If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front Movie Review

Daniel McGowan’s t-shirt showing a picture of George W. Bush with the caption “International Terrorist” just about sums up the way he encounters the world. That he chose to wear that shirt while a documentary film crew was interviewing him during his house arrest prior to receiving a criminal sentence indicates that knowing what a shorthand signal it is, he wants the audience to know just how far to the left he stands from the political fence. I’m going to make a bold guess in saying that how you respond to the message on his shirt will be a fairly accurate litmus test for your opinion of the environmental warriors that are the subject of If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

Nuclear Disaster Makes World's Sissies Run for the Hills

This story is an Onion article waiting to happen.

Germany has announced that it will phase out all of its nuclear reactors by 2022. This is a direct response to anti-nuclear protests in the wake of the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan which was itself the result of a massive earthquake and tsunami, which are two things that don't occur Germany!

What I find so particularly piquant about this decision is, where the hell do they expect to get their energy from in ten years? Sorry, but wind and solar are far from being efficient enough to power an entire industrialized nation. I don't see those two sources being the answer in ten years. And the price of oil is not going to drop significantly in the next decade as it becomes scarcer and scarcer. Not to mention, you know, that everyone's supposed to be in a tizzy about carbon emissions and global warming, right?

Also, the panic over the (un)safety of nuclear power is unfounded. How many deaths have there been as a direct result of nuclear power production? Far far fewer than deaths resulting from coal mining and oil production, I would say.

Yes, nuclear power presents its problems. What do we do with the spent fuel rods, for one? But does the Germany government really think closing its nuclear plants isn't a giant step backwards?

The Cooling Trend

There's something a little perversely satisfying about this new revelation in Britain that shows the climate change skeptics are gaining ground.

I've long suspected that the climate change/global warming scaremongering is little more than a fad like just about every other imminent environmental disaster proclaimed over the last 40 years. What ever happened with that hole in the ozone layer that was supposed to fundamentally alter our existence? What about the destruction of rain forests that was going to kill us off? How about the impending ice age that was touted in the 70s?

My climate change skepticism is not about whether the warming effect exists but whether humans are responsible. And even if we are, is it worth scaling back national economies to implement "fixes" that will have very little practical effect on mean global temperatures? Seriously, the United States was the Great Satan for not signing the Kyoto Protocol but China and India weren't even included?