kids tossing the chips onto the pile, it must not seem quite as real to them.

While watching the world bite the hand that feeds, use your spare time wisely to learn about energy reality! Order a copy of “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.