Tag: environmentalism
Pope And Change: Conservatives React To Francis

Pope And Change: Conservatives React To Francis

Pope Francis’ new encyclical on environmentalism and social justice, Laudato Si (“Praise Be To You”), has placed right-wing politicians in an awkward situation: After having conflated religion and conservatism for so long, proudly bolstering their political views with their Christian ones, many must now contend with one of the most prominent religious leaders in the world, who is advancing a progressive vision on some key issues.

George Weigel at National Review gives a remarkably balanced take, highlighting Pope Francis’ commitment in the document to morality and tradition: “Francis’ counter-proposal leads him to argue that being ecologically conscious and environmentally committed necessarily means being pro-life.” Weigel stresses that the encyclical is about far more than global warming and that it contains a call to revitalize the human condition.

Others, however, have not been receiving it quite so well.

Folks at The Wall Street Journal are already criticizing Pope Francis, dubbing it “Pope Francis’ New Religion: Environmentalism,” and accusing of him of having “an anti-capitalist bent.”

In recent days, Republican sort-of-frontrunner Jeb Bush — a convert to Catholicism — walked on eggshells as he distanced himself from Francis.

“I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Bush told Sean Hannity this week. “And I’d like to see what he says as it relates to climate change and how that connects to these broader, deeper issues before I pass judgment. But I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.”

(Of course, this discomfort with mixing religion and politics might seem odd coming from a man who, under the banner of right-to-life rhetoric, interceded in the Terri Schiavo affair while serving as Florida’s governor.)

In the run-up to the encyclical’s release, Rick Santorum made a classic blunder a week and a half ago on Fox News Sunday. “I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists,” Santorum said — only to be reminded by host Chris Wallace that Pope Francis does have a background in chemistry.

Santorum’s skepticism of religious figures getting involved in science is also a major turnaround for him. While championing the teaching of creationism in schools, he was skeptical of scientists’ involvement in science. As he said in 2011, during his first campaign for president: “It’s very interesting that you have a situation that science will only allow things in the classroom that are consistent with a non-Creator idea of how we got here, as if somehow or another that’s scientific.”

Rush Limbaugh was railing against the pope as well, claiming that he has long been “attacking capitalism using Democrat Party language,” and that “this guy sounds like a Marxist.”

Mark Levin says Francis “wants to go beyond his leadership of the Catholic Church” and boss all of us around — “replacing true faith and religion with this phony faith that they believe is the new religion,” referring to environmentalism. (Levin also took the occasion to trash not only left-leaning Catholics, but liberal Jews as well.)

And there’s the always-unhinged Michael Savage: “He has been hand-selected by the New World Order. He is the first non-European pope in 1,200 years — the same people who gave us Obama gave us this pope.” Savage also demanded that the Vatican sell off its fine works of art (many of which are in fact on public display, mind you) and give the money away.

Photo: AFP Photo/Andreas Solaro

‘Dr. Evil’ Turns Out To Be ‘Dr. Silly’

‘Dr. Evil’ Turns Out To Be ‘Dr. Silly’

Big Oil, labor exploiters, industrial food factories, frackers, and other corporate profiteers have been paying a lot of money to a man who celebrates himself as “Dr. Evil” — the scourge of all progressive groups!

But Rick Berman is not a doctor, not evil, and not a scourge. While he is a wholly unprincipled little man, he’s just a self-serving huckster who grubs for corporate dollars by offering to do their dirty PR work. His specialty is taking secret funding from major corporations to publicly slime environmentalists, low-wage workers, and anyone else perceived by his corporate clients as enemies.

Berman’s modus operandi is not exactly sophisticated. Taking money from the likes of Philip Morris, Monsanto, and Tyson Foods, he sets up tax-exempt front groups (with nondescript names like Center for Consumer Freedom, Employment Policies Institute, and Environmental Policy Alliance), posing them as independent research and academic outfits. Each one is an empty shell, run by his small staff of political hacks out of his Washington, D.C., office, and, using the names of the front groups, Berman and Co. buy full-page newspaper ads and write opinion pieces filled with made-up facts and manufactured horror stories for clueless media outlets that amount to raw hatchet attacks on whatever progressive groups or public policies the corporate funders want to kill.

His mad-dog style is hardly worrisome to those targeted, for rather than drawing converts to the corporate funder’s cause, it merely rallies the usual anti-labor, anti-enviro, anti-“fill in the blank” crowd. But it still appeals to brand-name corporate clients, for Berman promises to spew their message into the media without having any of the nastiness stick to them. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors,” he assured energy executives last year. “There is total anonymity,” he bragged. “People don’t know who supports us.”

And can you even imagine a political PR campaign against environmentalists that was so negative, so ridiculously slanted and downright dirty, that it actually repulsed executives of some of America’s biggest fracking corporations?

Wow — it’s got to take a big wad of ugly to gag a fracker! But in the gross world of political rancor, few cough up hairballs as foul as those produced by Berman. Last year, he was in Colorado Springs, speaking at a meeting of Big Oil frackers about his down-and-dirty plan to smear and ridicule the grassroots enviros who’ve dared to oppose the fracking of Colorado’s land, water, people, and communities. Dubbing the campaign “Big Green Radicals,” the Berman team revealed that their PR firm had dug into the personal lives of Sierra Club board members, looking for tidbits to embarrass them. Gut it up, Berman cried out to the executives, “You can either win ugly or lose pretty.” The Little Generalissimo then urged them to pony up some $3 million for his assault, saying they should “think of this as an endless war,” adding pointedly, “and you have to budget for it.”

Unfortunately for the sleaze peddler, one appalled energy executive recorded his crude pitch and leaked it to the media. “That you have to play dirty to win,” the executive explained, “just left a bad taste in my mouth.” Even Anadarko, an aggressive fracking corporation with 13,000 fracked wells in the Rockies, publicly rejected Berman’s political play, telling the New York Times: “It does not align with our values.”

Berman likes to be called “Dr. Evil,” but he’s so coarse, strident, bombastic, and clownish that he’s become known as “Dr. Silly.” And oops, not only is this huckster an ineffectual fake, but big holes in his curtain of anonymity are now revealing some of the corporations hiding behind it and his big funders want no part of that. To take a peek, go to www.BermanExposed.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Webpage at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Mary Crandall via Flickr

Top Reads: ‘Silent Spring’

Top Reads: ‘Silent Spring’

In 1962 Rachel Carson published the seminal work Silent Spring, an indictment of the agricultural industry for its careless use of dangerous pesticides, and a touchstone text for the nascent environmentalist movement. Today congressional Republicans are threatening to repeal EPA rules on carbon emissions, and leaders fail not only to address the problem of climate change, but to even admit it exists. Earth Day is this week; Carson’s imperative to protect our planet is more urgent than ever.

You can purchase the book here.

Earth Hour To Tap Crowdfunding For Green Campaigns

Earth Hour To Tap Crowdfunding For Green Campaigns

Singapore (AFP) – Lights will go off in some 7,000 cities around the world for this weekend’s Earth Hour event, which will aim to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for environmental projects worldwide, organizers said Thursday.

Organizers Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) have partnered with payments giant PayPal to allow donors to contribute to specific projects in countries from Russia and India to Canada and Indonesia, using Asian fundraising site Crowdonomic.

“We are starting with around 20 projects this year, but our vision is to really expand once Saturday’s event has taken place,” said Earth Hour chief executive Andy Ridley.

“The projects have been chosen based on their scalability, so even if the target has not been met, a small amount of funds raised will still help implement an outcome on the ground.”

Projects under the “Earth Hour Blue” crowdfunding scheme — which aim to raise more than $650,000 in total — include a turtle center in Italy and funding for forest rangers in Indonesia.

Earth Hour will see world landmarks including the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, and the Kremlin switch off their lights for 60 minutes at 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday. The event is being marked in more than 150 countries, organizers said.

The event is being coordinated from Singapore, with the stars of new movie “Amazing Spider-Man 2” set to help switch off lights on the city-state’s skyline in the upmarket Marina Bay district.

Sofiah Jamil, adjunct research associate at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, who has been campaigning for environmental causes in Southeast Asia, welcomed the funding initiative.

“At the very basic level, such crowdfunding activities can potentially increase the visibility of Earth Hour and in turn awareness on environmental action,” Jamil told AFP.

“I think the main way in which this is effective is that it allows a way of involving a wider section of people, who would previously perhaps not be involved, such as those with limited knowledge on how they can contribute and those who want to contribute with ease and convenience,” she said.

©afp.com/Bertrand Langlois