The Real Green in Global Warming, Greenpeace, and Salad for your Dog
Green is good.
Say It Aint So
I'm going to reveal a dirty little secret in today's post that might help explain for some of you why special interest groups, political activists, and other crusaders might lie or at least exaggerate the facts. I'm speaking of all kinds of organizations, left wing and right wing, from Greenpeace to MoveOn.org to PETA to the Minutemen. I'm also speaking of left and right wing newspapers and other print and electronic media.
Raising Money for Chappaquiddick
Ted and Hanoi Jane
A long time ago, in a universe far far away, in 1988, I was a fundraiser for Tom Hayden, the radical progressive politician ex-husband of Jane Fonda. (by the way, I also ran Ted Kennedy's Israeli operation to gather votes of Americans overseas for his 1980 primary run for the presidency. I was apolitical at the time, just doing my duty for the Kennedy family, who I thought were all JFK's.) I turned out to be the top fundraiser for Tom and Jane (they were married still when I worked for their organization) .
Can You Give Twenty Dollars to Help Fight AIDS?
The thing that I want to reveal is that each day we had a meeting, before we went out to raise funds door-to-door. We were given literature and a topic on which to raise money for the day. At that time, one of the big tear-jerkers (and deservedly so) we were pushing was A.I.D.S. We had brochures and talking points all about the subject and this was what we would be raising money for on that day. We'd ask people to give money to help fight A.I.D.S., work for political change on A.I.D.S. and so on. As I say, I raised more money than anyone else in the organization, even though I was apolitical at the time.
The dirty little secret is that each day's funds that we collected always went into the organization. The money we were raising that day, supposedly to fight A.I.D.S., went instead into the same pot as the money we raised the day before to help save the water around Santa Monica Pier. I can't say that this was entirely a fraud, as Hayden and Fonda did actually push for A.I.D.S. legislation etc. and to clean up the Santa Monica Pier water, but the monies we collected on those days did not go into any fund for specific purposes. Rather, it went into the campaign coffers of Hayden and Fonda.
I'm not revealing this to besmirch Hayden and Fonda. All the politicians do this. I am making the point, though, that people use causes to raise money. The best way for them to raise this money is to scare you. They must hammer one-sided presentations about everything, from global-warming to homelessness, to get you to part with your dough.
Dogs Are People Too
This goes double for any activist group. PETA will exaggerate the harm being done to animals, and make dogs the equivalent of people. Greenpeace will demonize industry. MoveOn.org will demonize conservatives. The Minutemen. will emphasize the negatives about illegal immigration.
I knew a PETA guy once who was also a vegetarian. He forced his poor chocolate Labrador to be a vegetarian too. The dog was skin and bones, and salivated uncontrollably whenever it was around meat, looking longingly at it. His "dog-loving" master would instead give it a vegetable pellet, which the dog would ignore. I almost became PETA-like myself when I interacted with that dog. It used to gaze at me so soulfully that I thought I could hear it say, "Meat! Please, give me some meat!" Then, this PETA guy would go out and raise money, complaining about the abuse of animals.
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Most activists, on either side, are not entirely honest; and some of them are not even role models of decency.
To quote the godmother of the entire modern environmental movement:
I would rather save the life of one bird than the lives of a million human beings. Screw the malaria-ridden Africans! – Rachel Carson
Wow! The things we were allowed to say back in the day!
With global warming, it's good to go green, as I've said. It's not good, though, to get hysterical about it. If anyone comes to your door claiming to raise money to fight global warming, you have the right to remain silent, and keep your hands in your pockets. You have the right to say, "Show me the science!" and "Show me how you're gonna' stop it!"
Tomorrow's post will be about the positive effects of global warming.
Rock
(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)
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Show Me the Money
The same goes for one-sided political pundits. Keith Olberman makes money by bashing Republicans, as does Media Matters. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage get their dollars by lambasting liberals.
Follow the money. Not everything said by these sources is false or exaggerated, but at least know from whence they get earn their livelihoods.
Be Discerning
As consumers, it might still be important that we fight A.I.D.S. and clean up the waters at the Santa Monica Pier. Just realize that the pitch you will hear about these things is going to be jacked up a notch to get you interested; plus, the spiel you are hearing might not be for the cause mentioned—it might be about the candidate, not the cause. In some cases, the exaggerations do no harm, as when speaking about the homeless. As long as the money you give really does go to help the homeless, you can't go wrong.
Iffy Scare Tactics
Global warming, though, and other fundraising topics, are not that clear cut. See my recent post, An Inconvenient Truth, about the global warming hysteria, founded on a one-sided presentation of the facts. The hype does have economic consequences. It influences people's decisions about what cars to buy and the development of alternative fuel sources and so on.