[Super Mario]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...10954769943823

From California to Missouri, four of five environmental initiatives lost at the ballot box. Voters are clearly still not ready for exorbitant costs and excessive regulation without clear benefits.

California voters shot down both clean-energy propositions on the ballot. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40% of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2025. It lost 65% to 35%.

Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high-fuel-economy or alternative-fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology. It failed 60% to 40%.

Even in San Francisco, the capital of liberalism and greenie fervor, voters rejected Proposition H, which would have mandated a rapid increase in the city's use of clean energy to achieve its goal of being 100% renewable by 2040. It would also have meant taking over the city's private electric company.

Obama took the former red state of Colorado, which also elected environmentalist Senate candidate Mark Udall over oil executive Bob Shaffer. Yet Coloradans struck down a measure to pay for conservation and clean energy by increasing taxes on oil companies.

Only in Missouri did green energy score a victory. There, Proposition C mandated a 15% increase in renewable energy by 2021 with slow and steady yearly increases that energy companies felt they could phase in without disruption and with which voters felt more comfortable.

The mantra is that oil and car companies are blocking the increased use of renewable energy. The truth is that consumers, through their choices and their votes, are slowing the stampede. They worry about the cost in tough economic times and whether such efforts are worth it based on dubious evidence of global warming. Energy independence is one thing, but going bankrupt to achieve it is quite another.

[TETENAL]

American automobile companies rejected the climate change hysteria. Now they are sitting on their gas guzzlers and face bankruptcy.

That's what I call expensive.

[Wiskedjak]

I see nothing in your article about "Liberals". I see "voters", "Californians", "Coloradans", "San Franciscans". I suspect Conservatives also rejected environmental initiatives.

Just as not all Conservatives are Christian Fundamentalists, not all Liberals are Greenies.

[Big Mac]

The majority of Californians would describe themselves as liberal, I think it's safe to say.

[nonhuman]

Perhaps, but the majority of (voting) Californians also passed prop 8.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

The majority of Californians would describe themselves as liberal, I think it's safe to say.

I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that not all Liberals are environmentalists.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that not all Liberals are environmentalists.

Apparently not, as Mario points out.

[Super Mario]

Liberal states who voted for Obama rejected the proposals. That's the point. Democracy has spoken.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Super Mario 

Liberal states who voted for Obama rejected the proposals. That's the point. Democracy has spoken.

Absolutely. Of course, that doesn't mean that the people who believe we are destroying our planet will stop fighting for measures to be taken to curb human activities they believe to be causing climate change.

[Super Mario]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

Absolutely. Of course, that doesn't mean that the people who believe we are destroying our planet will stop fighting for measures to be taken to curb human activities they believe to be causing climate change.

Let them try as they may. Those nuts have spent billions trying to convince the public of a barefaced lie. If they put the same amount of time, money and effort into investing in technology to improve battery technology for cars, or spent that money to help Africans out of poverty then they would get respect. But they do the opposite. They tell Africans to stay poor because the peasant life is beautiful (with all its diseases and famines) and that we should not have nuclear power or new clean coal burning technologies.

The time will come very soon that these fanatic Green groups will come under heavy physical Direct Action attacks and any politician who supports them will also find themselves getting rough treatment.

[Chongo]

The citizens of the Peoples Republic of San Francisco voted down naming their sewer treatment plant after W

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by Super Mario 

The time will come very soon that these fanatic Green groups will come under heavy physical Direct Action attacks and any politician who supports them will also find themselves getting rough treatment.

Be advised:

Do not make threats.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by Super Mario 

Let them try as they may. Those nuts have spent billions trying to convince the public of a barefaced lie. If they put the same amount of time, money and effort into investing in technology to improve battery technology for cars, or spent that money to help Africans out of poverty then they would get respect. But they do the opposite. They tell Africans to stay poor because the peasant life is beautiful (with all its diseases and famines) and that we should not have nuclear power or new clean coal burning technologies.

The time will come very soon that these fanatic Green groups will come under heavy physical Direct Action attacks and any politician who supports them will also find themselves getting rough treatment.

Your suggestion that it is environmentalists that are somehow responsible for African poverty is problematic to say the least. A long history of colonialism and capitalist exploitation is a much more proximal explanation. You mention diseases in Africa, failing to consider the health effects of nuclear and coal power. You criticize the environmentalist movement for spending "billions" (a figure I think you would have a hard time justifying) claiming they should invest in battery technology, when that is precisely the sort of thing the movement is lobbying for. Your entire argument is spurious.

[Super Mario]

Originally Posted by Helmling 

Your suggestion that it is environmentalists that are somehow responsible for African poverty is problematic to say the least. A long history of colonialism and capitalist exploitation is a much more proximal explanation.

The environmental movement's actions in Africa is a modern extension of elitist colonialist action. This is the expert opinion of a number of top ecologists from Patrick Moore to Bjorn Lomborg and from CS Prakash to Paul Driessen.

[Helmling]

Originally Posted by Super Mario 

The environmental movement's actions in Africa is a modern extension of elitist colonialist action. This is the expert opinion of a number of top ecologists from Patrick Moore to Bjorn Lomborg and from CS Prakash to Paul Driessen.

While I'd be willing to agree that the environmentalist movement needs to focus on the first world first, the suggestion that there are any significant effects on Africa because of that movement when compared to the rampant exploitation of Africa and the rest of the developing world by free-trade-hungry corporations in the developed world and their proxy governments is absurd.

The other fundamental flaw with your premise is that you conclude that America is rejecting environmentalism because they voted for Obama and yet defeated a few ballot measures in a few locations. This is fallacious because the number one item on Obama's agenda is stimulating the economy through creating a clean energy policy and developing five million "green" jobs. Seen in the big picture, then, it doesn't look like liberals are rejecting much of anything.