Don’t get me wrong. I recycle every kind of paper, metal, glass and plastic; I take my own reusable canvas tote bags with me to the grocery store; I purchase from local and/or organic farmers as much as possible. I believe in good stewardship of the earth God has given us. What’s changed is my attitude toward “environmentalist” advocacy groups.

I joined the Sierra Club in 1982 because at that time I bought the establishment-media line that Reagan’s Interior Secretary, James Watt, was evil incarnate and had to be stopped. I joined Audubon because I love birds. I joined World Wildlife Fund because I was concerned about the rate at which tropical rainforest was disappearing.

Well, I still love birds, trees and everything else God created besides us humans — but I quit all three of the above organizations quite a few years back because they crossed the line from love of animals to hostility toward humans; all of them, especially Sierra Club, vigorously promote population control — which always comes down to abortion. It’s bad enough I’m forced to pay for abortions with my tax dollars; I’ll be darned if I’m going to donate to abortion promoters of my own free will.

Nevertheless, all through the ’90s, I continued to support two watchdog groups, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Silent on the population issue, they instead focused on making sure that laws already on the books were enforced, and that governments and businesses were held accountable. I saw a place — and still do — for watchdogs. After all, when I was living in Texas in the ’80s, I myself had fought — and rightly so, I believe — to get the State of Texas to enforce its own regulations on several uranium mill-tailings dumps. The uranium mills not only were out of compliance, but were continuing to operate despite the fact that their licenses had long since expired.

NRDC and EDF were not involved with our effort on that front, but I’d always seen their mission as similar. Somewhere along the line, though, these groups came to represent, whether intentionally or not, an agenda that is less about holding corporations accountable than it is about destroying the free-market system altogether.

Of course, nowadays, these groups (which I no longer support) are largely redundant, since the Environmental Protection Agency itself has become the most radical anti-business entity of all.  Case in point:

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling. [emphasis added]

Got that? The EPA wants Shell to flush its $4 billion investment down the drain because of carbon dioxide emissions from a ship! (What does the EPA have to say about the carbon dioxide being emitted by every one of those 245 natives every time they exhale?) The world’s main institutions dealing with “climate change” (NASA, IPCC, CRU, et al.) have been shown to have engaged in scandalous fraud — egregious enough that the whole theory of man-caused climate change has been thrown into doubt, if not substantially disproven — and yet, the Obama administration persists in acting as if ClimateGate never happened!

At stake is an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. That’s how much the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean. For perspective, that represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed down the Trans Alaska pipeline throughout its 30-year history. That pipeline is getting dangerously low on oil. At 660,000 barrels a day, it’s carrying only one-third its capacity.

Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining at a rate of about 7 percent a year. If the volume gets much lower, pipeline officials say they will have to shut it down.…

“It’s driving investment and production overseas,” said Alaska’s DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan. “That doesn’t help the United States in any way, shape or form.”

The EPA did not return repeated calls and e-mails. The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. [emphasis added]

Environmental “watchdogs”? No, they’ve become attack dogs — and they’re going for the jugular of the free-market system that keeps you and me and other human beings clothed, sheltered and fed.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Cross-posted