New York Times columnist says ownership from $700 billion bailout of Wall Street should force environmental initiatives.

It was just a matter of time. Now that government has taken over services normally offered by private corporations as a result of the recent series of bailouts, environmentalists have proposed green building requirements be incorporated into new mortgages.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested Sept. 23 that any construction financed by government-funded mortgages should be certified “green” according to the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

“If we’re going to be in the mortgage business as a government, then every government-funded mortgage – at least for a new building – means that building has to be at least Silver LEED certified, okay?” Friedman said at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. He appeared to promote his new book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America.”

Aged hippy and professional agitator David Suzuki was in Alberta yesterday.  He only goes to Alberta to shout at them for being successful; the province doggedly refuses to drink the AGW kool-aid and continues to enjoy booming economic times.

Suzuki would far rather Alberta decimate its economy by closing up the tar sands and clubbing its citizens into green submission with carbon taxes.

The worst part of Suzuki's latest rant was his rank hypocrisy over the green shift.  He said this of PM Harper's dismissal of the Liberal policy:

“You don’t dismiss a major proposal like the carbon tax and just say, ‘That’s crazy.’ What kind of discussion is that? At least it should be on the table so the public can begin to understand what it is.”

Wind energy might be the simplest renewable energy to understand. Yet there are misconceptions about what makes the wind industry turn.

The United States now has nearly 17,000 megawatts of wind power installed, which can supply about 1.2 percent of the nation's demand for electricity, according to a recent report from the Department of Energy (DOE).

With these numbers projected to grow in the coming years, it might be good to be aware of a few myths that are blowing in the wind.

1. Wind is cheap

No one owns the wind, so it might seem like wind energy should cost less than other technologies that require costly fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to operate.

The government previously forecast a ``worst-case scenario'' rise in the Thames of 4.2 meters during the highest tidal surges, the agency said today in an e-mailed statement. Research by scientists at the Met Office contributed to a report for the Environment Agency, which manages flood risk.

The downward revision means a tide-excluding estuary barrier isn't likely to be needed, the Met Office said. The river's most likely gain will be 20 centimeters to 90 centimeters due to melting ice sheets and thermal expansion as water molecules become more spaced out due to warmer temperatures, it said, describing the worst-case scenario of 2.7 meters as ``highly unlikely.''

If you read as much of the blather turned out by media folk like the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman [pictured] and others, you begin to see certain themes emerge.

They don’t like humanity much.

One of their great concerns is population growth and, in concert with the use of various sources of energy, all the problems that come from too many people competing for food, water, and that parking space you want.

Their disdain for oil, the primary energy source of transportation, plus the source from which plastic is derived, along a thousand other uses, infuses everything they write. They don’t like natural gas or coal either. These misnamed “fossil fuels” transformed and improved life for everyone over the last century and earlier. The Earth is not running out of any of them.

Lastly, they are desperately clinging to the “global warming” lie despite the fact that most people have concluded it was and is a hoax. Most people are right. The Earth is already into a decade-old cooling cycle.

The EPA is considering whether it should be regulating greenhouse gas emissions and whether the Clean Air Act is an effective way to do so.

"Using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases is not at all what the law was intended to do," Burnett said. "You're seeing a lot of regulation without any results."

According to Burnett, laws intended to fight global warming will only hurt American progress.

Former New York Times environmental reporter criticizes market system, lack of government heavy handedness in new book: 'Poisoned Profits.'

If you want to get people on your side of an issue, scare them by suggesting something is going to hurt their children.

That’s the environmentalists’ strategy, according to Philip Shabecoff, the former 14-year chief environmental correspondent for The New York Times, and his wife, Alice Shabecoff, the former executive director of the National Consumers League.

On September 18, the couple told an audience at Politics & Prose, a bookstore in Washington, D.C., the idea behind their new book. They said “Poisoned Profits” was designed to scare parents into siding with environmentalists by suggesting kids are at high risk from environmental problems.

“It’s a very difficult question, perhaps the most difficult question, which is why we wrote about children,” Philip Shabecoff said when asked how he and his wife would raise awareness for their cause. “Because, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, you really just throw up your hands and say, ‘This is too much. I can’t do anything about it.’ Or, you do whatever you can because it’s your child’s future. It’s your grandchild’s future. It’s your own posterity that’s at stake and for the nation as a whole when you talk about children – that’s the future of America.”

Global warming and the environment are dead last among the criteria that voters are using to evaluate the presidential candidates, according to a recent Gallup survey.

When asked in an open-ended question "What would you say are the one or two most important reasons why you would vote for [preferred candidate]" or the candidate the respondent might be leaning towards, thirty-seven percent of Obama's supporters give "change" as the reason for their support. McCain supporters are most likely to explain their vote with references to McCain's experience and qualifications. As I've written before, for the miserly public, it's often heuristics based on personal characteristics and narrative that matter, rather than the issues.

Source

CCF Note: I'm posting this non-global warming story because I wanted to show the type of vitriol that is so prevalent on the far left. The hacker, an ardent Obama supporter, did this hoping to 'derail' the McCain-Palin campaign. So the next time some lefty-enviro-whacko wants to go toe-to-toe on an issue, perhaps this will shed some light on what you're really up against: an adolescent mind where the ends justify the means.

Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell of Tennessee unveiled the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's e-mail—his 20-year-old son, David Kernell.