Preserving the Earth for our children and grandchildren

A gathering of grandchildren at a recent family reunion.

Reading Naomi Klein’s article on “Capitalism vs. the Climate” at the Nation reminded me of the many children and grandchildren present at a family reunion I attended a couple of years ago. With the welfare of our children, grandchildren, and all of life in mind, sensible people need to rise up and support the safety of this blue and green planet against the assault of anti-environmentalists.

You may not agree with everything Klein has to say in her critique of the views from both the left and the right on environmental concerns, but she deserves a hearing. Her thought-provoking article begins with a report from the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change:

There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.

He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”

Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is.

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