Algore’s got his stupid first concert on July 7th. He’s going to be at the one in New Jersey. Anyway, this column, and I’ll give you more details of it when I have a little bit more time after the break here, but it makes the point that this fanatical religion of global warming is just getting out of control. The idea of protecting our environment’s gotten way out of control. Now there seems to be no limit on what is land worthy of being protected and what isn’t. Every single little acre of land, if touched by evil white man, will contribute to global warming. They are getting out of control.
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RUSH: From Oslo — now, this is the place where they hand out the Nobel Peace Prizes. Of course, I am a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Get this. This is how absurd this whole global warming thing has gotten. ‘Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and ex-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are best suited to champion work to fight climate change, a 47-nation opinion poll said on Monday. The three were most picked by more than 26,000 Internet users from a list of more than 20 politicians, actors, singers and soccer players to highlight links between celebrities and the environment before Live Earth pop concerts on Saturday…. Gore was chosen by 18 percent of people when asked to pick up to three people from the list as the most influential to ‘champion efforts to combat global warming.’ … In other countries, Annan was top with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clinton in China. In Germany, Annan was paired with Mandela while in Britain, entrepreneur Richard Branson led with Irish singer Bob Geldof.’
So the pop culture and the people who portray it and dally in it, dabble in it, choose these people — Gore, Winfrey, and Kofi Annan — as the best team to lead on explaining climate change. This piece is from the Las Vegas Review Journal ran yesterday: ‘There are some who, lacking the ecstatic thrill of any other faith-based religion, wish to believe that the earth is in the early stages of an unprecedented climatic change which will see temperatures soar, the polar ice caps melt, rising sea levels flood our coastal cities – … all because we insist on driving petroleum-fueled private automobiles and using electricity generated by burning coal. Burning that stuff releases into the atmosphere large amounts of carbon dioxide, you see, a ‘greenhouse gas’ which contributes to the ongoing warming of the planet. Now, this is almost entirely nonsense. The planet is currently warming at a rate of perhaps one degree a year, part of an ongoing cycle of global warming and cooling which … has been ongoing for millions of years.’
One of the reasons I like this piece is because I have said so much of it on prior occasions, but the real impact here of this piece, the real point — and it’s a great point — is this: ‘Last weekend, however, the Review-Journal ran an editorial ridiculing the radical Greens for fighting a pipeline needed to transport drinking water to Las Vegas from east central Nevada by using their usual [straw dog] – insisting the plan would damage some obscure minnow in some pond in Utah. ‘It appears that the RJ editorials have hit a new low,’ wrote one of these characters. ‘The childish, blind-eye editorial in Sunday’s paper was pathetic. Apparently whoever wrote (and approved it) feels that man is the only thing on earth worth saving … and damn the environment if it gets in their way!’ So now ‘the environment,’ as used by these zealots, no longer means ‘the environs of mankind, which make mankind’s life healthier and more enjoyable,’ … Rather, the term has been skinned and cured, turned into sheep’s clothing and draped over a lurking wolf. The term is now used to mean ‘pristine nature…”
That’s another point that I have made over and over and over on this program. We are predators. We are not part of nature. Man is not part of nature. All we do is destroy. The fact of the matter is that we are as much a part of nature as is any other living organism, and every living organism alters the environment in order to thrive. It must! Environmental change is called ‘destruction’ when man engaging engages in it but when a bunch of beavers chop down a bunch of trees and damn up a little brook, ‘Oh, look at those cute little beavers! Why, isn’t that cute? Isn’t it wonderful how nature operates.’ My cat goes out there and catches a lizard, plays around with it, and the lizard dies, ‘That’s nature, Mr. Limbaugh! That is a wonderful thing.’ If I go out and catch a lizard and it dies, I have intruded on nature. My cat does it, and ‘It’s a beautiful thing, Mr. Limbaugh.’ I, by the way, don’t go out and catch lizards. They’re our little buddies down here. They eat the insects. In fact, I rescue them from my cat all the time. The cat goes nuts, too. It doesn’t understand what I’m doing. The cat thinks it’s bringing me a surprise. I say, ‘Punkie, drop the lizard,’ and she’ll drop it and start pawing it. It will dart around, and she goes right after it. So I have to hold her back, while trying to pick up the lizard, and then what’s funny is I’ll open the sliding door; I’ll take it outside and dump it in the grass.
I’ll come back in and she’s still smelling the floor where it was, trying to figure out where it went, because she can still smell it but she can’t see it. It’s not there, and that’s sort of fun. I have just interceded in nature there, haven’t I? I got in the way of my cat doing what it’s instincts tell it to do: go after and play with the lizard. She doesn’t actually try to kill them, it just happens, you know, paws them around and they probably die of shock or what have you. So we’re just natural born predators, but here’s the point. If we are really in the process of warming up the planet like crazy, and we’re doing it in a way that’s going to cause all this destruction. When you start talking about the polar ice caps melting, that’s huge. When you start talking about sea levels rising, whatever they say from day to day, ten feet to 17 feet to 20 feet, and flooding Long Island and Manhattan, I don’t see those people leaving. Property values there going crazy, but what do we do? What’s the solution to it? Well, the liberal solution is raise taxes, have huge government, and restrict your freedom; make you drive cars you don’t want to drive, but none of the solutions actually involve cooling the planet, do they? Has Algore or Oprah or Kofi Annan ever come up with a way to cool the planet?
If we’re warming the planet, don’t you think we can cool it? If we can do one, we can do the other — and if we’re really warming it to this dangerous degree, then isn’t it incumbent upon all of us to do what’s necessary to cool it? No, liberals are not talking about any such solution. They just want bigger got there, higher taxes, less freedom and liberty for people. But how could you cool the planet? You’re saying, ‘Well, come on, Rush, don’t be silly. You know we’re not warming it; how could we cool it?’ Well, there is a way. Go back and look at incidents in the past that have led to the planet getting colder, or areas of the planet getting colder, because things that have happened. We got records 200 years. We can find these instances. How about this: if you Google in your search engine ‘Year without a Summer,’ you will learn that from April 5 to 15 in 1850, Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies, which is the modern day Indonesia, blew up. This mountain literally blew up and it ejected 40 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash. That’s more than twice as much as the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa, into the upper atmosphere. There have been other volcanoes that have done this, Mt. Pinatubo and so forth, and you know what happened? The sun couldn’t get through all the garbage, so it didn’t get nearly as hot.
The planet cooled wherever this cloud of ash and sulfur and everything that had been thrown out of that volcano was, and as it traveled around the atmosphere it was, you know, dark days, cloudy looking days, dense smoke, but the planet got a cooler — and of course this was nature. You might say these are all pollutants that it ejected and belched out of the top of the volcano, but it’s all nature. So the columnist here in the Las Vegas Review Journal says, ‘[I]if anyone believes the earth is warming catastrophically and that we need to do something, the only PROVEN solution is to start throwing as much crap into the atmosphere as we possibly can, right now,’ that would be the effect. ‘Clean nuclear and natural-gas-fired power plants must be shut down and immediately replaced with coal plants burning the softest, dirtiest coal… ‘Smog inspections’ will take on a new meaning as our cars will be checked regularly to make sure each is pouring up the densest cloud of black smoke and carbon particulates possible,’ and life-saving black ‘soot. Since every little bit counts, we may also have to make tobacco-smoking mandatory for everyone above the age of 10. ‘Global warming is a crisis, [folks]. It’s time we all set aside our selfish desire to keep our yard furniture free of drifting soot… and share the sacrifice! Share the sacrifice. Think globally; act locally! Do your part! Pollution – wholesale, massive, sooty pollution – is the only answer!’ That’s what’s cooled the planet in the past. Well, it’s one of the things that has. There have been other of course climatic things that have made it happen, but those are things we could do, really do, to counteract global warming. None of them are ever suggested by the people who promise us a catastrophe in a few short years.
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RUSH: Here’s Fred in Bemidji, Minnesota. You’re next. It’s great to have you with us, too.
CALLER: Rush, you are the man.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I am glad to talk to you. And I want to say that I consider you one of the true sources of news in our country, in spite of what the mainstream media says. I think that in most cases, they don’t know the difference between news and garbage. I listen to you.
RUSH: I appreciate your saying that because I think you’re exactly right. I think in the three hours of this program, we tell people more about what’s going on than they do. They’re agenda-driven and I have an agenda, too, in the sense that I’m trying to expand the number of conservatives, the number of people who understand it, believe it, and are able to explain it to others. They’ve got an agenda, too, which forces them to leave out a lot of stuff that doesn’t make the grade. In fact, I probably have a couple examples in my stack today. I’ll try to find one or two of them after I finish your call.
CALLER: What I called about is in reference to your talking about the environmentalists continuing to push the idea that we need to leave the land untouched, that that’s the only realistic and proper way to do it, and I’m wondering how that foolishness is going to allow us to grow the additional 300,000 acres of corn that they want grown so that we can substitute that for fossil fuels?
RUSH: You know, it’s an interesting question, and the answer to it is this. When liberals and environmentalists start defining and are in charge of land use, then, of course, it’s good because they are good people, and they are not destructive. And of course the pursuit of ethanol is to save us from global warming. So they’ve got a good motive. They have good intentions behind them.
CALLER: So you can destroy the land if you have good liberal intentions, that’s the rationale?
RUSH: Not only that, you can destroy the black family; you can destroy prosperity for a lot of people; you can destroy everything you want, as long as you have good intentions behind it. As long as people are unwilling to judge the results of your destruction and will be won over by your good intentions, absolutely.
CALLER: Well, to me what is foolishness is that much of this is driven by emotion rather than the search and the consideration of what I would call true truth or true facts. You know, most anything can be called a fact now if somebody says, ‘Well, I think this is true, so that makes it a fact.’ Well, it does not. It just makes it spin or creative lying or whatever you want to call it. Truth is more difficult than that.
RUSH: Well, of course and the truth is easily side-stepped in the advancement of an agenda. As far as the liberals are concerned, it’s never too early or late to rise above principle.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, I wanted to just throw in there that too many of our leaders are pushing this foolish idea that a bad plan or a bad bill or a bad idea is better than doing nothing, and I think that that is completely wrong —
RUSH: Well, it’s illogical on its face. To do something worse than what exists or do nothing at all, who in the world would say that doing something worse than the current is good? But then you’ve gotta get into the argument of saying, ‘Well, is it really worse?’ Well, any open-minded person looking at what this bill would have done would have to conclude, yeah, it’s worse. It’s far worse.
CALLER: Well, this is why I started out saying you in fact are a true news source, because you bring a quantity and a quality of truth to the discussion that seems to be painfully missing from most mainstream and I would agree Drive-By Media.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I’m glad you noticed. You’ve made my day because we say we’ve been doing the Drive-By Media’s job for them for decades here. They gave up on it a long time ago, especially when they became aware that they lost their monopoly. They have made it abundantly clear that they have chosen sides with the Democrats. My buddy, Evan Thomas here who says I have more power than President Bush, actually said going into the 2004 campaign — you’ll remember this when I remind you — he actually said that mainstream media support of John Kerry would be worth 15 points in the election. That’s coming out of the closet and admitting it, and he’s one of the chief editors at Newsweek magazine. All right, I appreciate that, Fred, very kind, you are.
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RUSH: James in Cleveland, you’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, Day One dittos, ultraconservative alternative fuel vehicle manager here at a Honda and Toyota dealership, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m driving natural gas Civic. It runs on natural gas. It’s about a buck a gallon coming out of your house. You can pump it right from your house, and I want to tell you about E85. I don’t think it’s worth it. It takes more fuel to make it. It could be part of the problem.
RUSH: Wait a second here! Wait a second. Do you enjoy your job?
CALLER: I love my job.
RUSH: Maybe we better stop this conversation right now. (Laughing.)
CALLER: (Laughing.) We don’t sell E85s at our dealership, but the thing about E85 is —
RUSH: Hold, hold it. Hold it just a second. By the way, slow down a little bit, because your phone quality is not the best. I’m having a little trouble understanding you. It’s not your fault. But what is an alternative fuel vehicle manager?
CALLER: I handle the vehicles that run either hybrid, which isn’t really considered a[n] alternative fuel, but I would handle the natural gas Civic.
RUSH: Are you a salesman? Are you management?
CALLER: Salesperson, salesperson/manager for the alternative fuel —
RUSH: This is even more incredible! So you sell these things and you’re calling us saying you drive one and it doesn’t work?
CALLER: No, no, no. I drive a natural gas Civic that works great. I don’t drive an E85 vehicle. I drive a natural gas Civic that runs perfect. You could fill it up at your house. You —
RUSH: Oh. Oh, you do like the natural gas vehicle. It’s the hybrid that you’re not crazy about?
CALLER: Nope, I’m crazy about the hybrids, too. It’s the E85, the ethanol car. Everybody is pushing ethanol. Everyone is pushing the corn. Everyone is pushing that. That’s not an efficient fuel.
RUSH: The ethanol car is what you’re criticizing?
CALLER: Yes. Well, I’m not necessarily criticizing it. I think it’s overly hyped. Let me explain to you how I explain it to people. You can’t win a war just a Marine, okay, but you can win a war with the Marines, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, and the National Guard. E85 is just one portion of winning the war against, you know, dependency on foreign oil. Believe me I’d much rather drill in the United States, get our own oil from here, but that’s not going to happen, so we need to come up with alternatives, and E85…
RUSH: See, that’s where I disagree with you. I totally disagree with you. It won’t happen if we choose this alternative army you’re saying of these worthless and as far as I’m concerned. Well, shouldn’t say that. I’m never going to buy one.
CALLER: But they’re not at all worth it.
RUSH: I’m never going to buy a natural gas. I’m not going to buy an E85 car. I’m not going to buy a hybrid. I never, ever will buy one. I will risk fines. I’m not going to buy junk, buy stuff I don’t like. But the more people who do, the more we are delaying actual production of our own energy. We are not going to grow an expanding economy to the extent the American people demand it, with defensive cutbacks with alternative fuels and vehicles like this when oil is still the fuel that runs everything. We’re not going to do it. It’s not going to happen.
CALLER: I’m not asking for cutbacks. I’m not asking for anything. I’m just asking basically, if you have… Your house I’m sure has natural gas running the range. You cook on that big stove of yours, I’m sure with natural gas, right?
RUSH: Yeah, it runs a couple of things. It runs the barbecue pit, and the pool heater, the cooler and so forth, yeah, but not much else. Not much else.
CALLER: You’re using an alternative fuel and you’re saving… You’re actually doing something you don’t even realize. You’re actually using an alternative fuel.
RUSH: Natural gas is the alternative fuel?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Oh, it’s —
CALLER: (Unintelligible)
RUSH: When you’re talking about alternative to internal combustion engine, yeah. But natural gas is as plentiful… There’s nothing alternative about it. It’s as in as much use as oil is for different reasons.
CALLER: Right, exactly. But you can get natural gas from different sources. You can get it from… I don’t want you to think I… Believe me, I’ve got a Nixon tattoo on my arm, I’m so conservative. But I see that there’s other alternatives we have besides giving those people across the pond there our money and they’re giving it to terrorists so that terrorists can kill us. And I know people that are over in Iraq, and I know people in the military, so I’m pretty up on what’s going on. But my main concern was calling you about E85, and what I wanted to tell you right now is that every sixth row of corn is dedicated to ethanol right now. Only 10% of your gasoline that you put in your tank, at the most, at most is two or three percent, but the most ethanol that’s in your gasoline at your corner gas station, not E85 specific, which is 85% ethanol, every sixth row is dedicated to that 10%. So if we’re going to switch over to 50% E85, we don’t have enough land to grow this. Now the environmentalists are finally realizing this. I go to these meetings and everything. I listen to these people. They go on and on.
RUSH: Yes, we do. We’ve got plenty of land. We’ll just have to convert some other crop to grow corn.
CALLER: Well, no, but there’s other ways to do it. What I’m saying is if they want E85 so bad, E85 is just part of it. We can still use gasoline. We can still use, diesel fuel, but if we can cut the gasoline use and not have to give those people over there so much money, that’s fine. You know, I would rather drill here in the Gulf. I’d rather drill off the coast of California.
RUSH: Let me tell you what the flaw in your argument is. I understand, once again, your desire to not contribute to terrorist graduations and regimes with the purchase of foreign oil.
RUSH: Now, remember, you’re talking to a conservative here — a very, very conservative person.
RUSH: You could be Hillary Clinton and I’d tell you the same thing here. If we don’t buy it, somebody will. You have got to understand: oil is the fuel of the engine of the world economy, and there is nothing that is going to change that dramatically, in your lifetime or mine or hundreds of years from now. It isn’t going to happen.
CALLER: I graduated from that class, Rush. I understand that completely.
RUSH: Well, so then your dabbling around in all this stuff is just cosmetics to make you feel better. You can drive around an E85 car and think you’re burning corn. You can drive around thinking you’re driving a natural gas car and make yourself feel better, but it’s not depriving any oil-rich sheik of his money.
CALLER: I don’t do it to make myself feel better. I do it because it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to win, and I think there are other alternatives than gasoline.
RUSH: Well, independent that. Sometimes I try to live with the thermostat at 72 instead of 70. I understand challenges and trying to do my part, but I know that when I keep my thermostat at 72 instead of 70, somebody’s making up for what I’m doing. It all balances out. This is just… You do feel better doing it. Admit it, that’s what you’re trying to do! You’re trying to accomplish something, too. You’re accomplishing a lot here. You’re engaging in a challenge. You think you’re overcoming the obstacles of the challenge. You feel good about what you’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with that.
CALLER: Well, I do feel good about what I’m doing and when I drive a Prius or when I drive a Honda Civic and I’m getting 600 or 650 miles out of a tank or a mid-size Camry or a mid-size Highlander SUV I’m still beating the system. I’m still coming out with more money in my pocket, even though I get a tax credit, and I’m still coming out with more money in my pocket. When I have to drive 620 miles on one tank of gas…
RUSH: That’s great. That is just great. If that matters to you and you’re doing all that, that’s great, but do not think while you’re doing all that — I don’t want to disappoint you or ruin the day here, but don’t think that all these things that you like are happening, that — you’re changing the world scheme of energy.
CALLER: But more money in people’s pockets because they’re spending less on gas, that means they’re going to buy a better car. That means they’re going to buy more food at the grocery store; they’re gonna buy more clothes.
RUSH: If they could buy a better car, they gotta buy something other than the kinds you’ve been describing.
CALLER: Well, Honda and Toyotas are the best cars — rated some of the best cars in the world as far as the way they’re built and they’re reliability. They’re much more reliable than a Mercedes or BMW. You can look that up on the Internet, anywhere.
RUSH: Yeah, you could look anything up on the Internet, and it’s still not going to deprive the sheiks of their oil revenue. Somebody’s going to buy it.
CALLER: I understand that, Rush, but you know what? If we quit buying from the sheiks, believe me, they’re going to be in a panic, because we are their largest customer.
RUSH: We can’t stop buying
CALLER: I understand that.
RUSH: The sheiks… By the way, who do you think we boy the most oil from?
CALLER: Well, we boy the most oil from Canada and Venezuela.
RUSH: Canada. Who’s number two?
CALLER: I believe it’s South America and then Russia is three, I think.
RUSH: Mexico.
CALLER: Well, South America, Mexico.
RUSH: Mexico, and that’s Central America.
CALLER: Oh, that’s right.
RUSH: Hell, it’s North America.
CALLER: I didn’t mean to…
RUSH: — and then Venezuela is number four.
CALLER: Yeah, I didn’t mean to group the Latinos. I’m sorry. I mixed them up.
RUSH: Now, that’s a situation. You know that that little dictator down there, that little pig-faced dictator owns 15% of US refining capacity or has financial interests in it? I mean, you can sit there all day worry about the oil sheiks and so forth, but we got this little megalomaniac down there who’s rattling sabers, trying to by submarines from the Soviet — well, the old Soviet Union, from the KGB. As somebody described him over the weekend, he’s Castro on steroids. Anyway, look, I appreciate the call out there, James, and if you love those cars, that is fabulous! If you have good fortune selling them, and you have people that to want buy them, that’s absolutely great. I’m not being critical of that. But I don’t want people to lie to themselves and tell themselves that, you know, you’re depriving Sheik Abdullah Whatever of another gold-rimmed palace over there in Riyadh.