The Jerusalem Post: Israeli environmentalists shocked by Greta Thunberg's position on Gaza

More than 100 Israeli environmental leaders and activists have sent a letter to Greta Thunberg after she posted a pro-Hamas thread on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza.  The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected. 

Israel’s environmental leaders told her over the weekend that they are “deeply hurt, shocked and disappointed with your tweets and posts regarding Gaza, which are appallingly one-sided, ill-informed, superficial and are in complete contrast to your ability to deep dive into details and get to the bottom of complex issues.”

They accused Thunberg of “[taking] sides with terrorists, with the worst and darkest representatives of humans, and plainly - with the wrong side of history.” 

The letter was spearheaded by Rony Bruell, founder of the Israeli Forum of Women in the Environment. In just a few hours, Bruell captured more than 200 signatures from like-minded individuals nationwide, many in top roles at their institutions.

~ Maayan Jaffe Hoffman, "Israel environmentalists slam Greta Thunberg for ‘Stand with Gaza’ post," The Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2023

The Education Ministry has said it will remove any reference to climate activist Greta Thunberg after she published a post over the weekend holding an anti-Israel sign reading "stand with Gaza."

~ Maayan Jaffe Hoffman, "Israel removes Greta Thunberg from school curriculum over anti-Israel post," The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2023

Douglas Blair on the backlash against the green movement

It’s clear that moves by world governments to prostrate themselves on the altar of environmentalism are neither effective nor popular with their citizens. They might make Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg happy, but you’d think the country’s leaders would prefer one unhappy Swedish youth to a mob of angry citizens.

~ Douglas Blair, "Sri Lanka Collapses and Dutch Farmers Revolt. Blame ‘Green’ Policies.," The Daily Signal, July 15, 2022

Thomas Sowell on environmentalism

I wish that some way could be found to add up all the staggering costs imposed on millions of ordinary people, just so a relative handful of self-righteous environmental cultists can go around feeling puffed up with themselves. 

~ Thomas Sowell

Save Our Cities, Soil, Air, Water
1970

Jordan Peterson on environmentalism

This is also the problem I have with much of the environmentalist movement: There is a powerful stream of anti-human sentiment that motivates it, and masquerading under the guise of virtue on a planetary scale.

~ Jordan Peterson, interview with Helen Lewis of British GQ, 1:18:25 mark, October 30, 2018

Ronald Bailey on falling carbon emissions in the U.S.

Overall carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. energy sector peaked at 5.9 gigatons in 2007 and have now dropped 19 percent to 4.8 gigatons in 2019.

~ Ronald Bailey, "Peak Carbon Emissions?," Reason.com, February 12, 2020

Bloomberg Businessweek: "Davos is cloaked in white, but its agenda is green"

Davos is cloaked in white, but its agenda is green.  Environmentalism - fighting climate change in particular - has emerged as one of the biggest priorities of the World Economic Forum annual meeting, which is held every January in the Swiss ski village.

~ Bloomberg Businessweek, "A Sense of Climate Urgency in The Alps," January 17, 2020

Greta Thunberg: "We are still telling you to panic"

Let's be clear: we don't need a low carbon economy; we don't need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5 degree target. Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.

~ Greta Thunberg, World Economic Forum, January 21, 2020

Greta Thunberg on climate change: "I want you to panic"

Adults keep saying, "We owe it to the young people to give them hope."  But I don't want your hope.  I don't want you to be hopeful.  I want you to panic.  I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.  And then I want you to act.  I want you to act as you would in a crisis.  I want you to act as if the house was on fire, because it is.

~ Greta Thunberg, "'I want you to panic': 16-year old issues climate warning at Davos," 2:14 mark, January 25, 2019, World Economic Forum

Kevin Duffy on Love Canal, a "Big Lie in plain sight"

Here is an example of official narrative: Love Canal. For the official version, go to the EPA's website: https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy.html. Notice that the lead-up to the crisis is short, while the crisis part is in horrific detail. 

Now go the the Wikipedia page, a relatively neutral site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal. If you read the section "Sale of the site," you'll notice some important details were left out by the EPA.

Curious to know what really happened from an investigative journalist? Check this out: https://reason.com/1981/02/01/love-canal.

The real story is almost 180 degrees from the EPA version. Yet this Big Lie in plain sight continues to be perpetuated by documentarians to this day.

~ Kevin Duffy

Lew Rockwell on the religion of environmentalism

Like socialism, environmentalism combines an atheistic religion with virulent statism. But it ups the ante. Marxism at least professed a concern with human beings; environmentalism harks back to a godless, manless, and mindless Garden of Eden.

~ Lew Rockwell, An Anti-environmentalist Manifesto, 1990

Orri Vigfússon on privatizing rivers

Governments shouldn't be in the business of managing or marketing a river. They might as well be opening up a Chinese restaurant. They should leave fishing to the private sector.

~ Orri Vigfússon, 65-year old Icelandic businessman, conservationist and world-renowned angler, "Privatize U.S. Rivers?," Forbes, January 28, 2008

(See also "The Leaping Fish," Forbes, January 28, 2008)

Jonah Goldberg on environmentalism

Environmentalism's most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying.

~ Jonah Goldberg, "The Church of the Green," Townhall.com, May 21, 2008

Kevin Duffy on sustainable development

The whole idea of “sustainability” is a bit off kilter. I remember listening to Austrian economist Walter Block talk about the environment. He said he thinks of the earth like a bus, i.e. that it temporarily takes us from point A to point B. At some point, the earth will be sucked into the gravitational pull of the sun and explode (or burn up, or something to that effect). The key is for man to accumulate enough knowledge and build the means to save himself from destruction (admittedly, eons away – enough time for man to self destruct).

The secrets to solving this puzzle are out there in the universe, but require discovery. And what is the most powerful, efficient discovery process known to man? The free market! And of course private property is the cornerstone of that system.

There has been a long running debate amongst economists regarding “natural resources.” Are we in danger of running out? Do we need some kind of government controls to prevent such a catastrophe? This debate is between the resource depletionists (like Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834) and resource cornucopians (led by Julian Simon, 1932-1998). The abundance argument – to which I subscribe – is that resources are simply nature’s materials (virtually unlimited) stamped with man’s ingenuity (which is only restrained by economic ignorance and the resulting state intervention). The Malthusians have been constantly proven wrong in their predictions, e.g. that oil would run out or that the world is overpopulated and incapable of feeding significantly more people. Yet every year the earth yields more food and man discovers more proven (i.e. economic) fossil fuels.

So how should each of us focus our efforts? On conservation or creating greater abundance? Or will that be different for each of us depending on the resources at our disposal – not just our property, but also our drive and creativity? Life is about making tradeoffs in a world of scarcity. The scarcest resource, however, is our time on this planet.

~ Kevin Duffy, May 5, 2008

Dr. Stephen Schneider on advancing the environmentalist movement

To do this, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. This "double ethical bind" we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

~ Dr. Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Professor, Discover magazine, October 1989 issue

Lowell Ponte comes to his senses about climate change and media fearmongering

But the Leftist press continues to quote bug and flower scientists about global warming - including doomsayers who three decades ago were predicting a fast-approaching, planet-freezing ice age. (I should know, being author of the 1976 Prentice-Hall bestselling climate book The Cooling.)

As you probably recognized, all such Leftist doomsaying - hothouse or ice age, wet or dry, population explosion or drastic decline - calls for the same remedy. We must have bigger government, more political regulation and control, higher taxes, and permit less individual and private sector liberty if we are to survive whatever is this year's fashionable danger.

~ Lowell Ponte, "Prophets of Doom," FrontPageMagazine.com, August 22, 2002

Murray Rothbard on environmentalist hypocrites

My own observation is that most of the bellyachers about the ugliness of our cities and singers of paeans to the unspoiled wilderness stubbornly remain ensconced in these very cities. Why don't they leave? There are, even today, plenty of rural and even wilderness areas for them to live in and enjoy. Why don't they go there and leave those of us who like and enjoy the cities in peace. Furthermore, if they got out, it would help relieve the urban 'overcrowding' which they also complain about.

~ Murray Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays

Friedrich Hayek on conservationists vs. progress

Industrial development would have been greatly retarded if sixty or eighty years ago the warning of the conservationists about the threatening exhaustion of the supply of coal had been heeded; and the internal combustion engine would never have revolutionized transport if its use had been limited to the then known supplies of oil (during the first few decades of the era of the automobile and the airplane the known resources of oil at the current rate of use would have been exhausted in ten years). Though it is important that on all these matters the opinion of the experts about the physical facts should be heard, the result in most instances would have been very detrimental if they had had the power to enforce their views on policy.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 369