Racism of the Global Warming Agenda

Recently, crowds gathered to protest Robert Redford and linked his environmental activism to racism.

The protesters, led by the Congress of Racial Equality's national spokesman Niger Innis, suggested Redford should "relinquish his wealth" and live like a poor person. They complained that the filmmaker's anti-drilling stance could lead to higher energy prices for inner-city residents, forcing them to accept a lower standard of living.

The clergymen prayed for Redford "to see the light" and linked his environmental activism with racism.

"The high energy prices we're going to see this winter are essentially discriminatory," said Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., chairman of the High-Impact Leadership Coalition, a petroleum industry advocate.

Indeed. Who will be hurt most by the silly notion of carbon credits and the increased energy costs that will accompany?

The Religious Left prefers to deny that reducing global economic growth, even if it could affect the climate, is no way to help the poor.

Instead, the Religious Left wraps its Global Warming agenda in the mantle of caring for the poor. The NRPE’s November 1 press conference emphasized that a hotter planet will cause the poor to suffer the most. Although not stressed in the press conference, the NRPE wants government subsidizes for poorer Americans to compensate for the increased energy and transportation costs that will inevitably result from Global Warming regulation.

At least the Religious Left is tacitly admitting there will be an actual cost to all of its proposed climate change regulation. But worry not! An expanded welfare state can compensate the poor for their expenses. The NRPE appeal to the U.S. Congress insisted that the "needs of people in poverty must be a central priority as you and your colleagues develop legislation to address the critical challenge of global climate change."

Ironically, it is indeed the poor who will suffer the most from the hundreds of billions of dollars in additional taxation and increased regulation that Global Warming activists demand for saving The Planet.

It's wonderfully convenient for the Religious Left that Global Warming will be one more urgent reason for adding additional layers to the welfare state. Keeping the poor dependent on government transfer payments is politically useful. Reducing economic growth through climate change regulation will further reduce the poor's ability to escape poverty. Newly empowered people who have escaped their poverty through economic entrepreneurship are always a political threat to the statism of the Religious Left.