The Green Religion

Karl Marx called religion "the opiate of the masses," suggesting that rulers used religion to keep the lower classes from realizing they were being exploited. Well, his successors--or usurpers, if you choose to look at it that way--found out that it's a pretty powerful drug, as Pope John Paul was one of the trio of world leaders (the others being Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) who brought down the Soviet sphere. His outspokenness, his survival of their assassination attempt, and the courageous, historic mass he gave in Soviet-dominated Poland inspired millions who longed for the freedom to practice their religion.

So the Marxists realized they needed to use religion rather than scorn it, and the results have been stunning. But at least some whose minds are truly trained for skepticism--sadly, I'm not now talking about many scientists--are sounding alarms after initial enthusiasm. Here is an excerpt from Simon Jenkins writing in The Guardian:

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so.

The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of American grain production is now subsidised for conversion into biofuel. Jeremy Paxman pleaded the cause of this latest green wheeze on Monday's Newsnight, while the United Nations food expert, Jean Ziegler, screamed for it to stop: "Children are dying ... It is a crime."...

If all these fancy subsidies and market manipulations were withdrawn tomorrow and government action confined to energy-saving regulation, I am convinced the world would be a cheaper and a safer place, and the poor would not be threatened with starvation.

Just now, for reasons not all of which are "green", commodity prices are soaring. Leave them. Send food parcels to the starving, but let demand evoke supply and stop curbing trade. The marketplace is never perfect, but in this matter it could not be worse than government action. Playing these games has so far made a few people very rich at the cost of the taxpayer. Now the cost is in famine and starvation. This is no longer a game.

Read the whole fantastic column.

Conservatives have known for years what this man is only discovering: almost no matter what the issue is, the government is worse at solving problems than free associations of people. Michael Crichton points out in his well-researched novel State of Fear that human efforts have failed nowhere more spectacularly than in trying to control environments. Moreover, the green movement is creating a massive new opportunity for lobbying that is currently being used by Toyota to destroy American manufacturers and by the agribusiness lobby to raise corn prices and profits to the detriment of American consumers. Americans are wealthy and will muddle through, but the true crime is the grinding poverty Africa is being kept in because of enviro-fads. But it's all wrapped in a cloak of secular piety. Disgusting.