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« Back to Opinion & Analysis
Global Warming HysteriaEditorial for the Houston Community Newspaper
Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
July 3, 2008
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" warned Chicken Little.
Al Gore is our modern day Chicken Little. Here is what Gore says about the environment and global warming: "The worst potential catastrophe in the history of human civilization is approaching." This statement is not just wrong. It's ridiculous.
The greatest danger facing mankind is the loss of individual liberty. The environmentalists have raised the straw man of global warming to justify granting the government complete authority to regulate our lives.
The issue at stake is individual liberty, not the environment. Environmentalism is a form of collectivism which is rooted in Marxist ideology. Collectivists stress the interdependence of individuals and the collective good over the importance of individual rights and personal initiative. Collectivism gave rise to the failed ideologies of socialism and communism. Personal initiative and individual rights led to free enterprise capitalism. The environmental movement is nothing more than a morphing of socialism to give a select group of elites power over the lives of the masses.
The world has been warming since the end of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. This warming trend has been caused by the effect of increased solar activity, not by man. So what if the world warms by ½ degree over the next century. Will anyone notice? Will it really make any difference in our environment?
There is nothing man can do to change the weather. Weathermen have a hard enough time predicting the weather for next week. There is no way anyone can predict what the weather will be like next year, much less one hundred years from now. The periodic cooling and warming of the earth's temperature is normal. The earth and the environment have adapted to climate changes over the millennium, as have humans. We do not need a whole new layer of government bureaucracies with their regulators telling us how much energy we can or cannot use. If we give the government this kind of authority, then a host of new taxes will be passed, more bureaucratic regulations adopted and free enterprise will be undermined.
With capitalism having won over communism, ending the Cold War, the collectivists had to find a new way to attack free enterprise. The collectivists have propagated the scare of an impending environmental catastrophe which they proclaim can only be solved by giving government, politicians and bureaucrats broad powers over the economy. The leftist media promotes this philosophy. The press spotlights scientists who hold to the environmentalists' party line in order to bolster the urgency of the problem with the public.
Anyone who challenges global warming, its effects or the government measures suggested to regulate the economy to prevent it, is ostracized. This is how the global warming hysteria has developed. It is reminiscent of the hysteria which Houston Mayor Bill White created when he recommended voluntary evacuations prior to Hurricane Rita.
If you follow the environmentalists' herd mentality, then you can be sure your economic liberties and freedoms will be trampled.
About Conservative Republicans of Texas
Steven F. Hotze, M.D. is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and founder of Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston, Texas.
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