GREENIE WATCH

"The environmental lobby now stands charged with direct responsibility for millions of needless deaths, mostly of children in the Third World, from malaria. At issue is the banning of DDT. Bjorn Lomborg, of The Skeptical Environmentalist fame, puts the basic science briskly. "Our intake of coffee is about 50 times more carcinogenic than our intake of DDT before it was banned ... the (cancer) risk for DDT is about 0.00008 per cent." Ted Lapkin insists in November's edition of Quadrant that it's "still widely regarded as the single most powerful weapon at our disposal in the war against malaria" and that its disuse has been a scandal of public policy".

"Contrary to the public image of an everyman's movement, environmentalism is in fact big business, raking in more than $8.5 billion per year. ... Environmentalist group income is larger than the Gross National Product (GNP) of about five-dozen nations worldwide. ... Only a small portion of these immense revenues comes from the checkbooks of concerned individual donors. ... Each year, hundreds of foundations earmark thousands of grants totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for environmentalist groups. Many of these foundations are part of an informal coalition called the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) .... Occupying a prominent place at the EGA meetings is the Ford Foundation, which has a long history of donating enormous sums to environmentalist causes."

The Green enemy being recognized: "A vote for exploration of Alaska's National Wildlife Reserve is a vote for environmental responsibility, Jerry Hood, Local Alaska Teamsters leader, said on July 31, 2001. When the Teamsters announced support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to create jobs, many commentators claimed that the nadir of the relationship between environmentalists and the labor movement was reached. Halting drilling in ANWR is the No. 1 defensive priority of the largest environmental organizations in the country, and creating new jobs is the top priority for many labor unions."

What fun! "An unusual alliance of immigration foes and animal-rights activists is attempting to take over the leadership of the Sierra Club, America's oldest national environmental group, in what is emerging as a bitter fight over the future of the 112-year-old organization founded by Scottish immigrant John Muir. Leaders of a faction that failed to force the club to take a stand against immigration in 1998 are seeking to win majority control of the group's 15-member governing board in a spring election -- this time, as part of a broader coalition that includes vegetarians, who want the club to denounce hunting, fishing and raising animals for human consumption."

Biased schools: "Some material taught in NSW [Australia] public schools was anti- farmer and 'blatantly deep green,' Acting Prime Minister John Anderson said today. Prime Minister John Howard this week sparked a political debate on education when he said government schools were too politically correct. Mr Anderson welcomed the debate on public schools, saying teachers' unions and government school curriculums were sometimes too ideological. He said some lessons on sustainable development given in NSW schools were biased against farmers."

Phoney panic: Again the UK authorities find no evidence that mobile phones are a threat to health - and again they warn us to be cautious anyway.

Environmentalism as the new socialism: "The International Socialist Party, which is intent upon continuing to press countries into socialism, is now headed up by people within the United Nations. They are the ones in the UN environmental program, and they were the ones sponsoring the so-called Earth Summit that was attended by 178 nations.... One of the main organizers of the program, Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway was the assistant executive for the conference. She is also the vice-president of the World Socialist Party. When she was questioned by Brazilian reporters after her talk and asked if what they were proposing didn't have a peculiar resemblance to the agenda of the World Socialist Party she said, "Well, of course." That was reported in Brazil but not picked up by the American press".

A useful summary of the Left/Right difference over global warming here. Its conclusion: "When it comes to global warming, conservatives are not convinced there is a problem, are convinced the left's expensive solution wouldn't work, but are willing to consider the matter further".

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