The Green Gestapo/International Society for Individual Liberties

EDIT0R’S CHOICE:  The issues of who is right about the environmental questions surfacing now have to do with a great deal more than clean air. Al Gore and the Green Gestapho would deny you a lot more rights than to cause pollution – the ultimate goal is to put the government in total charge of your life. The AUDI motor company’s idea of an environmentally-correct America, to judge from the TV commercial it spent several million dollars to air during the Super Bowl, is one in which homeowners could be arrested for using incandescent light bulbs, customers choosing plastic bags at the supermarket would be manhandled by the Green Police, and anyone tossing an orange peel into the wastebasket could find himself in the beam of a searchlight, hearing a voice bark through a loudspeaker: “Put the rind down, sir! That’s a compost infraction.”

Here’s the take from Joe Jacoby on Boston.com: It’s also a place where highway traffic would back up at an “eco-roadblock,’’ but anyone driving a “green’’ car like Audi’s A3 TDI would be waved through the checkpoint. Of course, the notion of an environmental police state terrorizing citizens for not being sufficiently “green’’ is just parody meant to be laughed at. Or is it?

CARICATURES: On its website, Audi USA earnestly describes its Green Police as “caricatures’’ created to “help’’ consumers “faced with a myriad of decisions in their quest to become more environmentally responsible citizens.’’ And what better way to “help’’ them than with scenes of ruthless Greenshirts handcuffing hot-tubbers whose water is too warm, or raiding the home of residents who threw a used battery into the wrong trash bin?

“Green has never felt so right,’’ proclaims Audi’s dystopian ad. Others agree. David Roberts, who writes for the environmental webzine Grist (and who has called for putting global warming skeptics on trial), says the “thrill’’ of the ad “turns on satisfying the green police.’’ The commercial makes sense, he writes, only “if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police - people who may find those [environmental] obligations tiresome and constraining . . . but who recognize that living more sustainably is in fact the moral thing to do.’’

GREEN POLICE: On Twitter, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom expressed his approval more concisely: “That ‘green police’ Audi commercial hits home.’’ He would know. Under a composting ordinance Newsom signed last year, throwing orange peels, coffee grounds, or greasy pizza boxes in the trash is now illegal in San Francisco, and carries fines of up to $500 per violation.

There was a time when Americans were thought capable of deciding for themselves what to do with their coffee grounds or whether to carry groceries home in paper or plastic bags. It isn’t only in San Francisco, and it isn’t only when it comes to “green’’ issues, that such mundane or personal choices are being supplanted by government coercion.

One thin slice at a time, liberties we used to take for granted are replaced with mandates from above. Rather than leave us free to choose, Big Brother increasingly makes the choice for us: On trans fats; On gambling; On smoking; On bicycle helmets; On health insurance.

TRAINING; In Massachusetts, the Globe reported last week, new regulations will soon require thousands of restaurant workers to undergo state-designed training on handling food allergies, and every restaurant menu will have to be revised to include a new message: “Before placing your order, please inform your server if a person in your party has a food allergy.”

In Pennsylvania, the Reading Eagle notes that it is illegal for volunteers to sell pies or cookies at a charity bake sale unless the treats were “prepared in kitchens inspected and licensed by the state Agriculture Department.’’ In Oregon, an eight-year-old boy was suspended from his public school on Monday because he came to class with a tiny plastic toy gun from his G.I. Joe action figure.

DICTATORS: It isn’t to evil dictators with a lust for power that Americans have been slowly surrendering their autonomy. It is to well-intentioned authorities who believe sincerely that our freedoms must be circumscribed for our own good. At the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced what The New York Times called “a sweeping initiative…aimed at revamping the way American children eat and play - reshaping school lunches, playgrounds, and even medical checkups - with the goal of eliminating childhood obesity.”

Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the federal government to take charge of “revamping the way American children eat and play.’’ It is only our passivity that makes such an encroachment possible. This used to be the land of the free. Is it still?

ALREADY HAPPENING: The examples of the excesses are manifest. In Riverside, California, 76,000 acres -- much of it privately owned and occupied, was declared a preserve for the kangaroo rat. Kangaroo rats are common throughout California, and for centuries have been regarded as destructive vermin. However, homeowners were repeatedly threatened with prison sentences and fines of up to $100,000 if they cleared overgrown brush from their own property.

On October 26, 1993, wildfires swept through the area. Fire quickly leapt from brush to homes. As homeowner Yshmael Garcia explains: "My home was destroyed by a bunch of bureaucrats in suits and so-called environmentalists who say animals are more important than people." In fact, the ban on clearing brush also killed the kangaroo rats, who burned along with the homes.

HEAVY FINES: In San Rafael, California, an employee of a construction company owned by businessman Fred Grange accidentally spilled a single barrel of oil on a vacant lot. As required by law, Mr. Grange reported the spill to the EPA and local environmental agencies. Over a dozen government agencies – including the EPA, California Highway Patrol, and local police conducted investigations. Grange admitted he got very angry when literally hundreds of government investigators swooped down upon him.

So, according to Grange, the Green Gestapo decided to make an example out of him. Fines totaling over $20 million were imposed on his business, forcing it to close.

EPA GONE WILD: Throughout much of America, construction of new homes has slowed to a crawl -- driving up costs and pricing most young families out of the market. One major reason is the Green Gestapo. Louise and Frederic Williams of Little Compton, Rhode Island, bought five acres for a new home. When their home was already partially constructed they received a letter from state environmental officials ordering them to tear it down.

Although there was little water on the property, eco-bureaucrats had declared their property to be a wetland. The EPA also ordered them to plant trees and tend them for a full year at their own expense. The value of the Williams' property plummeted from $260,000 to less than $30,000.

How could a dry homesite be classified as a wetland? Robert J. Pierce, who helped write the 1989 EPA wetlands standard, bluntly states, "Ecologically speaking, the term "wet-land" has no meaning. For regulatory purposes, a wetland is whatever we decide it is."

OSHA: In October, 1995, new OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations went into effect that require property owners to eliminate lead-based paint and asbestos -- substances commonly found in older property. If you sell or rent residential property built prior to 1978, you are now required to give new occupants a notice which reads in part: "This property may place young children at risk of developing lead poisoning."

In this case the environmental "cure" appears to be far worse than the disease. Government agencies calculate "dangerous doses" of lead and other substances by feeding rats and mice enormous daily doses, just below the level it would take to kill them immediately.

These are levels hundreds or thousands of times higher than most people are exposed to in their lifetimes. If this procedure were followed for all chemicals, virtually everything touched would be banned. As a National Center for Policy Analysis study concludes,

"At these high levels of exposure, one out of every two chemicals ever tested (both natural and man-made) eventually causes cancer in at least one species of rodent."

Implementing new lead and asbestos regulations could force millions of people out of their homes -- in many cases permanently: The cost of retrofitting old buildings is often greater than their value.

PROPERTY: Crazy environmental laws are destroying homes, mines, factories, and people throughout America. On January 12, 1995, a federal judge halted all mining, ranching, and logging on 14 million acres in Idaho. Angry Idaho citizens protested, "Our lives are about to be destroyed and disappear."

In Colton, California, a fly brought economic development to a screeching halt. The town of 45,000 slipped into economic depression when a local military base closed. Unfortunately for its human residents, Colton is also home to the Delhi Sand fly, which is listed as endangered. To protect the fly, state authorities have blocked construction of a new hospital and industrial park that would have brought over $171 million in new capital and thousands of jobs. Any major development in Colton is now impossible because of the fly.

According to the Mountain States Legal Foundation, over 1,300 species including a number of flies and rats, are now listed as "endangered" and hence protected. Kill one, and you risk a $300,000 fine and two years in prison.

FUTURE: Absurd, anti-human environmental laws are part of a much larger Green Gestapo agenda for your future. Their blueprint is the UN's 1,140-page UN Environmental Programme's Global Bio-diversity Assessment (GBA), which Bill Clinton  urged the Senate to ratify, called the "Wildlands Project," would convert at least half of the continental U.S. into an "eco-park" devoid of industry and private property.

John Davis, editor of the Wildlands Project journal, Wild Earth, writes: "Wilderness recovery must start now but continue indefinitely -- expanding wilderness until the matrix, not just the nexus, is wild. Does this mean that Wild Earth and the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized must go."

Although the Biodiversity Treaty was not been ratified, implementation has already begun in several states. In Chicago, a coalition of 34 federal agencies, cultural organizations, and environmental groups has created the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, which the Chicago Tribune called “An ambitious and unprecedented effort to restore what nature created, not piece-by-piece, but on a regional scale…The idea is to create a network of native natural areas not just in Illinois forest preserves but in city and suburban neighborhoods and on corporate campuses. Lawns and parkways could be replaced by fields of prairies, wildflowers and boring detention ponds could be replaced by living wetlands."

It goes on and on, and there is ample evidence that there is little science to back it up.