Mitt Romney's Advisor On The Environment

Once upon a time, on a totally non-political day, during a non-political speech amidst his taxpayer-funded and non-political bus tour, Mein Obama offered us the following non-political discourse.

“The Republican plan says that what’s been standing in the way between us and full employment are laws that keep companies from polluting as much as they want,” Obama said in a speech at the regional airport in Asheville, N.C., on Monday…..“My plan says we’re going to put teachers back in the classroom, construction workers back to work rebuilding America, rebuilding our schools, tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for hiring veterans, tax cuts if you give your worker a raise,” said Obama. “That’s my plan. Then you’ve got their plan, which is, let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance. So far at least, I feel better about my plan.”

What Our Fearless Teleprompter forgot to mention is that Republicans want to have fewer people as well. That claim could be made of at least one GOP candidate for the White House in 2012. The validity of this depends upon how seriously he takes the advice of Harvard Professor and advocate for human population reduction, Dr. John Holdren, who now works for President Obama. Dr. Holdren, like ObamaCare, is yet another idea that President obama has cribbed off of Republican Candidate, Mitt Romney.

What advice would Eminent Harvard Scholar and current advisor to the president on science and technology offer to Former Governor Romney? Investor’s Business Daily describes Dr. Holdren’s philosophical bent below.

Holdren’s bizarre views are best suited for an adviser to someone like, say, Pol Pot. He views humanity as a plague on the planet and the Industrial Revolution as a tragic mistake. The fewer people, he believes, the better, and he’s not shy about the ways he would use to reduce their number.

Long before he became Mitt Romney’s advisor in Massachusetts, Holdren co-authored Human Ecology Problems and Solutions with Paul and Anne Erlich (of Population Bomb fame). In the introduction of this book, the three Ecologists wrote the following.

Even achieving the necessary transition to stable population size and stable resource consumption will not mean the end of ecological problems, however. Supporting a constant world population smaller than today’s at a material standard of living lower than that now enjoyed in the United States would still require constant vigilance if the quality of the Earth’s life support systems were to be maintained.

The man not only seeks to tell you how to live your life, he seeks to decide whether your children will even be allowed to exist. In 1977, he wrote Ecoscience. He again co-authored with the charming and talented Erlichs. In this particular tome, he called for the following.

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

(HT: Zombietime.com)

And yet Mitt Romney claims to be a Pro-Life Conservative. A child asked him what he thought about abortion while he campaigned in New Hampshire. He responded as follows.

Romney reaffirmed that he was “firmly pro-life” after a young child asked him for his position on abortion: “This is a tender and sensitive issue, and people – good people – come out on both sides of this issue,” he said. “I respect people that have different views on this issue.” He added that he’d like to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe vs. Wade “and return to the states the authority to decide whether they want to have abortion or not.”

Yet, while he ran for Senate in 1994, he was asked about abortion during a debate and said the following:

I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it, and I sustain and support that law, and the right of a woman to make that choice, and my personal beliefs, like the personal beliefs of other people, should not be brought into a political campaign.

On another issue near and dear to Holdren, Mitt Romney compiled the following environmental record.

To curb global warming, Romney supports regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through voluntary measures. He issued a 72-point Climate Protection Plan. His staffers spent more than $500,000 negotiating the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI—pronounced “Reggie”), which Romney praised in November 2005, saying “I’m convinced it is good business.” As plan details were being worked out, Romney began pushing for a cap on fees charged to businesses who exceed emission limits, citing concerns of increased consumer energy costs. He stated: “New England has the highest energy rates in the country, and RGGI would cost us more.” This ongoing disagreement eventually led Romney, in December 2005, to pull out of RGGI. Nevertheless, in 2011 he stated, “I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”

(HT: Wikipedia)

He now runs far away from these previous positions he held on abortion and global warming. He even claims to want CO2 stripped from the EPA’s list of regulated airborne pollutants under the current Clean Air Act. But given, his past stances on these issues, and given the man who he hired to offer him advice on them, I see no reason to trust him. When Mitt Romney claims to be anti-abortion and pro-environmental deregulation, the question he needs to be asked is this. “If these are your beliefs, Mr. Romney, why would you ever have asked Dr. John Holdren to help you on these issues with his “advice?”