It’s Earth Day, the day we assume is the very favorite one of the year for extreme greenies. After all, they have center stage – and a fawning mainstream media – for demonstrating all the silly elements of their extreme “green” agenda.
But, what the enviros don’t want you to know is that all too often their “green” schemes don’t exactly work out as they planned (and propagandized).
So, in the spirit of Earth Day, we decided outline some of those green fails, since the rest of the media won’t do so. Without further ado:
1. During the past few years, school districts across the country have been implementing new “green” standards via systems that promise to deliver energy saving and various environmental benefits. Of course, that’s not what has happened.
Far from reducing costs, not a single green school investigated by the Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers saved more in energy costs than it spent gaining the “green” rating. Green schools failed to deliver on promises in every state.
2. When a Washington state tribe launched a campaign to “rally political support for more regulations on agriculture,” campaign officials didn’t do their due diligence in assessing the props they decided to use. The campaign, operating under the name “What’s Upstream,” paid for anti-agriculture billboards with taxpayer-provided EPA funds.
The billboards had to come down after the EPA confirmed that the media campaign is an “inappropriate use of EPA funds.” But, that’s not the most embarrassing part of the debacle.
The picture used to demonstrate that farms upstream are violating water quality standards and harming salmon featured a photo of three cows standing in a stream. Here’s the kicker, the picture wasn’t even in Washington State.
3. This legislative session, state legislators got a close-up look into the minds of extreme greenies. Elicott Dandy, a representative of not one, but two far-Left groups – the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy and OneAmerica – testified before lawmakers against I-732, the so-called “revenue neutral” carbon tax.
That Dandy took the time to testify against a carbon tax is not a surprise. After all, liberals don’t like I-732 because it would not necessarily result in any new money in their pockets. It is, however, noteworthy that Dandy openly admitted that the groups she represents are “against putting a price on carbon because the proposal included a tax cut.”
In the words of Dandy, a tax cut is “too high a price to pay” to address the impending catastrophe that is climate change.
Not the best PR moment for enviros.
4. Extreme “green” activists love to take credit for natural phenomenon, including economic factors. At least, that’s what happened when Seattle City Council members Kshama Sawant and Mike O’Brien celebrated Royal Dutch Shell’s withdrawal from the Arctic by taking credit for the multi-billion dollar company’s purely market-based decision.
Apparently, Sawant and O’Brien (in all their delusion) believed that Shell’s decision to withdraw from the Artic was due to the efforts of a group of “kayaktivists.” Of course, “kayaktivists” paddling plastic kayaks that were made using oil did not scare off a multi-billion dollar oil company. Shell’s decision had everything to do with cost analysis, not an unknown hastag used by extreme greenies.
5. Through the years, Jay Inslee has had his share of “green” fails – just be the first person on your block (or in your county) to read the environmental screed he “wrote, Apollo’s Fire for a full picture of his delusions. But, his failure to pass any part of his extreme “green” agenda during the 2015 legislative session is at the top of the list. As we all know, Inslee proposed a cap-and-tax scheme that would have reduced the average annual employment by approximately 56,000 jobs over the next 20 years. And, the total aggregate income for workers and business owners would have been reduced by an annual average of $3.1 billion per year.
Fearing public backlash, even liberal Democrat lawmakers rejected his cap-and-tax scheme. Inslee failed to garner enough support to pass the scheme out of the Democrat-controlled state House. Adding to Inslee’s failures, lawmakers even destroyed his chances for imposing a job-killing fuel mandate when they included a consumer protection provision in the transportation package he was forced to sign.
But, all that didn’t stop our green governor from calling on lawmakers to re-consider his scheme time and time again — a reality that only added to his embarrassment.
BONUS: Everyone should do the right thing with recyclable material. Unfortunately, sometimes the distinction between “recyclables” and “trash” gets a little blurred… especially when a single bin accepts both.
This cool, multi-purpose trashcan comes courtesy of Bellevue High School.
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