Thousands of years of practice, and the human race still hasn't found a way to influence the weather with dancing, primitive chants, and sacrifices to the Angry Sky Gods. There was a big "People's Climate March" in New York City on Sunday, and it got impressive turnout... but the Earth stubbornly insisted on continuing its 19-year streak of not having any climate change, and the Antarctic ice cap is still growing to record-breaking levels, just the way these people said it wouldn't.
If you needed any further proof "climate change" is a religious cult that uses the bare trappings of science to seem respectable, watching the People's Climate March should have settled the matter for you. The funniest bit watch watching the crowd clap like baby seals when carbon-blasting celebrities like Leonardo diCaprio - who has been known to fly around the world on a private jet to race the international date line and make New Year's Eve last for an entire day - descend from the heavens to address them. Nothing says "gullible fool" quite like a throng of people who claim to be concerned about greenhouse gas worshiping celebrity high priests who have a bigger carbon footprint bigger than most of the crowd put together.
Actually, the mounting evidence that carbon emissions might not play all that great of a role in "climate change" is one of the three great crises facing the cult at the moment, so maybe some of them are happy to applaud St. Leo of the Endless Par-tay because they know all that "greenhouse gas" stuff is bunkum - a fairy tale designed to bring anti-capitalists together, by portraying industry and consumerism as Ultimate Evils that are killing the planet. (The other two big crises are the failure of those vaunted global-warming models to accurately predict much of what's actually happening in global climate at the moment, and the refusal of developing nations to sacrifice their development at the altar of radical environmentalism. The former is addressed mostly by using thug tactics to silence skeptics, especially former paid-up members of the global-warming "consensus" who are having second thoughts. The latter is handled by ignoring it, and occasionally mumbling something about how the hated Great Satan of America must "lead the way," by beating itself into a Third World economy to demonstrate its commitment against climate change.)
But some of the people in this crowd surely do believe in the evils of greenhouse gas. They give their carbon-bigfooted leaders a pass because... how to put this delicately?... they like being ruled by titans, and they think the titans deserve special privileges. This is one of the core beliefs of every leftist - they view themselves as superior people whose leaders are demigods, and in their vision of "meritocracy," good intentions, correct political allegiance, and popularity should bring rewards. The people working in New York's financial district didn't "earn" their wealth, but Leo? He can show you the ticket sales to back up his millions, and he cares so very much about the Earth, so he belongs in the sky.
What holds the Church of Global Warming together, in these years of failing "science," is hatred. These people are defined by what they hate, and a big part of what they hate is capitalism. The mainstream media labored mightily to avoid reporting it, but the People's Climate March was festooned with anti-capitalist banners and other symbols of left-wing radicalism. It was an ugly crowd, united more than anything else by its conviction that wise political leaders need total power to save the fools in flyover country from themselves. The Blaze, Twitchy, and Climate Depot have galleries of the photos your left-leaning Big Media - the same people who scoured Tea Party rallies for the tiniest sign of racism or radicalism, and were happy to invent what they wanted when they couldn't find it - decided you didn't need to see:
Also present for the festivities, despite having science-free agendas, were Ferguson obsessives chanting "F**k the police!", militant vegetarians, the anti-war lunatics from Code Pink, terrorist sympathizers protesting "Israeli apartheid," and the dregs of Occupy Wall Street. If you're in favor of totalitarian power, sympathetic to America's enemies, dubious about representative democracy, hostile to free markets, or you just get turned on by fantasizing about violent revolution, there was a place for you at this march.
Of course, there was no place for dissenters, as skeptic Marc Morano of Climate Depot discovered when he attended the march, found himself used as a hate fetish, and was told "you cannot ask questions." He managed to catch global-warming enthusiast Naomi Klein after one of the panel discussions and ask her some of those forbidden questions anyway, leading to a highly illuminating exchange:
Also featured on the panel with [march organizer Bill] McKibben was author Naomi Klein, author of the new book ???This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate???. See:Warmist Naomi Klein: ???Capitalism is irreconcilable with a livable climate??? ??? Facing climate change head-on means changing capitalism
& See: Warmist Naomi Klein: ???Dealing with the climate crisis will require a completely different economic system???
During the panel discussion, Klein was asked: ???Even if climate change issue did not exist, you would be calling for same structural changes. Klein responded: ???Yeah.???
Following the panel, Climate Depot asked Klein if she would support all the same climate ???solutions??? even if the science was wrong.
???Yes, I would still be for social justice even if there was not climate change. Yes, you caught me Marc,??? Klein answered sarcastically as she abruptly ended the interview. [Also see: EU Commissioner: Global Warming Policy Is Right Even If Science Is Wrong ]
Klein told the activists she recommended ???weaving this [climate] movement into all of our movements.???
Klein also singled out Climate Depot???s Marc Morano during her panel presentation, noting that ???climate deniers and Heartland Institute people like Marc Morano, who I am told is here tonight, they understand that if the science is true, if the science is right, then of course we have to break every rule in their idiotic playbook because it is at war with life on Earth. ??? The audience roared with approval.
Klein noted that the ???ecological clock is ticking.???
???We are dealing with an existential terror,??? she added.
There you have it: the central animating belief of the "climate change" cult, and its satellite of left-wing allies, is that skepticism, free markets, and even free politics are impediments to their urgent agendas. They know what the cure is; they'll work backward until they've cobbled together some diagnoses to support it. Not a single one of the blowhards holding forth at this rally can explain why there hasn't been any climate change for the better part of two decades, but they don't think they have to. This is all about who they hate, not what they can prove, which is why the 9/11 Troofers fit right in.
It was also meant to be a show of strength from the dispirited far Left, which has been watching both America and the world fall apart under the inept stewardship of President Barack Obama, and others who hold to their world-view. These are dismal days to be a liberal, because "climate change" isn't the only theory falling apart after sustained contact with reality. The Left is dealing with that by convincing itself that people like Obama and Hillary Clinton aren't true liberals, just as aging faculty-lounge Marxists have been teaching generations of students that Marxism and communism have never really been tried - they're still beautiful theories waiting for a true Marxist leader to come along and implement them correctly. The various factions of the American Left needed a big public event to reassure themselves that they're still powerful, and still have allies around the world. To that end, in the course of chronicling how the mainstream press airbrushed the uglier scenes out of the People's Climate March, NewsBusters observes that their march was a mere fraction as big as the annual March for Life in D.C., which is never described as a historic or powerful event by the press, if they bother to mention it at all. I would add that the March for Life is also composed almost entirely of dedicated pro-lifers; it doesn't need satellite groups and entirely unrelated movements to show up at the Mall to bolster its numbers.
"The absurdity of people calling for the end of the system that has made the availability of virtually everything they touch and experience on a daily basis possible ??? including the cellphones and tablets they were doubtlessly using in abundance ??? never ceases to amaze," marvels Tom Blumer at NewsBusters. "How do these people believe these items came about?"
You might also ask why they seem incapable of understanding that capitalism is the greatest force for environmental improvement the world has ever seen. Environmentalism is a luxury item only prosperous nations can afford. Technology is the key to improving the human standard of living without wreaking havoc on the environment. Statist economies are environmental disasters, as you can see by touring the ruins of the Soviet Union, or trying to glimpse the buildings of Beijing through billowing clouds of smog on bad days. The answer is, quite simply, that most green radicals take these innovations for granted. They think statist central planners can create sufficiently advanced technologies after capitalism is brought to heel. A lot of these people are more properly described as fascists than socialists or anti-capitalists; they desire the benefits of capitalist industry, ruled by a political elite with transcendent wisdom and absolute power.
There are no shortage of government-industry partnerships lumbering across the land today, of course, but the New Fascism resembles the old in its belief that the failures of such partnerships are always and entirely the fault of the Little Partners in the private sector, or political dissenters whose antics dilute the total control needed to make central planning work. The problem always boils down to too much freedom, and there is no sturdier vessel for the opposition to freedom than the Church of Global Warming, which preaches that the urgency of Saving the Earth renders dissent and skepticism illegitimate. Plenty of other "freedom has failed" movements can find room in that vessel. And after they've all had their fun driving it down Wall Street and doing donuts in front of the trading houses, they'll go home and happily consume Democrat propaganda that the Obama economy can't be as bad as those rascally Republicans say, because the stock market is doing great.
Update: Eco-warrior Leonardo diCaprio doesn't just pump out greenhouse gas when he flies. His 8-story-high, 500-foot yacht has an impressive carbon footprint, too. But you need to change your life to save the planet. Speaking of which, another thing about the "green" elites is that their lifestyles would not be greatly impacted by aberrations of government that will devastate the poor and middle class. Al Gore is a billionaire; his life will not change perceptibly if the price of gasoline rises to $8 or $10 a gallon, the way many global-warming crusaders want, but your life would be ruined.
Another skeptic who managed to get a few Heroes of the Climate Revolution to answer her questions was Michelle Fields of Pajamas Media. She interrupted Robert Kennedy Jr. in the midst of a lunatic rant about how big corporations rule the world to ask if he plans to make any concessions in his lavish lifestyle to help fight climate change. He didn't handle it well at all. His answer is a fairly pure distillation of the New Fascism - never mind how we elites live our carbon-spewing lives, this problem can only be solved with more political control over the Little People and their evil industries - but after throwing in a dash of stale Koch Brothers rhetoric, he loses what little composure he has and grabs her microphone. War on Women, anyone?
Evidently Leo DiCaprio wasn't pleased to be asked by Fields about his plush planet-raping lifestyle, either. You've got to hand it to these clowns: they've been amazingly successful at waving off both the blinding evidence of their utter hypocrisy, and the lack of evidence to support their global-warming mythology. Or maybe that's more properly interpreted as a sign of just how gullible and/or dishonest their followers are.
Update: If you've been following left-wing protest marches for any length of time, you will not be surprised to learn that the horde of "environmental activists" that descended upon New York City on Sunday left it littered with mountains of garbage. This is not only a predictable example of the hypocrisy that characterizes this movement, but also a jarring contrast with all those neat-and-tidy Tea Party rallies the media told us to be worried about.
