Friday, December 12, 2014

Environmentalism as moral preening

Yeah, I know that I'm kicking the puppy here, but can we finally all agree that environmentalism is nothing but NIMBY?
Take Portland, for example. The Northwest city’s modest goal is to reduce Portland and Multnomah County emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Planners claim that, as of 2010, the city and county had reduced emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels. However, this claim is full of hot air as all of the reductions are due to causes beyond planners’ control.

Almost two-thirds of the reduction was in the industrial sector, and virtually all of that was due to the closure in 2000 of an aluminum plant that once employed 520 people. The closure of that plant hasn’t led anyone to use less aluminum, so all it did was move emissions elsewhere.
They don't care about reduced emissions, they just don't want it there.  And if hundreds of families have to lose their livelihoods for that, well they were the Wrong Sort of people anyway.  Not the swell sort that go to wine tastings at the very well regarded localvore cafe.  Almost Kulaks.

No wonder the economy has been stagnant for 15 years.

2 comments:

NotClauswitz said...

Oregon is rife with moral preening since they used the "spotted owl" ruse to destroyed their own forest and wood-products industry, inflate the University and Academic positions, and put thousands of Wood-Kulak families out of work. They just don't care.

Unknown said...

My car has no cat converters (I live in real oregon), and I keep threatening to shove a load of 110 low lead in there and go drive around downtown Portland. Probably should pull the mufflers off for full effect