Radical Right Reality Check

More bizarre claims about the environment from the far right  

For those who frequent the world of political websites and blogs, one of the best and most insightful places on the Internet is the outrageous news website parody known as The Onion. If you haven't checked it out, you really ought to.

Whether it's a faux news headline like "Bush Urges Expanded Drilling of Alaskan Wildlife," a "radio" piece entitled "Non-Controversial Church Opens for Potential Presidential Candidates," or a "TV" spot entitled "In the Know: Are Politicians Failing our Lobbyists?" the site does a fabulous job of skewering politicians, celebrities, pundits and the "mainstream" media with stories that are sometimes distressingly close to being believable. Indeed, those who spend more than a few minutes on the site report sometimes having trouble transitioning back to the world of legitimate news websites - many of which suddenly appear to include headlines as absurd as those on The Onion.

Lately, it appears that the people who run The Onion may have taken on a new task -infiltrating the world of conservative policy think tanks. Several recent headlines and initiatives of far right policy groups - particularly around the issue of the environment - appear suspiciously similar to headlines from The Onion.    

On global warming

For instance, last week, the group Americans for Prosperity used their "Take Back Our State" rally (an event in which the featured speakers were from Washington, DC) to decry efforts to enact policies that combat global warming. The national head of the group even announced that Americans for Prosperity would launch (we're not making this up) a "Hot Air Tour." The group describes the tour this way:

"Climate alarmists have bombarded citizens with apocalyptic scenarios and pressured them into environmental political correctness.  It's time to tell the other side of the story. Americans for Prosperity is working hard to bring you the missing half of the global warming debate.  What will the impacts of reactionary legislation be for you, your family and our economy? Join us at an event near you to learn more about climate alarmism and the looming Big Government ‘solutions.'" 

The group plans to bring their symbolic hot air balloon to Raleigh, appropriately enough, during one of the hottest weeks of the year next Wednesday.

According to the Locke Foundation's "Environment NC" blog:

"It is being called the ‘Hot Air Tour' because advocates of these policies are using the ‘threat' of climate change as a front to push a hidden agenda of expanding government control over the economy and individual freedom."

On reducing solid waste

This week, more Onion-like claims emerged from the third group in the Pope, Inc. stable - the JW Pope Civitas Institute. On Tuesday, the group released an op-ed by a staffer that is entitled "North Carolina: Save Energy, End Recycling." According to this little gem, North Carolina would "do its part to lower gas prices" by placing a moratorium on recycling of solid waste.

Though the author's arguments are a little jumbled, here are the main points he seems to be trying to make:

• High prices indicate that petroleum is scarcer than some of the products we recycle. Therefore, it's a waste to use diesel fuel running recycling trucks.
• If it becomes "cost effective" to recycle plastic, we'd be better off "strip mining" landfills.
• Modern landfills are wonderful places that pose no environmental threat and have been rendered artificially scarce by the "left-dominated N.C. General Assembly." Any concerns about "sights or smells" can be "easily resolved through application of the common law."
• Municipal aluminum recycling programs "leech off our labor."
• Recycling is doing more harm than good to the environment and if we just leave everything to the free market, all will be okay.

Reality Check     

Like the "stories" on The Onion, most market fundamentalist claims about the supposed evils of public environmental protection initiatives are knee-slappers that require little in the way of point-by-point debunking. Anyone who seriously argues that there is some kind of grand conspiracy amongst the world's environmental advocates to limit individual freedom or that the North Carolina General Assembly is dominated by leftists bent on denying citizens the opportunity and convenience of more numerous landfills is obviously detached from reality and/or a candidate to become a writer on "Comedy Central" (and has also never witnessed a debate in the General Assembly).

In many ways, such claims are reminiscent of those who persisted in denying Galileo's discoveries about the earth's place in the solar system or the reality of evolution, i.e., weaker and weaker as time goes by and, ultimately, almost poignant.

Still, there is something underlying these absurd types of claims that progressives should continue to assertively confront if they want to avoid winning the battle on specific issues but risk losing broader, philosophical war. This concerns the far right's deep-seated, almost cult-like, devotion to the so-called "free market."

At the heart of all of the bizarre claims about the environment emanating from Right-Wing Avenue is the belief that "the invisible hand" of the market is always better at solving the problems confronting humanity than anything that humans can do in an intentional and collective way. Rather than viewing the market as a powerful and important tool that humans use to spark innovation and to create wealth, the right sees the market as an end in itself.

Thus, anything that humans do to "interfere" with the market is akin to sacrilege. When society, through its public institutions, acts to limit an individual's inherent "right" to emit pollutants in the pursuit of profit, it is interfering with the "natural" order of things and, by implication, denying some kind of divine will.

Such a worldview may strike most of us as strange when spelled out in such explicit terms or when it shows up in absurd denials of global warming, but if one reflects for a moment, it's clear that the "market = God" philosophy has won and continues to win many adherents in recent decades.

Whether it's the 180 degree transformation of the Chinese and Indian economies (and the horrific environmental degradation that has accompanied it) or the ever-expanding obsession with extreme wealth that grips so many in the West, the world has perhaps never been so overt in its devotion to greed on a global scale. Today, most people may reject many of the specific interpretations of the market fundamentalist religion propagated by the policy monks who inhabit the far right think tanks - at least when it comes to global warming - but the persistent drum banging has had an impact.

Going forward

Thirty years ago, some of today's real world headlines, if printed in a pre-Internet version of The Onion, would have been rightfully seen as a dark and outrageous parody - whether it's the notion of Chinese "communist" corporations owning vast swaths of the American economy or the U.S. government maintaining a network of secret overseas prisons to hold "terror" suspects. Those who wish to prevent history from repeating itself in the future owe it to their children to speak up and confront the market fundamentalists of today, lest they succeed through sheer repetition and persistence in transforming their bizarre and distorted worldviews into the common wisdom of tomorrow.            

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.