Bullies

by Ben Shapiro

  Or how about we all agree that Richard Glover has just enough brain power to toast a piece of organic bread . . . lightly?

  These are the extremists. But even the moderates ain’t so moderate. Micah White of the British newspaper the Guardian says that the only way to avoid global meltdown, Wicked Witch of the West–style, lies in “liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume. . . . Democratic, anti-fascist environmentalism means marshaling the strength of humanity to suppress corporations. Only by silencing the consumerist forces will both climate catastrophe and ecological tyranny be averted. Yes, western consumption will be substantially reduced. But it will be done voluntarily and joyously.”29

  Really? Will it? Because there were almost riots when people couldn’t get the iPad fast enough. Communism, which had zero corporations, didn’t breed a new race of humans who didn’t want stuff. Turns out, stuff is pretty great. We like it. And we’re not going to give it up just because pointy-headed academics threaten global extinction based on faulty science.

  Professor Kari Norgaard of the University of Oregon goes even further, stating that denying anthropogenic global warming is a “sickness,” and that you—yes, you—have to be “treated” for it. “This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat,” she wrote. Then, echoing Al Gore, she explained that denying global warming was akin to denying the evils of slavery in the American South. All these folks needed some reeducation. “If you have to push a heavy weight, it doesn’t mean it can’t be moved, but in order to push it you had better know that you have something heavy and figure out how to move it—where to put the lever to shift the weight,” she explained.30

  And what better way to move that weight than with some good old-fashioned bullying? With the help of President Obama, of course. Norgaard penned an open letter to President Obama calling for him to suspend the Constitution and do what was necessary to curb the dramatic threat of global warming. Democracy be damned, this is a crisis of epic proportions! Send Bruce Willis to that asteroid! “Public opinion does matter in a democracy, but this is a time when following it would be a serious mistake. . . . [A] primary recommendation of my report commissioned by the World Bank on climate denial is that policymakers should not wait for public opinion to take necessary action.” She asked Obama to “eliminate coal,” throw out the notion of “clean coal,” and toss out nuclear power. As for oil, she’s against that, too. So I guess we’re down to animal feces.31

  It appears that Obama was listening.

  President Obama has used the EPA to implement his global warming goals. In 2009, Obama’s EPA did something unprecedented: they declared that under the Clean Air Act, they had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases—particularly carbon dioxide—as an “air pollutant.” Now, this makes no sense, and for a very simple reason: the Clean Air Act was designed to fight actual pollutants, not the stuff that you breathe out. No city has ever been polluted by too much carbon dioxide. Nonetheless, the courts upheld the unbelievably idiotic construction. And Obama was free to regulate, without having to go back to Congress for authorization for this thuggery.

  After utilizing UN studies to back his case, Obama authorized the EPA to put into place regulations that, according to Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), would “cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the ‘absurd result’ that the EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime.”32

  Obama has leveraged the entire administration to back the climate change play. “The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,” said Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, when he wasn’t too busy covering Obama while Obama personally capped Osama bin Laden.33 Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told an international conference, “President Obama and I understand that we cannot wait any longer to act. President Obama has made it clear that he’s committed to passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will create millions of new jobs and secure clean energy sources that are made in America and work for America.”34 Because fighting cancer just isn’t good enough anymore. The department must focus on the dramatic shortage of sunscreen. Even the Department of Labor has gotten in on the act, committing the agency to “addressing the impacts climate change may have on our operations and assets through adaptation planning.”35

  Remember, this wasn’t done through legislation. It was done unilaterally by the executive branch, prep work and press done by the environmentalist thugs. And it was that toxic combination that would truly bring its weight to bear on the issue of oil.

  THE WAR ON OIL

  Oil is the cheapest, most efficient fuel source on the planet.

  And it’s yucky.

  According to the environmentalist bullies, we all have to beat our cars into plowshares. Oil companies have to divest themselves of profit and hobble on bended knee to Washington, D.C., to proffer their loyalty to the left.

  Now, nobody has yet come up with a viable alternative to oil. Nobody. Green technology does not yet relieve the oil burden; short of green technology becoming significantly more affordable and effective, it’s not slated to replace black gold anytime soon.

  But that doesn’t stop the left. “What we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return,” says Barack Obama. “And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe.”36

  Well, no. What we can be scientifically certain of is that if we cut off our own oil supply, we’ll cripple our own economy. Not only does the oil industry directly provide jobs to hundreds of thousands of employees, it provides the energy that drives our economy. Theorists believe that the September 2008 economic crash occurred thanks to the sharp oil spike earlier that year. When the Arab nations shut off their spigots, America enters an economic downturn—every single time.

  Obama’s goal from the beginning was to raise the price of oil on the American public to serve his environmentalist buddies. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu told Congress in February 2012, with gas prices at $3.65 per gallon, that the Obama administration wasn’t concerned with high prices at the pump. That was for those rednecks in their SUVs to worry about. When asked whether it was the administration’s goal to lower oil prices, Chu quickly replied, “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.” That was perfectly consistent. Back in 2008, Chu said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”37

  But the Obama administration needed a pretext.

  Obama got his greatest wish—and the environmentalists’ ultimate fantasy—when a massive deepwater well owned by British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico burst in April 2010, filling the Gulf with oil and precipitating an environmental catastrophe. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” urged CNN. Obama and his allies agreed. As CNN reported, “The energy policy favored by . . . many Democrats in Congress, and most renewable energy advocates, involves making fossil fuels more expensive either by adding some type of tax or putting a price on carbon emissions.” Now was the time to go cold turkey on oil!

  But Obama had a problem. As badly as people felt for the storks wading around in goo in the Gulf, they still had to get to work. So Obama hit upon a solution. He wouldn’t be cracking down on oil drilling to protect the sea lions. He’d be doing it to get BP.

  It was a brilliant tactic. Instead of doing the bidding of the environmental left, Obama could claim he was doing the bidding of the class bullies. He was just standing up for the little guy. How? Well, by sticking it to the Oil Man! But didn’t the little guy need oil? Shut up, you!

  And so, a few weeks aft
er the spill began, Obama released the hounds. First, Interior Secretary Salazar said, “[O]ur job basically is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum.”38 It was a line he repeated over and over on the media. The next day, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed Salazar: “We will keep our, as Secretary Salazar said, our boot on the throat of BP to ensure that they’re doing all that they—all that is necessary, while we do all that is humanly possible to deal with this incident.” When asked by the press pool just what he meant by that, Gibbs backed down . . . sort of. Instead he suggested that he just wanted to hold BP’s “feet to the fire.”39 Yeah, right.

  Of course, even as the Obama administration did little or nothing to actually stop the leak, forcing Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to essentially take charge of the crisis, they did plan a response: a response that targeted the oil industry. “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately,” said Salazar, knowing full well that the feds had no capacity to fix the issue.40 The bullying got so bad that in June 2010, Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron called up Obama to tell him to stop bullying BP, especially given the fact that thousands of British pensioners relied on BP’s financial success.41

  But Obama’s bullying wasn’t just for show. He had a plan.

  Obama did what only great actors are capable of doing: he hid his glee beneath a veneer of moral outrage. Then he acted. In May 2010, he announced a six-month deepwater drilling moratorium. He also decided that there wouldn’t be any more lease sales in the western Gulf of Mexico; he canceled a lease sale off the coast of Virginia; he stopped drilling off the coast of Alaska. As the New York Times reported, “The White House also will propose more rigorous oil development regulations and oversight as part of an effort to boost its response to the disaster as criticism has mounted of its handling of the worsening crisis.” Said Interior Secretary Salazar, “We simply will not allow any more deepwater drilling until we can ensure it is done safely.”42

  Unfortunately for him, a court soon levied an injunction against the moratorium, given that it was completely uncalled for. There had been one major accident, and no evidence whatsoever that another was imminent. It was the equivalent of one multiple-fatality shooting taking place in downtown Los Angeles and Obama immediately declaring a nationwide moratorium on gun sales. The judges called Obama’s action “arbitrary and capricious.”

  But that sort of thing—the rule of law and that stuff—couldn’t stop the Obama bully machine. In July 2010, he announced a revised moratorium on deepwater drilling.43 Then he proceeded to slow offshore oil and gas drilling permits for months at a time, prompting noted non-oil-lobbyist Bill Clinton to acknowledge “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it.”44

  But that sort of stuff wouldn’t stop Obama from putting his boot on the neck of the oil industry. In November 2011, President Obama announced that he’d be killing the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada down to Texas for refinement. That would have increased American oil supply and provided Americans with jobs. But Obama wasn’t interested in that. He was interested in the Anti-Oil Crusade. It didn’t matter that all the environmental concerns expressed by the left were hooey. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, “[T]he State Department had subjected Keystone to three years of review—the most exhaustive study of any oil pipeline in U.S. history—and twice concluded in voluminous studies that there would be no significant environmental harm.” And environmentalists were ecstatic—so ecstatic that they began talking about their need to reelect President Obama. Which, of course, was the whole point.45

  As Obama launched his reelection campaign, it was time for him to disown his bullying. Suddenly he announced that gas prices were the fault of “speculators”—he had apparently been reading his FDR again.46 He even said, obviously without exercising his neurons, that drilling “every inch” of the United States would not affect gas prices—which is like saying that buying and milking a thousand cows will not lower the price you pay for moo juice.

  Obama now brags that he has opened more land for drilling, and that he “quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high . . . added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some . . . we are drilling all over the place right now. That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem.”47 Except that Obama was not a drill, baby, drill president. He was a kill, baby, kill president. As in, he killed drilling off the mid-Atlantic coast, the Florida Gulf coast, the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Rockies, Keystone XL.48 Drilling on state lands—land that he didn’t control—went up. Drilling on federal land went down to a nine-year low. In 2011 alone, oil and gas production on federal land decreased 14 percent.49

  Obama wants to have his cake and eat it, too. And the way he achieves that is to bully the oil companies into submission, bully Americans at the pump, and hope that the American public doesn’t catch on.

  CONCLUSION

  The environmentalist bullies have a singular goal—and it’s been their goal since the days of Malthus. They want you—yes, you—to stop living so high on the hog. If you don’t, they warn, we’ll all die. And it’ll be your fault.

  It just so happens that this catastrophic worldview crosses paths politically with the class bullies, who also want Americans to stop consuming so many resources. They don’t care that it’s our consumption of resources that enriches other nations—if we don’t buy things, they don’t make money. All they see is an unjust world where we live in our cozy air-conditioned houses and people in Afghanistan live in mud huts. The best solution, for both environmentalists and class bullies, is for us all to live in mud huts. That’s equality. And what’s more, mud is green . . . well, brown, but you know what they mean.

  And if you don’t, just ask President Obama. Campaigning in Oregon back in 2008, then-senator Obama had some harsh words for America’s environmentally unconscious consumers. Clearly, they didn’t drive Priuses. And that, said Obama, made Americans bad people. Obama told his crowd that Americans had to “lead by example” on global warming. What would that mean? “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”50

  As a matter of fact, basic economics says that other countries should be fine with us keeping our homes at 72 degrees, considering we’re buying our parts for the air conditioners from them. And those in Rwanda are likely too busy running from machetes to worry about President Obama’s Marxist injunctions.

  In fact, not even President Obama listens to President Obama. As soon as he entered the Oval Office, cameras caught him in his shirtsleeves—generally, a presidential no-no. What would prompt him to shed his coat? Reported the New York Times: “Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. ‘He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?’ said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. ‘He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.’ ”51

  Guess when the Potomac overruns its banks and swamps the White House, we’ll know whom to blame.

  And thanks to the environmentalist bullies, even the youngest among us will look at President Obama with the stricken eyes of the betrayed. Hollywood has spent the last two decades indoctrinating kids with pap like Captain Planet, in which the honorable Captain battled the likes of Hoggish Greedily (Ed Asner), a pigman who can’t stop consuming and presumably keeps his thermostat at 72 degrees; Duke Nukem (Dean Stockwell), a doctor who shows the evils of nuclear power; Looten Plunder (James Coburn), an unrestrained capitalist; Sly Sludge (Martin Sheen), who just won’t recycle; and the rest of the crew, all of whom presumably sit in the Republican caucus on their days off. If you aren’t a Captain Planet fan—and let’s face it, who is?—you can always rent Wall-E, in which humans have so polluted the eart
h with trash that they’ve decided to float around in space for generations. (Though Wall-E never explains why, if humans were able to shoot themselves into space, they didn’t just shoot the trash there.) For older audiences, Hollywood provides Avatar, also known as Ferngully on the Moon and Dances with Marxist Aliens, James Cameron’s revolutionary reenactment of Pocahontas with large blue people and awkward sex scenes.

  The goal of all of this is to make you feel bad for consuming. Of course, as soon as you stop consuming, the economy tanks—at which point the environmentalist bullies and class bullies begin complaining about the ills of capitalism. If only we’d all listened to Sheryl Crow and started using one square of toilet paper, how much better off the world would have been! And smellier!

  The bullying from the environmentalist left extends to all of our lives. If you decide you don’t feel like picking through your trash for dried-out orange peels and grease-soaked pizza boxes for composting in San Francisco, you could find yourself facing a hefty fine.52 In Portland, it’s too bad for you if you like your trash picked up more often than bimonthly. Those dirty diapers will just have to rot on the curb for two weeks.53 Nobody likes pollution. But nobody except Susan Sarandon likes the smell of dirty diapers pervading the house.

  The environmental bullies have convinced Americans to spend their time micromanaging their garbage. What’s worse, they have pushed for the handing over of U.S. sovereignty to foreign nations, since Americans can’t be trusted not to be fat slobs. So prior to the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012, the Earth System Governance Project, an international consortium of environmentalist academics, proposed that in order to stop the world from imploding, the UN should institute a new form of voting so that the United States couldn’t veto anything.54 Surely our global citizen president wouldn’t mind—after all, we’re supposed to ask other nations permission before flushing twice.