How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World (Chapter Sixteen: The Communism Behind Environmentalism)

(Minghui.org) [Editor's Note] This series is a reprint of The Epoch Times' English translation of the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World by the editorial team of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.

Table of Contents of the Book

Preface: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World

Introduction: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World

Chapter One: The Specter’s Strategies for Destroying Humanity

Chapter Two: Communism’s European Beginnings

Chapter Three: Tyranny in the East

Chapter Four: Exporting Revolution

Chapter Five: Infiltrating the West

Chapter Six: The Revolt Against God

Chapter Seven: The Destruction of the Family

Chapter Eight: How Communism Sows Chaos in Politics

Chapter Nine: The Communist Economic Trap

Chapter Ten: Corrupting the Legal System

Chapter Eleven: Desecrating the Arts

Chapter Twelve: Sabotaging Education

Chapter Thirteen: The Media – The Specter’s Mouthpiece

Chapter Fourteen: Popular Culture – A Decadent Indulgence

Chapter Fifteen: The Communist Roots of Terrorism

Chapter Sixteen: The Communism Behind Environmentalism

Chapter Seventeen: Globalization and Communism

Chapter Eighteen: The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Ambitions

Conclusion: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World

What is Included in This Part?

Chapter Sixteen: The Communism Behind Environmentalism

Introduction

1. Communism and the Environmental Movement

a. The Three Stages of Environmentalism

b. The Marxist Roots of Environmental Movements

c. Ecological Marxism

d. Ecological Socialism

e. Making Green the New Red

f. Manipulating the Rhetoric of Environmentalism

g. Ecoterrorism

h. Greenpeace: Not a Peaceful Story

2. Climate Change

a. The Suppression of Opposing Voices

b. ‘Consensus’ in Climate Science

c. Establishing Dogma in the Scientific Community

d. Propaganda and Intimidation

3. Communist Environmentalism

a. Blaming Capitalism

b. The Religionization of Environmentalism

c. Political Infiltration: Building a World Government

References

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE COMMUNISM BEHIND ENVIRONMENTALISM

Introduction

The Creator provides the conditions for human life and all things on earth. Traditional cultures emphasize the benign, symbiotic relationship between man and nature. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Dong Zhongshu wrote in Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, “Everything on earth was created for the benefit of man.” [1] At the same time, people must maintain respect for nature, following the principles of heaven and earth.

In traditional Chinese philosophy, there is a balance between everything, as well as the imperative to avoid doing harm. The Confucian Doctrine of the Mean states: “Moral laws form one system with the laws by which heaven and earth support and contain, overshadow and canopy all things. … It is this same system of laws by which all created things are produced and develop themselves each in its order and system without injuring one another; that the operations of nature take their course without conflict or confusion.” [2] The Chinese ancients thus valued protection of the environment. According to legendary records, during the time of Emperor Yu the Great roughly four millennia ago, “in the three months of the spring, people didn’t take axes to the forest so the forest could flourish; in the three months of the summer, people didn’t put nets to rivers so fishes could breed.” [3] Zeng Zi, a disciple of Confucius, wrote, “Wood should only be cut down in the right seasons and animals only slaughtered at the right time.” [4]

Such quotes reflect the traditional ideas, found not just in China but also in ancient cultures around the world, of practicing moderation in all things and of cherishing and protecting the natural environment.

Since the Industrial Revolution, society has become increasingly aware of the severe ecological damage caused by pollution. Starting in the West, this damage has been partially offset by the passage of laws and regulations to protect the environment. In first-world countries, the importance of environmental protection is universally acknowledged.

Less well-understood is how environmentalist narratives dominant in society today have been shaped and manipulated by communism. Though the rationale for environmental protection is legitimate, and many people have a genuine desire to improve the environment and safeguard humanity’s future prosperity, communist elements have commandeered much of the environmental movement to advance their own political agendas. Communism’s infiltration of environmentalism has been underway virtually since the beginning of the environmental movement.

Environmental science is a complex field of study, with research that remains far from conclusive findings on subjects such as climate change. Yet under the influence of left-wing ideology, many “green” activists and organizations have simplified and turned environmental protection into a highly politicized struggle, often employing extreme methods and radical narratives — sometimes to the point of religious fervor. Rather than following the ancient teachings of moderation and conservation, radical leftist environmentalists eschew morality and tradition in their crusade against everything they deem the “enemy” of environmentalism, from private business to procreation. Mixed with other radical movements, the green cause has come to be defined by misleading propaganda and authoritarian political measures, turning environmentalism into a kind of “communism-lite.”

This chapter will focus on how environmentalism as an ideology has come to be wed to communism, and how the environmental movement was hijacked, manipulated, and co-opted into serving communism’s aims.

1. Communism and the Environmental Movement

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist bloc, communists continued to spread their influence in both Eastern and Western societies, while also seeking to establish a tightly controlled global government.

In order to achieve this, communism must create or use an “enemy” that threatens all of humankind and intimidates the public around the world into handing over both individual liberty and state sovereignty. Creating global panic about looming environmental and ecological disasters is a route toward achieving its goals.

a. The Three Stages of Environmentalism

The formation and development of the environmental movement has been inextricably linked with communism. Its development can be broken down into three stages.

The First Stage

The first stage was a theoretical “gestation period,” which can be traced to the years from the 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, through to the first Earth Day in 1970.

Marx and his followers did not regard environmentalism as the focus of their theoretical discourse, but Marxist atheism and materialism were naturally consistent with the main tendency of the modern environmental movement. Marx declared that capitalism is opposed to nature (that is, the environment). Marxists devised the term “ecosystem” and quietly infused environmentalism with various public issues.

In the last decade of this phase, from 1960 to 1970, two best-selling books — Silent Spring (1962) and The Population Bomb (1968) — brought environmentalism to the public arena. The former raised legitimate concerns about the damage done to the natural environment by chemical pesticides, while the latter advocated immediate and widespread population control, sowing the seeds for the anti-human undercurrents of the communist-influenced environmental movement.

The Second Stage

At the macro level, the counterculture of the 1960s functioned almost like a military parade of communist elements in the West. They took the stage by co-opting the civil rights and anti-war movements, then quickly spread to other forms of battles against the “system,” including the feminist movement, the sexual revolution, and environmentalism. This is the root of the upsurge in environmental ideology and agitation.

The first Earth Day, held in 1970, marked the beginning of the second stage. Shortly after, in 1972, the United Nations held its first Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm. A battery of organizations and monitoring groups were rapidly formed. In the United States and Europe, these groups pushed governments by using protests, propaganda, activism under the guise of scientific research, and so on.

The Third Stage

The third stage began on the eve of the Cold War’s conclusion, when communism was in political collapse in Eastern Europe. Around this time, communists began to change gears by pushing the narrative of “saving the world.”

In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the concept of global warming began to enter the political realm. In 1990, months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow hosted an international conference on the environment. In a speech, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, advocated for the establishment of an international environmental monitoring system and a covenant to protect “unique environmental zones.” He also expressed support for UN environmental programs, and a follow-up conference, which was subsequently held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [5]

What seemed to be the majority of Western environmentalists accepted these proposals and came to view global, man-made climate change as the primary threat to humankind. Propaganda that used environmental protection as an excuse for heavy-handed policies suddenly escalated, and environmental laws and regulations proliferated rapidly.

Owing to the politicization of environmentalist issues, propaganda and hype have overshadowed sound policy and scientific research, as will be discussed later in this chapter.

b. The Marxist Roots of Environmental Movements

Eastern tradition views human beings as the spirit of all matter and one of the Three Talents (heaven, earth, and human beings), while Western religions teach that man was created by God in his own image. Thus, human life is endowed with higher value, purpose, and dignity. Nature exists to nourish humankind, and humans have an obligation to treasure and care for the natural environment.

In the eyes of atheists and materialists, however, human life has no such special quality. Engels wrote in one of his essays, “Life is the mode of existence of protein bodies.” [6] In this view, human life is no more than a configuration of proteins, no different in any essential manner from animals or plants — thus, it is only logical that humans may be deprived of freedom, and even their lives, for the supposed cause of protecting nature.

In the update to his 1840s book on organic chemistry, German chemist Justus von Liebig criticized British farmers for using imported guano as a fertilizer. British agriculture had benefited from the bird manure, an efficient fertilizer, and crop yields had significantly increased. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the British had ample high-quality food sources. Von Liebig listed various arguments against overreliance on the imported fertilizer, among which was the impact that collecting the guano had on island bird populations, as well as its long-term unsustainability. He also objected to the longer lifespans and larger families of the well-fed British populace, arguing that more people meant more environmental damage. [7]

Marx carefully studied von Liebig’s work when writing Das Kapital and used his arguments to attack the capitalist system. Marx praised von Liebig’s work for having “developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i.e., destructive, side of modern agriculture.” [8]

Marx regarded any effort to create wealth by using natural resources as a vicious cycle, with the conclusion that “a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system.”

After Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party launched their 1917 coup in Russia, they quickly promulgated the Decree on Land and the Decree on Forests to nationalize land, forest, water, mineral, animal, and plant resources, and prevent the public from using them without authorization.

American meteorologist and author Brian Sussman wrote in his 2012 book Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America that Marx and Lenin’s ideas form the basis of those of today’s environmentalists. In their view, no one has the right to profit from natural resources. “Whether it’s saving the forests, whales, snails, or the climate, it all comes back to a deep-rooted belief that the quest for such profit is immoral and will ultimately destroy the planet unless ground to a halt,” Sussman wrote. [9]

The global environmental movement has involved a large number of thinkers, politicians, scientists, social activists, and media personalities. This text does not have sufficient space to enumerate their thoughts, speeches, and actions in full, but one figure cannot be ignored: Maurice Strong, the founder and first executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

Strong, a Canadian, also organized UN conferences including the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment and the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development. He was deeply influenced by his cousin, Anna Louise Strong, a well-known pro-communist journalist who was buried in China. Strong described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” [10]

Strong came to occupy an important place in the global environmental movement. The views espoused by the UN agency led by Strong appear almost identical to Marxist theory; the preamble to the report of the 1976 World Conference on Human Settlements read: “Private land ownership is a principal instrument of accumulating wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.” [11] Strong lived in Beijing after his retirement, but died in Canada in 2015.

Natalie Grant Wraga, an expert on the Soviet Union’s disinformation tactics, wrote in a 1998 article: “Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.” [12]

c. Ecological Marxism

At the juncture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, British scientist Arthur Tansley originated the ideas of ecology and the ecosystem. Tansley was the first chairman of the British Ecological Society, and while attending University College, London, he was deeply influenced by Darwinian zoologist Ray Lankester. [13] Both were Fabian socialists. Lankester was a frequent houseguest and friend of Marx; he once wrote to Marx saying that he was studying Das Kapital (Marx’s 1867 text) “with the greatest pleasure and profit.” [14]

The originating links between ecological ideas and Marxism appear to emerge in these connections between Tansley, Lankester, and Marx. While environmentalism is an ideology concerned with protecting the environment against damage to the natural environment generally, ecology concerns the relationship between living things and their environment, and thus provides the theoretical basis for defining the harm done to the environment. Eco-Marxism takes these ideas a step further, adding the concept of ecological crises to augment its arguments about the economic collapse of capitalism. It seeks to expand the supposed conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat by adding an inherent conflict between production and the environment. This is the theory of double crisis or double conflict. In Marxist theory, the primary conflict of capitalism is between productive forces and the relations of production, while the secondary conflict happens between the environment of production (the ecosystem) and the productive forces (capitalism). In a Marxist view, the primary conflict leads to economic crisis, while the secondary conflict leads to ecological crisis. [15]

The last century has proven wrong the Marxist prediction that capitalism would collapse in on itself. On the contrary, it continues to prosper. To keep up the fight against capitalism and private business, communists infused environmentalism with Marxist theory, adopting the new rallying cry of “ecological collapse.”

d. Ecological Socialism

As its name suggests, ecosocialism is an ideology combining ecology and socialism. Inserting typical socialist demands, such as “social justice,” along with ecological concerns is an attempt to advance socialist ideology in new ways.

A good illustration of ecosocialism is The Ecosocialist Manifesto, written in 2001 by Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy. Kovel was an anti-Vietnam War activist and later psychiatry professor who ran unsuccessfully for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2000. Löwy, a sociologist, is a member of the Trotskyist Fourth International. In the manifesto, the authors resolve to “build a movement that can replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production replaces capitalist ownership, and in which the preservation and restoration of ecosystems will be a fundamental part of all human activity.” They did not view ecosocialism as merely a branch of socialism, but rather as the new name of socialism in a new era. [16]

e. Making Green the New Red

When environmentalism entered politics, green politics, or ecopolitics, was born. Green parties, now established in many countries, are the result of green politics, which typically extends beyond environmental protection to include left-wing programs such as social justice, feminism, anti-war activism, and pacifism. Global Greens, for instance, is an international organization associated with the Green Party, and its 2001 charter is heavily influenced by Marxist ideology. [17] After the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, many former communist party members and remaining communist forces joined or established green parties, strengthening the leftist character of green politics.

Former Soviet leader Gorbachev also tried and failed to re-enter politics. He then switched to environmentalism and established Green Cross International. Gorbachev has often promoted the establishment of a world government to prevent ecological disaster. [18]

Many communist parties in the West are directly involved in environmental-protection movements. Jack Mundey, a union activist and co-founder of Australia’s green ban movement, was a member of the Communist Party of Australia. His wife was the national president of the Party from 1979 to 1982. [19]

f. Manipulating the Rhetoric of Environmentalism

Starting mass movements is one of communism’s strategies for spreading its influence across nations and the world. Many environmental organizations mobilize large numbers of people to wage environmental protection campaigns. They have lobbied and hijacked government institutions to formulate and enforce unreasonable agreements and regulations. They have also created violent incidents in order to silence the general public.

As the radical leftist Saul Alinsky stated, it is necessary to hide the true purposes of a movement and mobilize people on a large scale to act in support of local, temporary, plausible, or benign goals. When people become accustomed to these moderate forms of activism, it is relatively easy to get them to act for more radical aims. “Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move. From there it’s a short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution,” Alinsky wrote. [20]

A variety of leftist groups use environmentalism as ideological packaging to carry out street actions advocating revolution. For example, if a country has a “people’s climate movement,” you can infer that it is a product of communist parties. In the United States, the organizations involved include the Communist Party USA, Socialist Action, the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party USA, the Ecological Society of America, the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Alternative, the Democratic Socialists of America, and so on. Such groups hosted the People’s Climate March, parading with a sea of red flags through major American cities, including the nation’s capital. Slogans at these events have included “System change, not climate change,” “Capitalism is killing us,” “Capitalism is destroying the environment,” “Capitalism is killing the planet,” and “Fight for a socialist future.” [21]

With more and more communist and socialist elements to strengthen environmentalism, “green peace” has made a full transition to red revolution.

g. Ecoterrorism

Due to its leftist influences, environmentalism has been relatively radical from the start. There are many branches, including deep ecology, ecofeminism, social ecology, and bioregionalism, with some being extremely radical. The most well-known include groups such as Earth First! and Earth Liberation Front, which utilize direct action — often destructive acts known as ecoterrorism — to stop activities they consider damaging to the environment.

Earth First! was named in 1979, and its slogan is “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!” The group targets logging operations, dam construction sites, and other projects using direct action and “creative civil disobedience.” One of the group’s well-known tactics is called tree sitting, in which members sit under or climb up trees to prevent logging. These operations have attracted many leftists, anarchists, and others seeking to rebel against mainstream society.

In 1992, some of the more radical members started a branch called Earth Liberation Front (ELF), copying the ELF name from the Environmental Life Force group that was disbanded in 1978, as well as adopting its guerrilla tactics, particularly arson. In December 2000, ELF perpetrated a series of crimes on Long Island, New York. The radicals smashed hundreds of windows and spray-painted graffiti in a housing development and at the corporate offices of McDonald’s, and set fire to sixteen buildings in a condominium development, as well as at least four luxury homes. The main justification for the arson was that the homes were the “future dens of the wealthy elite” and were being built over forest and wetlands. While committing these direct actions, ELF used the slogan “If you build it, we will burn it.” [22]

In 2005, the FBI announced that ELF and other extremist organizations were a serious terrorist threat to the United States, having claimed involvement in more than 1,200 criminal incidents, causing tens of millions of dollars in property damage, since 1990. [23] The organization’s actions have long since exceeded the limits of normal political protest or differences in views. Communist ideology has exploited hatred to turn some environmentalists into terrorists.

h. Greenpeace: Not a Peaceful Story

Greenpeace was established in 1971 and is the largest environmental organization in the world, with offices in more than fifty countries and annual revenues of more than $350 million. It is also one of the more radical environmental organizations.

Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson, who left the organization in 1977, said: “The secret to [former chairman] David McTaggart’s success is the secret to Greenpeace’s success: It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true. … You are what the media define you to be. [Greenpeace] became a myth, and a myth-generating machine.” [24]

Patrick Moore, another co-founder, was committed to environmental protection, but left the organization after 15 years, saying it had taken “a sharp turn to the political left.” It had developed into an extremist organization displaying hostility toward all industrial production and reflecting an agenda based more on politics than on sound science. [25]

In 2007, six Greenpeace members broke into a British coal power plant and were subsequently sued for causing damage worth about 30,000 British pounds. They admitted to attempting to shut down the power plant, but claimed that they were doing it to prevent even greater damage (an environmental crisis due to greenhouse gases). The court cleared the six of wrongdoing. Before this, Greenpeace had chalked up several court wins over actions such as damaging a fighter jet and nuclear submarine equipment, and occupying Britain’s largest waste incinerator. [26]

The strategy of radical environmental organizations such as Greenpeace is to use any means necessary to achieve their goals. On this point, radical environmentalism is highly consistent with communism. Traditional Marxism-Leninism uses the promise of an eventual utopia to justify killing, arson, and robbery. Similarly, under the banner of environmentalism, communists play up environmental crises to legitimize violent and illegal tactics.

In the above example, lawyers for the six Greenpeace members successfully persuaded the jury to accept their criminal behavior as legitimate, demonstrating that society can be misled into accepting specious and groundless arguments. All of this is part of the abandonment of universal values and is an indication of the moral downslide of society.

2. Climate Change

Climate change is a hot topic in today’s society, with celebrities, media personalities, politicians, and members of the general public weighing in. The most frequently heard assertion is that the emission of greenhouse gases by humans has caused global warming that will lead to climate disasters.

Advocates claim that this conclusion is reached through scientific consensus and that the science is settled. To some environmentalists, people who reject this conclusion are not only considered anti-science, but also anti-humanity. The voices of those who oppose the prevailing view are stifled, seldom appearing in the media or academic journals, in order to maintain the image of a consensus.

The aforementioned Greenpeace members who damaged the power plant were acquitted in part because a famous expert and proponent of this alleged consensus testified on their behalf. He claimed that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the power plant each day would lead to the extinction of up to four hundred animal species.

However, many members of the scientific community, such as retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Richard Lindzen and former US Department of Energy Undersecretary Steven Koonin, have written that climate science isn’t, in fact, settled and that we lack the knowledge needed to make sound climate policy. [27] [28]

a. The Suppression of Opposing Voices

In one article, Koonin wrote:

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science. At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability. At issue were not nuances, but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent — and unexpected — slowing of global sea-level rise over the past two decades. [29]

The issues hotly debated by scientists include whether environmental warming is caused primarily by human activity or by natural factors; how warm the world will be by the end of the twenty-first century; whether humans even have the ability to predict how the climate will change in the future; and whether there is an impending ecological disaster.

Physicist Michael Griffin, a former NASA administrator, said in an interview with NPR in 2007:

I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take. [30]

Although Griffin was expressing the humility that scientists should have, he immediately encountered severe criticism from the media and some climate scientists, who called his remarks ignorant. The following week, in a closed meeting at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Griffin apologized to NASA employees for causing controversy. [31]

A few months later, in an interview for a NASA publication, Griffin said: “I personally think people have gone overboard in the discussion of climate change, to the point where it has become almost not legitimate to view it as a technical subject. It has almost acquired religious status, which I find deplorable.”

Taking Griffin’s observation, the use of all means to stifle scientific debate itself violates the spirit of science, as scientific progress itself is the result of debate. “You develop your theories, publish your data, advance your concept, and others shoot it down, or try to. Scientific consensus evolves in that way,” he said. [32]

In a similar experience to Griffin’s, Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson received immediate and intense backlash from his peers around the world when he was asked to join the board for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think tank that challenges global warming theories. The pressure was so intense that he felt forced to tender his resignation from the foundation within two weeks.

In his resignation letter, Bengtsson wrote:

I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years. [33]

The transformation that Bengtsson observed was the result of communist ideology and struggle tactics hijacking environmental science.

The alleged scientific consensus regarding climate change has transformed climate-change theory into dogma. Climate change is a crucial tenet of today’s environmentalism, one treated as sacrosanct and inviolable. The scientists, media, and environmental activists who accept this tenet work together to spread the belief in an imminent ecological disaster. This has become an important tool used by the environmental movement to frighten the public into accepting leftist political agendas, including tax hikes and takeovers by big government, all in order to “save them” from doom. Through the process of establishing and solidifying this dogma, the techniques of communist-style political struggle are all apparent — including deception, mobbing, public shaming, and open conflict.

b. ‘Consensus’ in Climate Science

In 1988, the UN’s IPCC was established to assess and synthesize the science related to climate change. One of its missions is to evaluate existing scientific research on climate change and release an authoritative report every several years. These reports are designed to provide a scientific basis for governments in their policy making. They are authored by hundreds of scientists and reviewed by thousands more. Hence, the reports’ conclusions are often described as being the consensus of thousands of the world’s top scientists.

In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stated that its goal was to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system. It began with the assertion that climate change was caused by humans and was dangerous. [34] Therefore, the UNFCCC must operate under the assumption that humans are the culprits behind dangerous climate change, as this is necessary for the organization’s existence and survival. This assumption has also restricted the focus and scope of the IPCC’s inquiry. [35]

Statements of Uncertainty Removed From IPCC Reports

Before the IPCC released its 1995 Second Assessment Report, world-renowned physicist Frederick Seitz obtained a copy. Seitz later discovered that the final report was not the same version that contributing scientists had approved. All statements expressing uncertainty about the effects of human activity on climate change had been deleted.

Seitz’s article in The Wall Street Journal stated, “In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.” [36]

The deleted statements included the following:

* “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”

* “No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.”

* “Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.” [37]

The IPCC claimed that all modifications were approved by the authors, but the changes reveal how the IPCC’s reporting was influenced by politics. The report mostly summarizes existing studies without adding original research. Because the existing research contains so many different views, achieving a consensus meant the IPCC simply got rid of the views that stood in the way.

In April 2000, a first draft of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report said, “There has been a discernible human influence on global climate.” The second draft in October said, “It is likely that increasing concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have contributed significantly to observed warming over the past 50 years.” In the final, official conclusion, the statement was even stronger: “Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

When the UN Environment Programme’s spokesman, Tim Higham, was asked about the scientific basis behind the change, he told New Scientist, “There was no new science, but the scientists wanted to present a clear and strong message to policymakers.” [38]

Put another way, the UNFCCC gave a homework assignment to the IPCC, making the answer they wanted clear. The IPCC then delivered what was required.

‘Disaster Consensus’ Overstated in IPCC Report

Paul Reiter, medical entomology professor at the Pasteur Institute in France, is a leading expert on malaria and other insect-borne diseases. He disagreed with the IPCC report and had to threaten legal action against the IPCC to get his name removed from the list of two thousand top scientists who were said to have endorsed it. He said that the IPCC “make[s] it seem that all the top scientists are agreed, but it’s not true.” [39]

In his testimony during a US Senate hearing on April 26, 2006, Reiter said: “A galling aspect of the debate is that this spurious ‘science’ is endorsed in the public forum by influential panels of ‘experts.’ I refer particularly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Every five years, this UN-based organization publishes a ‘consensus of the world’s top scientists’ on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science.” [40]

For example, environmentalists have been promoting the theory that insect-borne diseases such as malaria will wreak havoc as the climate warms. “Global warming will put millions more people at risk of malaria and dengue fever, according to a United Nations report that calls for an urgent review of the health dangers posed by climate change,” a Bloomberg article stated on November 27, 2007. [41]

But Reiter does not agree with this simple correlation, pointing out that malaria is not confined to tropical areas. Throughout the Russian Empire and Soviet Union in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, up to five million people died annually from the disease. [42] A 2011 study published in Biology Letters found that, contrary to the prevailing assumption, rising temperatures decrease a mosquitoes’ infectiousness and malaria transmission slows down. [43]

Another scientist who withdrew from the IPCC accused the organization of using so-called disaster consensus as part of its operational culture. Meteorologist Christopher Landsea, a former hurricane researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a lead author of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report, withdrew from the IPCC in January 2005. In an open letter, he stated, “I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by preconceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.” He urged the IPCC to confirm that the report would adhere to science rather than sensationalism. [44]

Landsea criticized the lead author of the IPCC report’s chapter on hurricane activity for ignoring the scientific studies that could not prove that increased hurricane activity was related to man-made global warming. Instead, the lead author of the report spoke at a high-profile press conference in which it was asserted that global warming was “likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity,” and gave several interviews before the report was published presenting the same view.

David Deming, a geologist and geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma, obtained the 150-year historical temperature data for North America by studying ice cores and wrote an article about his research, which was published in Science. After publication, Deming said “a major researcher in the area of climate change” sent him an email saying, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period,” according to Deming’s testimony at a US Senate hearing in 2006. The Medieval Warm Period refers to a period of unusually warm weather that began around AD 1000 and persisted until a cold period in the fourteenth century known as the “Little Ice Age.”

More than 780 scientists from 462 institutions in 40 countries had contributed to papers over the course of 20 years saying that the Medieval Warm Period existed, Deming testified. However, erasing this period from the historical curve of climate change strengthens the claim that any warming today is unprecedented. [45]

Though hundreds of scientific papers refute the IPCC’s alleged consensus, their assertions have been marginalized in the current academic and media environment.

c. Establishing Dogma in the Scientific Community

The hype generated by communist forces around climate change is intended not only to pave the way for a global government, but also to destroy research ethics in the scientific community.

Climatology is a young subject with only a few decades of history. Yet the hypotheses surrounding global warming have been prematurely taken as fact. The media has been keeping global warming in the headlines and covering up the inaccuracies in the underlying science. Governments pour funds into researching the global warming hypothesis while marginalizing other findings. The media and politicians label the prediction of catastrophic climate change as “scientifically proven” and spread it worldwide as unassailable doctrine. Thus, thinking on the matter has been largely unified among the general public, and this has planted convoluted notions of right and wrong in people’s minds.

If carried to its conclusion, the natural trajectory is the establishment of a global super-government — that is, communism — for the ostensible purpose of saving the earth and humankind from a fabricated or greatly exaggerated crisis. Destroying the old world by any means is a basic strategy of communism.

No matter the academic reputation of a scientist, once he or she publicly expresses doubts about the consensus dogma, he or she immediately faces tremendous pressure from peers and academic institutions, forcing withdrawal. Some people have even argued that global warming skeptics should be prosecuted or criminalized. Those who have lived in a communist totalitarian society have had similar experiences when questioning communist party dogma.

The late David Bellamy, a well-known British botanist and president of The Wildlife Trusts who wrote dozens of books and papers during his career, publicly stated that he did not believe in the consensus dogma of global warming. The Wildlife Trusts responded with a statement expressing dissatisfaction and ousted him several months later when his term expired. [46] Environmentalists who previously showed him respect began to cast aspersions on his mental capacity. [47]

The late William Gray, a renowned professor, was a pioneer of American hurricane research. After he criticized the consensus dogma about human-induced global warming, his research proposals were repeatedly rejected. [48]

In Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know, co-author Patrick J. Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and a climatologist at the University of Virginia, listed numerous examples of environmentalists suppressing scientific opinion in order to reach their alleged consensus. Because Michaels asserted that changes in the climate would not necessarily lead to disaster — and this stance was inconsistent with the consensus dogma — the governor of Virginia instructed him to stop speaking on global warming as a state climatologist. Michaels ultimately chose to resign. [49]

Washington state assistant climatologist Mark Albright was dismissed from his position following an incident involving misleading statements given by the mayor of Seattle, who had asserted that “the average snow pack in the [Cascade Mountains] has declined 50 percent since 1950.” Albright began sending his colleagues data that showed the snow pack in the Cascades had been growing, rather than declining, since the 1970s. The state climatologist at the time demanded that Albright begin submitting his emails for vetting before they were sent, and when Albright refused, he was stripped of his title. [50]

In communist countries, crude political interference in science is common. In Western countries, the politics of environmentalism is being used to interfere with academic freedom. Academic research that casts doubt about the consensus dogma is rarely seen in academic journals, a phenomenon that began in the 1990s. In the 1990 documentary The Greenhouse Conspiracy, Michaels said he once asked an editor why one of his papers had been rejected for publication, and was told that his work was subject to a higher evaluation standard than that of others. [51] According to the 1990 IPCC report, the understanding at the time was that the extent of global warming was equivalent to natural changes in climate. Therefore, although Michaels’s point of view was different from that of many others, it could not be regarded as heretical. However, the goal of establishing a false consensus had already been set, and everyone had to get on board.

In March 2008, scientists who doubted the consensus dogma on climate issues held a private academic event in New York. Many of these scientists said they had encountered various obstacles when trying to publish their research in academic journals. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, said that some of his colleagues dared not attend the meeting out of fear it might affect their employment. He believed that there was “very likely a silent majority of scientists in climatology, meteorology, and allied sciences who do not endorse what is said to be the ‘consensus’ position.” [52]

Climatologist Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, testified in a 2015 US Senate hearing that she had once received an email from a scientist employed at NASA who said, “I was at a small meeting of NASA-affiliated scientists and was told by our top manager that he was told by his NASA boss that we should not try to publish papers contrary to the current global warming claims, because he (the NASA boss) would then have a headache countering the ‘undesirable’ publicity.”

Curry further said in her testimony:

A climate scientist making a statement about uncertainty or degree of doubt in the climate debate is categorized as a denier or a “merchant of doubt,” whose motives are assumed to be ideological or motivated by funding from the fossil fuel industry. My own experience in publicly discussing concerns about how uncertainty is characterized by the IPCC has resulted in my being labeled as a ‘climate heretic’ that has turned against my colleagues. There is enormous pressure for climate scientists to conform to the so-called consensus. This pressure comes not only from politicians, but from federal funding agencies, universities and professional societies, and scientists themselves who are green activists and advocates. Reinforcing this consensus are strong monetary, reputational, and authority interests. [53]

In January 2017, Curry chose to retire early from her tenured position, writing that she “no longer [knew] what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science.” In a 2017 interview, Curry said: “Once you understand the scientific uncertainties, the present policy path that we’re on doesn’t make a lot of sense. … We need to open up policy dialogue to a bigger solution space. So I’m just looking to open up the dialogue and to provoke people into thinking.” [54]

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, said Curry’s experience shows that “having a tenured position isn’t a guarantee of academic freedom.” [55] Pielke was previously a fellow at his university’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences. Although he agreed with most of the IPCC “consensus” conclusions, he was subjected to similar pressures because he pointed out that the data do not support the idea that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and droughts had increased due to greenhouse gas emissions. He eventually moved to the University of Colorado’s Sports Governance Center. [56]

It is no wonder that Joanne Simpson, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an award-winning NASA atmospheric scientist, did not declare her skepticism of the “consensus” until after retirement. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly,” she said. “As a scientist I remain skeptical. … The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” [57]

d. Propaganda and Intimidation

In the book The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists, Roy Spencer, a climatologist and former NASA satellite expert, listed fifteen propaganda techniques used by environmentalists, including causing panic, appealing to authority, encouraging a herd mentality, resorting to personal attacks, stereotyping, sensationalizing, and falsifying records. [58]

In the 2016 article “A Climate of Censorship,” British journalist Brendan O’Neill wrote about the derisive rhetoric faced by people in many countries if they dared to doubt the prevailing theory of climate change. For example, a British diplomat said in a public speech that those who doubt climate change should be treated by the media no differently than terrorists, and they should not be given a platform to speak. The former executive director of a large environmental group warned that the media should think twice before broadcasting the views of climate-change skeptics because “allowing such misinformation to spread would cause harm.” [59]

Some have even tried to use legal force to suspend freedom of speech in order to extinguish the voices of opponents of the climate-warming hypothesis. At a summit attended by top policymakers in Australia, including the prime minister, a proposal was made to deprive violators of their citizenship. One idea was to re-examine Australian citizens and reissue citizenship only to those who have verified they are “environment-climate friendly.” [60] In 2015, twenty academics sent a letter to the US president and the attorney general requesting that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act be used to prosecute “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change,” adding that these organizations’ “misdeeds” must be “stopped as soon as possible.” [61]

Those skeptical of the theory of climate change have been labeled “deniers.” This includes groups and individuals ranging from those who acknowledge climate warming but feel we are able to cope with it, to those who completely deny warming as a scientific phenomenon. The potency of the “denier” label is considerable. Charles Jones, a retired English professor at the University of Edinburgh, said that the term is designed to place skeptics on the same level of moral depravity as Holocaust deniers. According to O’Neill, some people even claim that skeptics of climate change theory are accomplices in a coming eco-Holocaust and may face Nuremberg-style trials in the future. He quoted a green columnist as saying: “I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine, and disease in decades ahead. I put [their climate-change denial] in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial — except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes.”

O’Neill, in his article, commented: “It is usually only in authoritarian states that thoughts or words are equated with crimes, where dictators talk about ‘thought crimes’ and their threat to the fabric of society. … It’s a short step from demonising a group of people, and describing their arguments as toxic and dangerous, to demanding more and harsher censorship.” [62] This judgment is correct. Restricting the right to think is one of the ways communism divorces people from a concept of good and evil that is based on universal values.

3. Communist Environmentalism

In the past decades, with communist forces in retreat and the political and economic catastrophes of communist regimes exposed, communism has latched onto environmentalism to further its agenda.

a. Blaming Capitalism

Environmentalism treats capitalism as the enemy, so it shares a common foe with communism. When communism suffered setbacks in the workers’ movements in developed Western countries, it shifted gears and hijacked the environmental cause. Normal activism for environmental protection morphed into activism aimed at vanquishing capitalism.

Communist doctrine originally promoted a utopia, a “heaven on earth,” to incite revolt and overthrow the existing social system. Under the cover of environmentalism, communism adopted a similar approach, but the vision it described is the exact opposite: In place of the wonderful workers’ utopia is instead a frightening dystopia, a vision of a “hell on earth.” According to this scenario, in just decades, humanity’s very survival will be at risk due to global warming, landslides, tsunamis, droughts, floods, and heatwaves. The target recruits of this movement are not the poor, but rather the wealthy, who are expected to abandon their current lifestyles.

By the original doctrines of communism, after acquiring power, the first step is to strip the affluent of their wealth with the supposed purpose of redistributing it to the poor. In reality, the poor remain poor while all the wealth ends up in the hands of the corrupt officialdom. The second step entails the establishment of a state-controlled economy and the abolition of private property. This destroys the national economy and brings everyone hardship.

The same equation plays out at the international level. Wealthy countries are expected to give aid to poorer countries — that is, to redistribute wealth on a global scale. In reality, poor countries remain poor, as the money that was intended for their development usually ends up in the hands of the corrupt officials of those countries. Meanwhile, the government’s responsibility is expanded and market mechanisms are replaced with command economics, using all sorts of heavy-handed environmental policies to obstruct the normal functioning of capitalism, forcing businesses to close or relocate overseas, thus crippling the country’s economy. Through these market-oriented methods, the environmental movement seeks to cripple capitalism. Environmental regulations have become important tools for undermining capitalist economies, and are becoming known for eliminating more jobs than they create.

The focus of modern environmentalism is to spread fear of future disasters and to hold the public and governments hostage to this fear. But among those who actively promote this doomsday panic, many live luxurious lifestyles, using plenty of energy and leaving a large carbon footprint. Clearly, they don’t think disaster is imminent.

To make use of a crisis mentality, especially using the “common enemy” of global warming to unite different forces to oppose capitalism, it has become imperative for environmentalists to emphasize and exaggerate the nature of the alleged crisis. The simplest way is to stoke mass fear around using the cheapest sources of energy, that is, fossil fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — and also nuclear energy. Environmentalists succeeded in making people fearful of nuclear energy decades ago, and now, they are trying to make people afraid of using fossil fuels by claiming that fossil fuels lead to catastrophic global warming.

However, in reality, climate science hasn’t concluded that global warming is caused by human activity, or that global warming will definitely lead to disaster. If natural causes are behind climate change, then all these government policies only serve to impede economic development while often providing only marginal benefits.

For example, officials raise the bar of emission standards for cars with the justification that it reduces the carbon footprint. However, this naturally leads to higher manufacturing costs and less profit, followed by greater unemployment and outsourcing industry to developing countries where costs are lower. Moreover, increasing the fuel efficiency of all cars from 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016 models to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 would at most cut the magnitude of global warming by 0.02 degrees Celsius by 2100. [63] This would do virtually nothing to help reduce global warming. Various restrictions of dubious effectiveness have cost millions of workers their jobs and have dealt a heavy blow to manufacturing industries, research faculties, energy innovations, and international business competitiveness in Western countries.

Proponents of environmental protection enthusiastically promote green energy, especially the solar and wind power industries. Unfortunately, the pollution that comes with the generation of green energy is either underestimated or simply hidden. During solar panel production, the deadly poison silicon tetrachloride is created as a byproduct, causing its own environmental problem. A report by The Washington Post quotes Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei University of Technology, as saying: “The land where you dump or bury it [silicon tetrachloride] will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place. … It is like dynamite — it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it.” [64] The production of solar panels typically also consumes enormous amounts of conventional energy, including coal and petroleum.

According to the Paris climate agreement, by 2025, developed countries must collectively mobilize $100 billion each year to help developing countries reduce emissions and “adapt to climate change.” If the United States hadn’t withdrawn from the agreement, it would have been required to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 to between 26 and 28 percent below its 2005 levels. This would have meant that every year, the United States would cut 1.6 billion tons of emissions. As for China, the world’s biggest polluter, the accord allows it to continue to increase its carbon emissions until 2030. [65]

In a statement formally announcing the withdrawal from the Accord, President Donald Trump said compliance would have cost 2.7 million American jobs by 2025, citing a study by the National Economic Research Associates.

The president said the study also predicted that compliance would cut production in the following US sectors by 2040: paper, which would be down by 12 percent; cement, by 23 percent; iron and steel, by 38 percent; coal, by 86 percent; and natural gas, by 31 percent.

“The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that,” Trump said. “In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from … America’s expected reductions in the year 2030 — after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes. [66]

With the rise of the environmental movement, communist countries caught a break in their struggle against the West. Unreasonable regulations and agreements choke industries, economies, and technological development in Western capitalist countries. This has hampered America in its role as the leading superpower and bastion of freedom against communism.

We do not deny that the environment needs protecting. However, the goal of environmental protection should be balanced with the needs of humankind. Environmental protection for its own sake is excessive and forsakes humanity while being co-opted by communism. Today’s environmentalism doesn’t care about balance and has become an extremist ideology. Doubtlessly, many environmentalists harbor good intentions. But in their quest to mobilize and concentrate the resources of the state for the sake of their cause, they are aligning themselves with communism.

b. The Religionization of Environmentalism

Michael Crichton, the author of Jurassic Park, once said that environmentalism is one of the most powerful religions in the Western world today. He said it possesses the typical characteristics of a religion: “There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature; there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge; and as a result of our actions, there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.”

Crichton believed that the tenets underlying environmentalism are based on blind faith over facts. “Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or [be] saved; whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom; whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.” [67]

This view has been recognized by a number of scholars. William Cronon, an influential environmental historian in the United States, believes that environmentalism is a religion because it proposes a complex set of moral requirements with which to judge human behavior. [68] Freeman Dyson, the renowned scientist and quantum mechanist, said in an article in the June 12, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books that environmentalism is “a worldwide secular religion” that has “replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.” The religion of environmentalism holds that “despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.” The ethics of this new religion “are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.” [69]

Many environmentalists do not shy away from this subject. A former head of the IPCC who resigned following a sexual harassment scandal intimated in his resignation letter that environmentalism was his religion. [70]

As environmentalism has become more ideological and religious in nature, it also has become increasingly intolerant of different views. Former Czech Republic President Václav Klaus, an economist, believes that the environmental movement is now more driven by ideology than true science, becoming a quasi-religion aimed at destroying existing society. This new religion, like communism, describes a wonderful picture of utopia, one reached by using human wisdom to plan the natural environment and rescue the world. This “salvation” is based on opposition to the existing civilization.

Klaus, who wrote the 2008 book Blue Planet in Green Shackles, said in a speech, “If we take the reasoning of the environmentalists seriously, we find that theirs is an anti-human ideology.” He agreed with biologist Ivan Brezina that environmentalism is not a rational, scientific answer to ecological crises, but rather boils down to an overall denial of civilization. [71]

In addition to hijacking environmentalism as a political movement, communist influences have given environmentalism characteristics of an anti-humanity cult.

Canadian political critic Mark Steyn says that according to the environmentalists, “we are the pollution, and sterilization is the solution.” In their view, “the best way to bequeath a more sustainable environment to our children is not to have any.” He gave the example of a British woman who had an abortion and underwent sterilization because she believed having children was bad for the environment. [72]

This thinking places the natural environment as the supreme priority, far beyond the sacred position of human beings, by means of even controlling human fertility and depriving people of their very right to exist. This view, which is in essence an anti-humanist ideology, is no different from that of communism. It also goes hand in hand with the Left’s attack on the family and traditional gender roles.

Population control has become a method of choice for dealing with environmental degradation, with environmentalist activists and other socialists promoting abortion and anti-natalist policies, and even praising the brutal one-child policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Religious fervor, enforced dogma, anti-capitalist action, and debasing humanity before the environment will not lead to a healthier natural environment, much less a fairer or more just human society. One need only look at the disasters of communist rule over the past century to predict the end result should radical environmentalism succeed in its aims.

c. Political Infiltration: Building a World Government

It is difficult to politically impose communism in the democratic Western world, which values individual rights, private ownership, rule of law, and free markets. The radical environmental movement requires the power of the government to compel people to part with their assets and their lives of comfort and convenience.

From the perspective of radical environmentalists, one nation’s government is nowhere near enough to tackle the myriad environmental crises facing the planet. Using the justification of an alleged consensus on issues like man-made climate change, they call for an empowered United Nations or the establishment of some other global authority.

If the movement is unable to take off, the vision of an imminent ecological crisis can be played up further, whipping up the panic and fear necessary to influence the public and governments to accept the forceful implementation of environmental policies, and in so doing, achieve the goal of destroying capitalism and imposing communism.

Traditionally, communist states reallocated wealth through revolution. Over the years, however, this approach became increasingly difficult. Therefore, environmentalists adopted indirect strategies, forcing people to quietly give up their freedom and property in the name of preventing environmental tragedy.

A campaign organizer for the group Friends of the Earth stated at a UN conference, “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.” [73] A leading green thinker at the University of Westminster told a reporter that carbon rationing “has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not” and that “democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it.”

In the “battle” against climate change, the United Kingdom was the first to float the concept of individual carbon-ration coupons. One British scientist regarded this as “the introduction of a second currency with everyone having the same allowance — wealth redistribution by having to buy carbon credits from someone less well off.”

Those who have lived in the Soviet Union or communist China can easily see this kind of carbon rationing is used as another method for constructing a totalitarian system. In China, food coupons were once used for buying essentials such as cooking oil, grain, and fabric. Through food rationing, wealth was redistributed, while the central government was given supreme control over people’s assets and freedom.

Environmentalists also use their ideology to curtail individual freedom. In Western countries, creating visions of an impending environmental catastrophe became a convenient means of persuading people to give up their rights. The Australia-based Carbon Sense Coalition proposed a list of new laws that would force people to modify their behavior in the name of solving global warming:

* Ban open fires and pot bellied stoves

* Ban incandescent light bulbs …

* Ban bottled water

* Ban private cars from some areas

* Ban plasma TVs

* Ban new airports

* Ban extensions to existing airports

* Ban “standby mode” on appliances

* Ban coal fired power generation

* Ban electric hot water systems

* Ban vacationing by car

* Ban three day weekends

* Tax babies

* Tax big cars …

* Tax supermarket parking areas

* Tax rubbish

* Tax second homes

* Tax second cars

* Tax holiday plane flights

* Tax electricity to subsidise solar [power]

* Tax showrooms for big cars

* Eco-tax cars entering cities

* Require permits to drive your car beyond your city limits

* Limit choices in appliances

* Issue carbon credits to every person

* Dictate fuel efficiency standards

* Investigate how to reduce production of methane by Norway’s Moose …

* Remove white lines on roads to make motorists drive more carefully … [74]

Environmentalism is also used to expand the size and authority of government. Various Western countries not only have huge environmental protection agencies, but also use the environment as an excuse to establish new government agencies and expand the authority of existing agencies. All agencies have the bureaucratic tendency for self-preservation and expansion, and environmental agencies are no exception. They abuse the power in their hands to spread the narrative of environmental catastrophe to the general public in order to obtain more funding and to secure their positions within the government structure. Of course, it is taxpayers who foot the bill.

The city of San Francisco established a position for a climate chief with an annual salary of $160,000. One of the poorest boroughs in London, Tower Hamlets, at one point had fifty-eight official positions related to climate change. [75] The logic is the same as that used by universities and companies for hiring “diversity” officers.

Environmentalism is used to suggest that democracy is outdated and to push for the establishment of a multinational or even a global totalitarian government. Environmentalists claim that democracies cannot handle the coming environmental crisis. Instead, to overcome the challenges ahead, we must adopt totalitarian or authoritarian forms of government, or at least some aspects thereof. [76]

Author Janet Biehl summarized this mindset as “the ecological crisis is resolvable only through totalitarian means” and “an ‘ecodictatorship’ is needed.” [77] It asserts that no free society would do what the green agenda requires.

Paul R. Ehrlich, one of the founders of environmentalism, wrote in the book How to Be a Survivor: A Plan to Save Spaceship Earth:

1. Population control must be introduced to both overdeveloped countries as well as underdeveloped countries;

2. The overdeveloped countries must be de-developed;

3. The underdeveloped countries must be semi-developed;

4. Procedures must be established to monitor and regulate the world system in a continuous effort to maintain an optimum balance between the population, resources, and the environment. [78]

In practice, except for a global totalitarian government, no government or organization could possibly accumulate this much authority. Ultimately, the programs proposed by environmentalists glorify communist totalitarianism and suggest that the communist system is superior.

Reuters estimated in a 2007 report that because of the one-child policy implemented in the 1980s, the CCP had been able to cap China’s population at 1.3 billion, 300 million less than the projected 1.6 billion. The author of the report noted that the CCP’s policy had the side effect of contributing to a reduction of global carbon emissions, completely ignoring the brutality with which the totalitarian policy was enforced — including forced abortions and sterilizations, and economic persecution — as well as the trauma and suffering it brought to the millions of Chinese women and their families whose fundamental rights and privacy the Party trampled underfoot. [79]

One of the biggest issues affecting the environment is pollution. Despite erasing hundreds of millions of people from China’s future generations, the CCP’s growth-intensive economic model consumes energy at a prodigious rate, making the People’s Republic of China the world’s biggest polluter, with the worst big-city air pollution and severe water pollution. The majority of rivers in mainland China are no longer safe to drink; contaminated air from China blows across the sea to Korea and Japan, even crossing the Pacific Ocean to reach the American West Coast.

Logically, genuine environmentalists should make communist China the main target of their criticisms, but curiously, many praise the CCP, even viewing it as the hope for environmental protection. The Communist Party USA news website People’s World has reported extensively on environmental news. The main theme of its reports is the claim that the Trump administration’s environmental policies will destroy the country and even the world, while the CCP is the force for its salvation. [80]

Klaus wrote in his book: “Environmentalism is a movement that intends to radically change the world regardless of the consequences (at the cost of human lives and severe restrictions on individual freedom). It intends to change humankind, human behavior, the structure of society, the system of values — simply everything!” [81]

Klaus believes the environmentalists’ attitude toward nature is analogous to the Marxist approach to economics: “The aim in both cases is to replace the free, spontaneous evolution of the world (and humankind) by the would-be optimal, central, or — using today’s fashionable adjective — global planning of world development. Much as in the case of communism, this approach is utopian and would lead to results completely different from the intended ones. Like other utopias, this one can never materialize, and efforts to make it materialize can only be carried out through restrictions of freedom, through the dictates of a small, elitist minority over the overwhelming majority.” [82]

4. Finding a True Solution to the Environmental Crisis

Humanity and the beautiful and abundant earth were created by the divine. It is an environment in which human beings can live, prosper, and multiply. People have a right to use the resources of nature, and at the same time, have an obligation to cherish natural resources and care for the environment. For thousands of years, human beings have heeded the warnings left by the divine in ancient times and have lived in harmony with nature.

The emergence of environmental problems is ultimately the result of human moral corruption. In modern times, this moral decay has been further amplified by the power of science and technology. The polluted natural environment is but an external manifestation of humanity’s inner moral pollution. To purify the environment, one must start by purifying the heart.

The rise of environmental awareness stems from the human instinct of self-preservation. While this is natural and understandable, it has also become a loophole exploited by the communist specter. Communism has latched on to environmentalism to create large-scale panic, advocate a warped set of values, deprive people of their freedom, attempt to expand government, and even impose a world government. Embracing this alternative form of communism in a bid to save the environment threatens to enslave humanity and facilitate its destruction.

A compulsory political program is not the answer to the environmental problems we face, nor is reliance on modern technology a way out. To resolve the crisis, we must gain a deeper understanding of the universe and nature, as well as the relationship between humans and nature, while maintaining an upright moral state. Humanity must restore its traditions, improve morality, and find its way back to the path set by the divine. In doing so, people will naturally receive divine wisdom and blessings, and the beautiful natural world, full of life, will be restored.

References

1. Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒, Chunqiu fan lu, di shisi 春秋繁露 [Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals], fu zhi xiang 服制象 [“Images for the Regulation of Dress”], 14, https://ctext.org/chun-qiu-fan-lu/fu-zhi-xiang/zh. The line in question appears both as “天之生物也，以养人” and “天地之生萬物也以養人.” [In Chinese]

2. Confucius, The Universal Order or Conduct of Life, a Confucian Catechism (Being a Translation of One of the Four Confucian Books, Hitherto Known as the Doctrine of the Mean), (Shanghai: Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury Limited, 1906), 68, https://bit.ly/2T74Dsb.

3. Yi Zhou shu 逸周書 [Lost Book of Zhou], “Da Jujie” 大聚解, https://ctext.org/lost-book-of-zhou/da-ju/zh. [In Chinese]

4. Zengzi, as quoted in Li Ji 禮記 [The Classic of Rights], “Zhai Yi” 祭儀，https://ctext.org/text.pl?node=61379&if=gb&show=parallel. [In Chinese]

5. Wes Vernon, “The Marxist Roots of the Global Warming Scare,” Renew America, June 16, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20100724052619/http://www.renewamerica.com:80/columns/vernon/080616.

6. Friedrich Engels, “Notes and Fragments,” in Dialectics of Nature, trans. Clemens Dutt (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1883), 295–311, accessed via Marxists Internet Archive on April 30, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch07g.htm.

7. Brian Sussman, Eco-Tyranny: How the Left’s Green Agenda Will Dismantle America (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2012), 8–9.

8. Karl Marx, as quoted in Sussman, Eco-Tyranny, 10.

9. Ibid., 11–15.

10. Maurice Strong, as quoted in Grace Baumgarten, Cannot Be Silenced (Grand Rapids, MI: WestBow Press, 2016).

11. Sussman, Eco-Tyranny, 35.

12. Natalie Grant Wraga, as quoted in Vernon, “The Marxist Roots.”

13. John Bellamy Foster, “Marx’s Ecology in Historical Perspective,” International Socialism Journal 96 (Winter 2002), http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj96/foster.htm.

14. Ray Lankester, as quoted in Lewis S. Feuer, “The Friendship of Edwin Ray Lankester and Karl Marx: The Last Episode in Marx’s Intellectual Evolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 4: 633–648.

15. James O’Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York: The Guilford Press, 1997).

16. Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy, “The First Ecosocialist Manifesto,” September 2001, accessed April 30, 2020, http://green.left.sweb.cz/frame/Manifesto.html.

17. Bob Brown and Peter Singer, The Greens (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 1996), 55.

18. Mikhail Gorbachev, “We Have a Real Emergency,” The New York Times, December 9, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/opinion/10iht-edgorbachev.html.

19. “Jack Mundey,” Sydney’s Aldermen, accessed April 30, 2020, http://www.sydneyaldermen.com.au/alderman/jack-mundey.

20. Saul Alinsky, “Tactics,” in Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1971).

21. Zombie, “Climate Movement Drops Mask, Admits Communist Agenda,” PJ Media, September 23, 2014, https://pjmedia.com/zombie/2014/9/23/climate-movement-drops-mask-admits-communist-agenda.

22. Dan Barry and Al Baker, “For ‘Eco-Terrorism’ Group, a Hidden Structure and Public Messages,” The New York Times, January 8, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/08/nyregion/for-eco-terrorism-group-a-hidden-structure-and-public-messages.html.

23. Noel Moand, “A Spark That Ignited a Flame: The Evolution of the Earth Liberation Front,” in Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth, eds. Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella, II (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 47.

24. Paul Watson, as quoted in Leslie Spencer, Jan Bollwerk, and Richard C. Morais, “The Not So Peaceful World of Greenpeace,” Forbes, November 1991, accessed via the Heartland Institute, https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/the_not_so_peaceful_world_of_greenpeace.pdf.

25. Ted Thornhill, “Humans Are NOT to Blame for Global Warming, Says Greenpeace Co-founder, as He Insists There Is ‘No Scientific Proof’ Climate Change Is Manmade,” Daily Mail, February 27, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2569215/Humans-not-blame-global-warming-says-Greenpeace-founder-Patrick-Moore.html#ixzz2vgo2btWJ.

26. John Vidal, “Not Guilty: The Greenpeace Activists Who Used Climate Change as a Legal Defence,” The Guardian, Sept 10, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/11/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp.

27. Richard Lindzen, “The Climate Science Isn’t Settled,” The Wall Street Journal, last updated November 30, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.

28. Steven E. Koonin, “Climate Science Is Not Settled,” The Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565.

29. Steven E. Koonin, “A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science,” The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-red-team-exercise-would-strengthen-climate-science-1492728579.

30. Michael Griffin, “NASA Chief Questions Urgency of Global Warming,” interview by Steve Inskeep, National Public Radio, May 31, 2007, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10571499.

31. Alicia Chang, “NASA Chief Regrets Remarks on Global Warming,” NBC News, June 5, 2007, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19058588/ns/us_news-environment/t/nasa-chief-regrets-remarks-global-warming.

32. Michael Griffin, as quoted in Rebecca Wright, Sandra Johnson, and Steven J. Dick, eds., NASA at 50: Interviews With NASA’s Senior Leadership (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2009), 18, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/716218main_nasa_at_50-ebook.pdf.

33. Lennart Bengtsson, as quoted in “Lennart Bengtsson Resigns: GWPF Voices Shock and Concern at the Extent of Intolerance Within the Climate Science Community,” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, May 5, 2014, http://www.thegwpf.org/lennart-bengtsson-resigns-gwpf-voices-shock-and-concern-at-the-extent-of-intolerance-within-the-climate-science-community.

34. US Congress, House, Committee on Science, Space and Technology of the United States House of Representatives, Hearing on Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications and the Scientific Method, 115th Cong., 1st sess., March 29, 2017, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20170329/105796/HHRG-115-SY00-Wstate-CurryJ-20170329.pdf.

35. Ibid.

36. Frederick Seitz, “Major Deception on Global Warming,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB834512411338954000.

37. Ibid.

38. Tim Higham, as quoted in Larry Bell, “The New York Times’ Global Warming Hysteria Ignores 17 Years of Flat Global Temperatures,” Forbes, August 21, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/08/21/the-new-york-times-global-warming-hysteria-ignores-17-years-of-flat-global-temperatures.

39. Paul Reiter, as quoted in Christopher C. Horner, Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2008), 319.

40. US Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Projected and Past Effects of Climate Change: A Focus on Marine and Terrestrial Systems, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., April 26, 2006.

41. Bloomberg, as quoted in James Taylor, “Mosquitoes Ignore Global Warming Predictions,” Forbes, October 5, 2011, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/10/05/mosquitoes-ignore-global-warming-predictions/#20938da66c1b.

42. Leonard J. Bruce-Chwatt, “Malaria Research and Eradication in the USSR,” World Health Organization Bulletin, 1959, accessed via National Institutes of Health on April 30, 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2537933/pdf/bullwho00505-0074.pdf.

43. Zoë Corbyn, “Global Warming Wilts Malaria,” Nature, December 21, 2011, https://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-wilts-malaria-1.9695.

44. Christopher Landsea, as quoted in James Taylor, “Climate Scientist Quits IPCC, Blasts Politicized ‘Preconceived Agendas,’” The Heartland Institute, April 1, 2005, https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/climate-scientist-quits-ipcc-blasts-politicized-preconceived-agendas?source=policybot.

45. US Congress, Senate, Committee on Environment and Public Works, Full Committee Hearing on Climate Change and the Media, 109th Cong., 2nd sess., December 6, 2006, https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=BFE4D91D-802A-23AD-4306-B4121BF7ECED.

46. Jonathan Leake, “Wildlife Groups Axe Bellamy as Global Warming ‘Heretic,’” Sunday Times Online, May 15, 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20080906161240/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article522744.ece.

47. Horner, Red Hot Lies, 78–79.

48. Ibid., 73–74.

49. Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling Jr., Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2009), x–xiii.

50. James Taylor, “Associate State Climatologist Fired for Exposing Warming Myths,” The Heartland Institute, June 1, 2007, https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/associate-state-climatologist-fired-for-exposing-warming-myths.

51. Hilary Lawson, dir., The Greenhouse Conspiracy (UK: Channel 4 Television, 1990), posted on YouTube by ZilogBob on February 16, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvpwAwvDxUU.

52. Marc Morano, “Climate Skeptics Reveal ‘Horror Stories’ of Scientific Suppression,” US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, March 6, 2008, https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases-all?ID=865dbe39-802a-23ad-4949-ee9098538277.

53. US Congress, Senate, Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Climate Change,” 114th Cong., 2nd sess., December 8, 2015, https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/curry-senate-testimony-2015.pdf.

54. Scott Waldman, “Judith Curry Retires, Citing ‘Craziness’ of Climate Science,” E&E News, January 4, 2017, https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060047798.

55. Roger Pielke Jr., as quoted in Waldman, “Judith Curry Retires.”

56. Rich Lowry, “A Shameful Climate Witch Hunt,” National Review, February 27, 2015, https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/02/shameful-climate-witch-hunt-rich-lowry/.

57. US Congress, Senate, Committee on Environment and Public Works, US Senate Minority Report: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims. Scientists Continue to Debunk ‘Consensus’ in 2008, S. Rep., December 11, 2008, https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8/3/83947f5d-d84a-4a84-ad5d-6e2d71db52d9/01AFD79733D77F24A71FEF9DAFCCB056.senateminorityreport2.pdf.

58. Roy Spencer, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), 31.

59. Brendan O’Neill, “A Climate of Censorship,” The Guardian, November 22, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/22/aclimateofcensorship.

60. Horner, Red Hot Lies, 107.

61. Hans von Spakovsky and Nicolas Loris, “The Climate Change Inquisition: An Abuse of Power That Offends the First Amendment and Threatens Informed Debate,” The Heritage Foundation, October 24, 2016, https://www.heritage.org/report/the-climate-change-inquisition-abuse-power-offends-the-first-amendment-and-threatens.

62. O’Neill, “A Climate of Censorship.”

63. John Fund, “Rollback Obama’s CAFE Power Grab, Give Car Consumers Freedom,” National Review, May 23, 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fuel-standards-cafe-epa-rolls-back.

64. Ren Bingyan, as quoted in Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html?referrer=emailarticle&noredirect=on.

65. “The Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), December 2015, issue brief: 15-11-Y, https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/paris-climate-agreement-IB.pdf.

66. US President Donald J. Trump, “Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord,” The White House, June 1, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord.

67. Michael Crichton, “Environmentalism Is a Religion: Remarks to the Commonwealth Club,” Hawaii Free Press, September 15, 2003, http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx.

68. Robert H. Nelson, “New Religion of Environmentalism,” Independent Institute, April 22, 2010, http://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=5081.

69. Freeman Dyson, “The Question of Global Warming,” The New York Review of Books, June 2008, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/06/12/the-question-of-global-warming.

70. Damian Carrington, “IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri Resigns,” The Guardian, February 24, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/24/ipcc-chair-rajendra-pachauri-resigns.

71. Václav Klaus, “An Anti-Human Ideology,” Financial Post, October 20, 2010, https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/vaclav-klaus-an-anti-human-ideology.

72. Mark Steyn, “Children? Not If You Love the Planet,” The Orange County Register, December 14, 2007, https://www.ocregister.com/2007/12/14/mark-steyn-children-not-if-you-love-the-planet.

73. Emma Brindal, as quoted in Horner, Red Hot Lies, 214.

74. Ibid., 211–215.

75. Ibid., 227.

76. David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).

77. Janet Biehl, as quoted in Horner, Red Hot Lies, 219–220.

78. Paul Ehrlich, as quoted in Václav Klaus, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2008), 14.

79. Alister Doyle, “China Says One-Child Policy Helps Protect Climate,” Reuters, August 30, 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/environment-climate-population-dc-idUSKUA07724020070831.

80. John Bachtell, “China Builds an ‘Ecological Civilization’ While the World Burns,” People’s World, August 21, 2018, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/china-builds-an-ecological-civilization-while-the-world-burns.

81. Klaus, Blue Planet, 4.

82. Ibid., 7–8.