Wood & Coal--Back In Vogue

Environmentalists have been very happy lately because rising gas prices have meant less cars on the road and more conservation. Yay momma Gaea! I'd like to be the first to wreck their happiness, by telling the filthy tree huggers, rising gas prices has led to an increase in the average Joe six-pack raping momma Gaea. Yay earth rapists!

More area residents will be heating their homes with wood pellets, coal and fireplaces next winter than anytime in the recent past, as they seek alternatives to skyrocketing fuel oil and natural gas costs.

Sales of pellet stoves and related equipment nationwide is estimated to have increased more than 50 percent in the first half of 2008, according to one industry source.

The cost for a home totally heated by pellets and using three tons of wood pellets per season is expected to be in the vicinity of $750 to $1,000 this winter, she said.

An Attleboro area home using 500 gallons of fuel oil that cost $1,275 to heat last year with fuel at $2.55 per gallon could well cost its owner $2,170 this year at the current average price of $4.34.

Either by hook or by crook, I will not live in a world where I can't rape its natural resources.

When faced with financial ruin, people will explore any avenue to cut their costs. If this means burning coal, so be it. If this means chopping down a few trees, so be it. If this means filling up their stoves with the eyeballs of puppy dogs, so be it. Sure, the environment is important to people, but do you know what is far more important? Not dying of starvation. And that's where environmentalism ends with most people. If you're making money hand over fist, then sure, you don't mind shelling out a few nickles for the environment. However, if the choice is between steak or giving away hard earned loot to some jackass who wears a jean jacket with a stupid button with an even dumber slogan about the environment on the stupid button, well, the environment can burn to the ground for all the average schmuck cares. I know this to be true, for I am a schmuck like you. Schmuck.

It's a disco inferno

The Intolerance of Environmentalism

Guardian (UK): Greens are the enemies of liberty -- Environmentalists want to curb our freedom far more than the government's anti-terrorist laws ever will by Brendan O'Neill

[G]reen thinking -- with its shrill intolerance of dissenting views, its deep distaste for free movement and free choice, and its view of individuals, not as history-makers, but as filthy polluters -- poses a more profound threat to liberty even than the government's paranoid anti-terrorist agenda.

Environmentalists are innately hostile to freedom of speech. Last month James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate change scientists, said the CEOs of oil companies should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature. They have been "putting out misinformation", he said, and "I think that's a crime". This follows green writer Mark Lynas's insistence that there should be "international criminal tribunals" for climate change deniers, who will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths". They will "have to answer for their crimes", he says. The American eco-magazine Grist recently published an article on deniers that called for "war crimes trials for these bastards… some sort of climate Nuremberg."

It is the mark of shrieking authoritarianism to look upon dissenting views not simply as wrong or foolish, but as criminal. Throughout history inquisitors and censors have sought to silence sections of society by labelling their words as "dangerous" and a threat to safety and stability; now environmentalists are doing the same. Their demonisation of sceptics as "deniers" has had a chilling effect on public debate. .

[...]

But perhaps the main way that environmentalism undermines the culture of freedom is by its ceaseless promotion of guilt. In the environmentalist era, we are no longer really free citizens, so much as potential polluters. We are continually told -- by government, by commentators, by radical activists – that everything we do, from wearing disposable nappies to using deodorant to allowing ourselves to be cremated, is harmful to our surroundings.

Liberty –- true liberty -– requires that people see themselves as self-respecting, self-determining subjects, capable of making free choices and pursuing the "good life" as they see fit. Today, by contrast, we are warned that we are toxic, loaded, dangerous specimens, who must always restrain our instincts and aspire to austerity. This is not conducive to a culture of liberty; indeed, it represents a dangerous historic shift. . .

[emphasis added]

~ Sisyphus, cross-posted at The Sisyphus Files.