welcome to the party

Hawks, hippies and the holy unite to turn America green
Between them, the Christian and neocon right, the enviro-left, and the mullahs of the Middle East may finally achieve what a young Thatcherite once dreamt of. The geo-neocon-green movement may have arrived. Just in time.

Let me start with this quote, from the end of the article, because it is the only time, other than the title, that Andrew Sullivan mentions the left. I guess that is the sum total of the debt owed by the right to left on this issue. A single word. Andrew Sullivan can waltz in, like Andrew Jackson, and claim the land owned by the native environmentalists without a speck of cognitive dissonance. Ole.

Welcome to the party, asshole.

A couple of decades ago a young Tory wannabe policy analyst (Andrew Sullivan) wrote a pamphlet called Greening the Tories. It was an attempt to argue that being in favour of environmental protection and energy conservation was not necessarily a liberal or statist idea.

How did a few decades sucking up to Da Man work out?

Take the hawks first. Some key advocates for the war against Saddam Hussein — among them Frank Gaffney, the neocon fire-breather, and James Woolsey, a former CIA chief — have come out as born-again conservationists, dedicated to promoting green technologies that can liberate the US from near-complete reliance on oil imports.

Haha! Like what?

These groups have now allied with more traditional environmental lobbies to form an organisation called Set America Free. What do they propose? There are competing ideas. Among them: tax credits for researching new forms of energy; more government research into alternatives to oil; more nuclear power; more exploitation of domestic oil and coal reserves; higher taxes on petrol; encouragement of hybrid car technology.

Oh – I see – more of the same, plus conservation. Given peak oil, conservation is the only trick in the bag, whether you are left, right, or (zut alors!) French. Excellent – stating the obvious, a party trick to impress the rubes.

Mankind, they argue, has a duty to be a good steward of God’s world. And that means energy conservation. “The environment is a values issue,” the Rev Ted Haggard, president of the 30m-member National Association of Evangelicals, recently told The Washington Post. “There are significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner issue for the Christian right.”

Ah, the Christians. The Christian right. It is old news that there is significant environmental thought amongst almost every political faction on earth, excluding bankers and CEO’s, and of course, polticians, owned by the former.

And the Christians had as much effect saving the environment as the Sierra Club, which is to say, none.

But trot out the Christians, Andrew Sullivan – cuz they are aligned with you on this topic, if not gay marriage.

Does this movement have a future? That’s hard to tell. John Kerry made energy independence a key plank of his presidential campaign — and, of course, he lost.

Of course?!!?

Kerry lost because Ohio and Florida were hacked. And I don’t follow the logic – didn’t John Kerry suggest the exact same thing that one Andrew Sullivan just spent a column of words supporting?

The geo-green movement is born of necessity and desperation, not a benign attempt to save the world. Making it safe for the hummer set to conserve. A joke.

Just in time.