Ask a friend or associate, “Can you explain ‘cap and trade?’” More than likely you will be astounded at what a poor grasp (if any) he or she has of the subject, even though the future of our economy and even our country hinges to a large extent on whether or not cap-and-trade legislation passes or not. Without knowledge, our citizenry will not realize this innocuous phrase “cap and trade” really means government control of an ever diminishing energy supply and the rationing that must accompany any restrictive policy implemented.

Explaining how the government plans to control energy, and the effects of that control, is just one of the points that co-producers and directors Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney put forth in their documentary film Not Evil Just Wrong about global warming and other environmental alarmism. The explanation about the effects of controlling energy is not given by means of graphs and charts, but by the words of a young couple who have raised their family by hard work and who can see what the Obama administration’s promise to shut down coal plants (because the tax on them would be prohibitively expensive) would do not only to their family, but to their community and the nation.

Where did this rush for “cap and trade” legislation come from? It is a spin-off (actually the only goal) of the hysteria over global warming alleged by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warming supposedly caused by the tiny human contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This alleged connection has become “fact” in the mainstream media, in liberal political rhetoric, and in academia. Yet polls show that most American voters believe that climate change is caused by natural factors; moreover, more people become skeptical every day as we see and feel temperatures on the decline. This year, for instance, meteorologists joke that winter in the upper plain states came 70 days early.

McAleer and McElhinney show that a general trend of planetary warming has been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age some 150 years ago, proving that there is no connection between CO₂ and increasing temperature — except in that increases of CO₂ levels in the atmosphere follow temperature increases on Earth because the oceans warm and outgas CO₂. Further, they show that the major “proof” given by global-warming alarmists of CO₂ forcing temperatures up was a farce. The proof, which was offered by the IPCC in its 2001 assessment, was a graph known as the hockey stick. The film gives the history of this graph, documenting how it was found to be a fraud that caused the IPCC to remove it in its 2007 assessment.

About the “In” Crowd

Not Evil Just Wrong provides plenty of time for environmental alarmists to explain their positions, which appear ludicrous when juxtaposed with a few basic facts. First on the list is Chief Global-warming Alarmist Al Gore, whose Inconvenient Truths was found to contain nine significant errors according to Britain’s High Court.

In another example of self-condemnation, a member of Plane Truth promotes shutting down air travel because of a belief that CO₂ emissions from aircraft are going to cause the planet to become uninhabitable from skyrocketing temperatures (temperature increases that I’m sure he is sad to see are not coming about, as the Earth’s temperatures have actually been decreasing during the past several years to record lows — as proven by satellite temperature readings and underwater ocean monitors). There’s no word from Al Gore in the movie about stopping air travel, apparently because he continues to fly around in his private jet from one “green” function to another. Nor was there any commentary from Obama and his wife, who took separate jumbo jets to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee to hold the 2016 Olympics in Chicago.

Many viewers (including your correspondent) were expecting the documentary to be strictly on the global-warming issue, since dialogue on that issue is in a critical phase in U.S. politics. So when a relatively large segment of the movie was about the insecticide DDT, it seemed incongruous — at least at the beginning. Eventually a realization hits that the controversy over DDT and that over global warming are both examples of the environmental movement’s disregard for the effect of their policies on the well-being of the human race. And how environmentalists — at the highest level, not the college student next door who has no idea of what is being done in the name of being “green” — consider mankind to be an alien life form on the planet, while protection of the snail darter is to be accomplished at any cost. With less and less energy to supply water and sanitation, cultivate and process food, provide health services, and allow us the many other modern life enhancing amenities we enjoy — how many lives would be sacrificed to the “green religion” of the environmentalists?

In one scene that made one want to throw bottles at the TV set, a well-to-do environmentalist showed no concern to a Ugandan mother, Fiona Kobusingye-Boynes, over the loss of her child to malaria, a disease that was almost eliminated by the use of DDT, but then resurged when the EPA banned DDT’s exportation and insisted other countries adopt the same policy. Now the death toll of malaria victims worldwide, but mainly in Third World countries, mostly young children, is estimated by the World Health Organization to be one million per year. Recently the World Health Organization, under strong pressure from human rights organizations, particularly in Africa and Asia, rescinded its ban on the pesticide that has been shown in test after test to be harmless to humans and animals, including birds. The environmentalists continue to push to overturn this ruling, regardless of its toll in human misery and death.

Pushing Back

While there were many other villains on the environmental Left that were allowed to embarrass themselves — NASA’s James Hansen noteworthy among them — there were also heroes of the skeptic camp who offered reasonable commentary on the shallowness of the hysterical arguments and gave verifiable scientific rebuttals. Among the scientists were Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lindzen of MIT; Stephen McIntyre, who discovered the “hockey stick” graph could be produced with any data set; and Professor Fred Singer, who has been involved in global environmental issues since receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 1948.

A particularly convincing skeptic of anthropogenic global warming was Dr. Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace who left the organization when it became obvious to him that the movement had gone down the slippery slope to misanthropic policies, such as banning the use of chlorine to purify drinking water. He knows well whereof he speaks.
Then there’s Roy Innis, who leads the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). While most civil rights organizations are in lock-step with leftist environmental policies, CORE ridicules them, presenting an understanding that restricting the access to energy of a society — again, which all “cap and trade” proposals would surely do — would be particularly devastating to the poor in developing nations who are already living on the brink of abject poverty.

Finally, there are the producers of the movie. In an interview with The New American, co-producer/director Phelim McAleer was pleased with over 7,000 premieres on Sunday, October 18 (this movie has not been disseminated through the usual channels, but was shown in homes and at college campuses). The producers estimate that about 400,000 people watched the movie’s premieres. But McAleer hopes that this is just a beginning and says that we Americans must educate ourselves on the many sham environmental issues that are but an excuse for government to institute new, unlimited taxes and to shift the balance of economic power from individuals and functional corporations to government, where destruction of our capital is assured. We agree that widespread viewing of this film could help awaken many of those who have not yet realized the danger faced by our Republic.

For more information about the film, including ordering the DVD, go to www.noteviljustwrong.com.

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Flu-Bird said:

	The truth hurts the greens Like all that malarkey from PAUL EHRLICH like the ban of DDT its all based entirely on fruad,lies, and junk science and this film proves that and why AL GORE should be stripped of his unearened oscar and peace prize
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October 23, 2009
Votes: +0

Ed Darrell said:

Fighting malaria should be the goal, not just poisoning Africa Ask a friend to explain the right to bear arms, and you're likely to get a bad explanation, too. Does that mean the Second Amendment is evil? I don't think so. This movie is greatly riddled with errors, and it presents a false portrait of science, history, and government. For example: In one scene that made one want to throw bottles at the TV set, a well-to-do environmentalist showed no concern to a Ugandan mother, Fiona Kobusingye-Boynes, over the loss of her child to malaria, a disease that was almost eliminated by the use of DDT, but then resurged when the EPA banned DDT’s exportation and insisted other countries adopt the same policy. When DDT was heavily used in Africa, about two million people a year died from the disease. Today? About one million die. The rates aren't low enough, but does the movie need to lie about history to make a point? Why? Malaria was never close to being eliminated with DDT. Most of the nations that got rid of malaria did it with the combination of better housing (with screens), better health care, and concentrated programs to attack mosquitoes to hold populations down long enough that the pool of malaria in humans could be wiped out. Mosquitoes get malaria from humans -- if there is no malaria in humans, mosquito bites are benign. DDT was never used in an eradication effort in most nations of Africa, because the governments were unable to get a campaign to fight the disease on all fronts as necessary. Do we know whether DDT was used in Uganda prior to 1967? And if it was, are we really supposed to believe that Idi Amin refused to use DDT out of respect for little birdies and fishies, while killing and personally eating his countrymen? [More in Part II]

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October 24, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

Ed Darrell said:

Fighting malaria should be the goal, part 2 I don't think that environmentalists are the root of the problem in today's malaria rates in Uganda, and any perusal of history suggests a dozen other culprits who could not be considered lesser threats by any stretch. Now the death toll of malaria victims worldwide, but mainly in Third World countries, mostly young children, is estimated by the World Health Organization to be one million per year. Near the lowest in 200 years. Recently the World Health Organization, under strong pressure from human rights organizations, particularly in Africa and Asia, rescinded its ban on the pesticide that has been shown in test after test to be harmless to humans and animals, including birds. WHO never had a ban on the use of DDT. DDT didn't work. It's foolish to require malaria fighting agencies to use tools that don't work. The environmentalists continue to push to overturn this ruling, regardless of its toll in human misery and death. Environmentalists have been lobbying since 1998 to allow DDT use in extremely limited circumstances, with controls to protect human health (the National Academy of Sciences notes that DDT, though among the most useful substances ever created, is more dangerous than helpful, and must be eliminated). In the past three years opposition to DDT use in Uganda has come from large agricultural companies, tobacco growers and unnamed groups of "businessmen" who sued to stop DDT use. [short comments only? More in part 3)]

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October 24, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

Ed Darrell said:

Fighting malaria should be the goal, part 3 Africans have been free to use DDT since the substances discovery, and some nations used it extensively throughout the period since 1946. Interestingly, they also experienced a resurgence of malaria anyway. If Africans want to use DDT, let them use it. In the interim, tests across Africa demonstrate that bed nets are more effective than DDT, and cheaper. DDT alone cannot help Africa much; bed nets alone help a lot. But eradicating malaria will require great improvements in the delivery of health care to quickly and properly diagnose malaria, and provide complete treatments of the disease in humans to wipe out the pool of disease from which the little bloodsuckers get it in the first place. This film is not interested in helping Africans, however. The film's producers are interested in trying to make hay besmirching the reputations of people who campaign for a clean environment. How long is this film? 90 minutes, IMDB says. UNICEF notes that a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. So while you watch this film, 180 children will die from malaria, and you will have done absolutely nothing to stop the next one from dying. Send $10 to Nothing But Nets instead.

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October 24, 2009 | url
Votes: +2

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