Environmental Disasters Caused By Liberals

Liberals like to portray environmentalism as a liberal cause. What they won't tell you is many of the environmental disasters were caused by liberals:

• In 1979, Jimmy Carter adopted an energy policy in an effort to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, demanding a 50% cut in the use of oil to generate electricity and replace it with coal. This policy was unveiled in his 1979 "malaise" speech.^[1] This caused a 40% increase in the use of coal as a power source,^[2] pumping millions of tons of additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
• Environmentalists have been opposed to nuclear power since the 1970s. Their cause gained more public support after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. As a result of this opposition, no new nuclear power plants have been commissioned in the United States since. In conjunction with Carter's energy policy, this led to coal becoming the default electricity-producing fuel. See above for the consequences. Nuclear power, by contrast, does not produce any air pollution at all.
• Aerosols are known to have an atmospheric cooling effect, possibly masking any man-made warming effects from greenhouse gases, assuming there is such a thing.^[3] Liberal environmentalists campaigned heavily against consumer use of aerosols starting in 1974 after an environmental scare hit the news that aerosol sprays could be harmful to the ozone layer.^[4] See above for the consequences. Global mean temperatures began rising again in the late 1970s.
• The anti-DDT campaign leading to a ban on DDT in most places has led to millions of deaths from malaria in the developing world.^[5] The popularity of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was a significant factor in bringing about a ban on the use of DDT. Replacement pesticides adopted after the DDT ban have proven to be less effective at eradicating mosquitoes, and more harmful to the environment. When properly used DDT's ecological impact is negligible.^[6]
• Liberal events are notorious for generating hundreds of tons of litter and leaving the area a trampled, muddy, often eroded mess where nothing grows. Such events include inaugurations of liberal presidents, protest demonstrations sponsored by ANSWER, the Woodstock festivals in 1969, 1994, and 1999, and even Earth Day celebrations. Compare this to the benign conservative, patriotic, and small town festivals such as the Fourth of July, where people pick up their litter and little damage is done to the ground.

The aftermath of the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009: 100 tons of trash to clean up.

• Liberal immigration policies adopted in the United States due to the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, opened the floodgates to unsustainable population growth in the United States which continues to this day. Had immigration levels been left at pre-1965 levels, U.S. population would have likely stabilized at around 240 million by now. Instead, it is over 300 million, and expected to reach 468 million by the year 2060,^[7] mostly due to mass immigration. The U.S. ecology cannot handle this rate of population growth.^[8]
• Likewise, the ecology of U.S. National Parks and Monuments bordering Mexico has been trampled and is severely at risk from the illegal aliens coming into the U.S. who enter through those parks (such as Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument). Liberal environmental groups responded to this threat, not by supporting the border wall, but by filing lawsuits against the fence claiming it would disrupt animal habitats. When in fact, the flood of illegal aliens already did disrupt those animal habitats.^[9]
• Liberal environmentalist demands for cleaner burning gasoline led to the addition of MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) into gasoline starting in 1979, with higher levels of MTBE mandated after 1992 to comply with the demands of the Clean Air Act. The leakage of MTBE from tens of thousands of storage tanks has contaminated tens of thousands of water wells throughout the U.S. An even small release of MTBE can render a large supply of water unpotable. MTBE was finally banned in some states in 2004-2005, but the damage has already been done. The cost of environmental cleanup and lawsuits from its use range upwards of $30 billion.
• Liberal environmentalist opposition to logging on public lands, even including selective logging, has caused an excessive fuel buildup in forests and wildlands. While periodic fires are a natural part of the ecology and most forest and grassland types are dependent on fire to one degree or another, the fires resulting from excessive fuel buildup are neither natural nor environmentally benign. This buildup is thanks to the near-ban on logging in 1992 when a federal judge halted all logging in National Forests until the northern spotted owl could be protected, and the resulting Clinton administration's forest policy which drastically cut logging in the National Forests.
• Animal rights activists, in the name of defending animals, have broken into laboratories and released the animals, "rescuing" them into the wild. If these "rescued" animals are non-native species they can become invasives, causing ecological harm from having been released and then multiplying in an ecosystem in which they lack natural enemies. This has happened, among other places, in the United Kingdom where non-native mink were released into the wild by animal rights activists.^[10] In addition, at least one case exists where vegetarian activists purchased fish with the intention of setting them free, releasing non-native sea lampreys into New Jersey's Passiac River. This same species has wreaked havoc on native species in the Great Lakes.^[11]
• Contraceptive birth control pills are a serious source of water pollution, and the presence of these chemicals in the environment from being disposed of, often by flushing down the toilet, is harming fish populations and even causing mutations and hermaphroditic fish.^[12]
• Organic farming is being promoted by liberal environmentalists. Organic farming requires 40% more land area to produce the same amount of food as modern, non-organic agriculture. The wide spread adoption of organic farming will encroach on conservation preserves and open space, and destroy many of them just to be able to feed the people whom modern agriculture feeds now.
• Liberal congressmen led by Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, pushed an amendment to the 2007 energy bill which will ban the sale of most incandescent light bulbs by 2014. The intention of this ban is to force a switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in the name of reducing energy use. CFLs contain toxic mercury, while incandescent light bulbs are free of any toxic chemicals and can be disposed of safely. CFLs present a toxic hazard if one of them breaks inside a house or on a carpet, and may become a major source of mercury contamination in the water and air from CFLs which will be disposed of in landfills or incinerated.^[13]
• Liberal animal rights opposition to hunting and fishing, and cultural changes in which young people idolize "hip" metropolitan postmodern cultural motifs while holding rural and small town values (including hunting, fishing and responsible gun ownership) in disdain, has caused a decline in hunting which in turn has led to an overpopulation of deer and other animals. Not only is an excess of deer an environmental problem in itself, but it has also caused Lyme disease, formerly a little-known disease spread by deer ticks, to become a serious health problem in recent years in the eastern United States. Additionally, moose, elk, bears, wolves, foxes, and certain species of birds and fish have overpopulated while spreading bad diseases and having negative effects on the environment.

See also[edit]

• Socialist Environmental Disasters
• Environmental alarmism
• Liberal hypocrisy

References[edit]

1. ↑ http://www.rightwingnews.com/speeches/carter.php
2. ↑ Huber, Peter, and Mark Mills. The Bottomless Well. Basic Books, 2005.
3. ↑ http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/39303
4. ↑ http://www.predictweather.co.nz/assets/articles/article_resources.php?id=36
5. ↑ Murray, Iain. The Really Inconvenient Truths. Regnery Publishing, 2008.
6. ↑ Lomborg, Bjorn. Cool It, pg 98. Vintage Books, 2008.
7. ↑ https://www.cis.org/impact_on_population.html
8. ↑ http://balance.org/alerts/alert122004.html
9. ↑ http://www.desertinvasion.us/
10. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1617919.stm
11. ↑ http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/vegetarian_reli.php
12. ↑ Murray, Iain. The Really Inconvenient Truths. Regnery Publishing, 2008.
13. ↑ http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59298