July 23, 2011
By Jason Ivey
Of tyrannies large and small, irritating me the most is the rise of the Green Police. They've reached heights previously held only by the subject of excessive taxation.
First of all, the entire basis for green ideology and the ideologues following and enforcing it is based on a sham of a lie. Global cooling led to global warming led to climate change, but the earth hasn't burned up yet and the Eastern Seaboard hasn't been swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean.
Yes, there are weather patterns and hot years and cold years and wet years and dry years. Yet we persevere. Anything out of the ordinary is treated as, well, completely out of the ordinary, when the fact remains that "average" meteorological behavior all the time would itself be highly unusual.
The so-called "scientists" at East Anglia who provide data to the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change can cook their books, "lose" facts running counter to their templates, and cherry-pick data best supporting their statist diagnoses, but no matter. Their theories and ideas have become so ingrained in the minds of a guilt-ridden public that it's to the point where we must now live under these assumptions, whether or not they have any basis in reality. Their solutions are always the same: tax oil companies, tax the rest of us, and force everyone to do with less.
These assumptions are enforced in the office I personally work in (it's a television show), that proudly proclaims itself a "Green Office." What makes the office green? Email is used whenever possible in place of memos, scripts are printed double-sided, and other paper-related material is sometimes printed on the backsides of the discarded scripts. This is all well and good, but the office kitchen run by the little green tyrannists seems to offend mostly everyone across the ideological spectrum (and being a television show, this would consist almost entirely of liberals). There are no paper plates or cups, only porcelain dishes and glasses, all of which require washing by hand upon their return to the kitchen after use.
The sink doesn't have a garbage disposal (those are illegal in New York City), so whatever doesn't get caught in the filter drips down the drain and into a compost machine. Signs (printed on paper) are everywhere urging people to return their dishes and glasses, and while you're at it, please wash them. Unfortunately, many don't, so it's left to the poor young interns to embark on a scavenger hunt for those missing items, and they're the ones who get stuck at the sink for 20 minutes at a time cleaning up after those who rudely ignore the rules.
Multiple times, as someone grabs a dish, I've heard: "I'm all for being green, but..." But what? Except for when it affects you personally? When you're the one who must spend more of your daily man-hours not designing a $20,000 set, but washing your own dishes? I'll respond to the grumbling with "I'm not just not green. I'm anti-green. It's tyrannical." I let that sit for a second before walking out. You see, I -- like many others -- have taken to hoarding plastic and paper container material for my food and beverages like a squirrel hoards acorns for the winter. These are hot commodities. In fact, I could probably make an extra buck or two by setting up a paper cup stand in the parking lot.
Initially, the film set was still a refuge where one could drink from a plastic water bottle, then discard it when finished. No more. New rules came down from on high: We're going totally green, and that means no more plastic water bottles! (Who pushed those plastic water bottles on us all those years ago anyway? Wasn't it the same leftists who were claiming our municipal water supplies were all polluted and contaminated? I can't remember...)
There were two solutions to the problem of excessive plastic water buildup damming our nation's rivers and streams: There would now be a water cooler dispensing water on set, and each crew member would receive a company-issued metal water bottle, complete with belt hook. I had visions of burly stagehands walking around a quiet soundstage with metal water bottles clanking around on their tool belts. The idea caught on with some of the crew, but for those for whom it didn't, there were now small plastic cups next to the water cooler -- thimble-like small. More than one visiting director, upon learning of our water bottle policy, then seeing the small plastic cups next to the cooler, would say: "So let me get this straight. You banned plastic water bottles, but drink out of plastic cups?" Yeah, that's what we're saying. Got a problem with that?
As the greens are ruining our kitchens and making us spend expensive man-hours washing dishes and making us thirstier on film sets, they're also moving further and further into that most personal of sanctuaries: the bathroom.
If you've read Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny, you'll know he rails more than once against the federal government's regulation of the water level of our toilets. Not only does this result in a less effective toilet, but it also carries the unintended consequence of more flushes, which results in using even more water.
And how long before they come for my precious shower pressure? If they attempted to place thermostat regulation into a climate bill, it's not far-fetched to imagine a day when bureaucrats manage the power and length of our showers. Levin's point becomes completely relevant: what can't they regulate?
Rob Long wrote a piece several months back for National Review Online entitled "Dim Idea," on the subject of Japanese toilets, those marvels of luxury and modernity. The Japanese give people everything they want...in a toilet. (Didn't we use to give people what they want here in America?) There are hoses and nozzles and buttons and spraying water (lots of water!). While here in the USA, the bureaucrats tell us how much of that precious toilet water we're allowed.
Then there's the current bull's eye target of the greens: our incandescent light bulbs, which they are currently regulating out of existence and replacing with those curly spaghetti-like luminaries. Mr. Long envisions a dim, badly lit future with fewer and fewer "Eureka!" moments, right here in the country that gave us Thomas Edison. Instead, we're asked to do with less under ugly yellow lights produced by the Chinese.
Late last year, a green British group called the "10/10 Project" produced a cute little ad called "No Pressure." The 10/10 Project was launched as an attempt to get Britons to lower their carbon emissions by 10 percent over 10 years.
In the ad, anyone who doesn't go along with suggestions for lowering their emissions, including schoolchildren, is summarily, uh, blown up. I initially thought this must have been produced by a green critic as a parody.
Realizing it wasn't, it suddenly felt like a horror movie, and not because of the gore and exploding bodies.
The horrific part was the zombie-like mentality of the followers of green environmental policies, as well as the ease with which any dissent was dispensed with, in this case, simply by blowing up the free thinkers in the crowd. (This ad was pulled shortly after its initial airing.)
The little green tyrannists in our midst are invading our most personal spaces, from our kitchens to our bathrooms, to the very light with which we view our world. They attack luxury, comfort, and convenience.
Their goal is to make us all do with less.
Jason Ivey was born 1975, conservative since 1976. He lives deep in enemy territory on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and works as an assistant director in film/TV.
By Jason Ivey
Of tyrannies large and small, irritating me the most is the rise of the Green Police. They've reached heights previously held only by the subject of excessive taxation.
First of all, the entire basis for green ideology and the ideologues following and enforcing it is based on a sham of a lie. Global cooling led to global warming led to climate change, but the earth hasn't burned up yet and the Eastern Seaboard hasn't been swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean.
Yes, there are weather patterns and hot years and cold years and wet years and dry years. Yet we persevere. Anything out of the ordinary is treated as, well, completely out of the ordinary, when the fact remains that "average" meteorological behavior all the time would itself be highly unusual.
The so-called "scientists" at East Anglia who provide data to the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change can cook their books, "lose" facts running counter to their templates, and cherry-pick data best supporting their statist diagnoses, but no matter. Their theories and ideas have become so ingrained in the minds of a guilt-ridden public that it's to the point where we must now live under these assumptions, whether or not they have any basis in reality. Their solutions are always the same: tax oil companies, tax the rest of us, and force everyone to do with less.
These assumptions are enforced in the office I personally work in (it's a television show), that proudly proclaims itself a "Green Office." What makes the office green? Email is used whenever possible in place of memos, scripts are printed double-sided, and other paper-related material is sometimes printed on the backsides of the discarded scripts. This is all well and good, but the office kitchen run by the little green tyrannists seems to offend mostly everyone across the ideological spectrum (and being a television show, this would consist almost entirely of liberals). There are no paper plates or cups, only porcelain dishes and glasses, all of which require washing by hand upon their return to the kitchen after use.
The sink doesn't have a garbage disposal (those are illegal in New York City), so whatever doesn't get caught in the filter drips down the drain and into a compost machine. Signs (printed on paper) are everywhere urging people to return their dishes and glasses, and while you're at it, please wash them. Unfortunately, many don't, so it's left to the poor young interns to embark on a scavenger hunt for those missing items, and they're the ones who get stuck at the sink for 20 minutes at a time cleaning up after those who rudely ignore the rules.
Multiple times, as someone grabs a dish, I've heard: "I'm all for being green, but..." But what? Except for when it affects you personally? When you're the one who must spend more of your daily man-hours not designing a $20,000 set, but washing your own dishes? I'll respond to the grumbling with "I'm not just not green. I'm anti-green. It's tyrannical." I let that sit for a second before walking out. You see, I -- like many others -- have taken to hoarding plastic and paper container material for my food and beverages like a squirrel hoards acorns for the winter. These are hot commodities. In fact, I could probably make an extra buck or two by setting up a paper cup stand in the parking lot.
Initially, the film set was still a refuge where one could drink from a plastic water bottle, then discard it when finished. No more. New rules came down from on high: We're going totally green, and that means no more plastic water bottles! (Who pushed those plastic water bottles on us all those years ago anyway? Wasn't it the same leftists who were claiming our municipal water supplies were all polluted and contaminated? I can't remember...)
There were two solutions to the problem of excessive plastic water buildup damming our nation's rivers and streams: There would now be a water cooler dispensing water on set, and each crew member would receive a company-issued metal water bottle, complete with belt hook. I had visions of burly stagehands walking around a quiet soundstage with metal water bottles clanking around on their tool belts. The idea caught on with some of the crew, but for those for whom it didn't, there were now small plastic cups next to the water cooler -- thimble-like small. More than one visiting director, upon learning of our water bottle policy, then seeing the small plastic cups next to the cooler, would say: "So let me get this straight. You banned plastic water bottles, but drink out of plastic cups?" Yeah, that's what we're saying. Got a problem with that?
As the greens are ruining our kitchens and making us spend expensive man-hours washing dishes and making us thirstier on film sets, they're also moving further and further into that most personal of sanctuaries: the bathroom.
If you've read Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny, you'll know he rails more than once against the federal government's regulation of the water level of our toilets. Not only does this result in a less effective toilet, but it also carries the unintended consequence of more flushes, which results in using even more water.
And how long before they come for my precious shower pressure? If they attempted to place thermostat regulation into a climate bill, it's not far-fetched to imagine a day when bureaucrats manage the power and length of our showers. Levin's point becomes completely relevant: what can't they regulate?
Rob Long wrote a piece several months back for National Review Online entitled "Dim Idea," on the subject of Japanese toilets, those marvels of luxury and modernity. The Japanese give people everything they want...in a toilet. (Didn't we use to give people what they want here in America?) There are hoses and nozzles and buttons and spraying water (lots of water!). While here in the USA, the bureaucrats tell us how much of that precious toilet water we're allowed.
Then there's the current bull's eye target of the greens: our incandescent light bulbs, which they are currently regulating out of existence and replacing with those curly spaghetti-like luminaries. Mr. Long envisions a dim, badly lit future with fewer and fewer "Eureka!" moments, right here in the country that gave us Thomas Edison. Instead, we're asked to do with less under ugly yellow lights produced by the Chinese.
Late last year, a green British group called the "10/10 Project" produced a cute little ad called "No Pressure." The 10/10 Project was launched as an attempt to get Britons to lower their carbon emissions by 10 percent over 10 years.
In the ad, anyone who doesn't go along with suggestions for lowering their emissions, including schoolchildren, is summarily, uh, blown up. I initially thought this must have been produced by a green critic as a parody.
Realizing it wasn't, it suddenly felt like a horror movie, and not because of the gore and exploding bodies.
The horrific part was the zombie-like mentality of the followers of green environmental policies, as well as the ease with which any dissent was dispensed with, in this case, simply by blowing up the free thinkers in the crowd. (This ad was pulled shortly after its initial airing.)
The little green tyrannists in our midst are invading our most personal spaces, from our kitchens to our bathrooms, to the very light with which we view our world. They attack luxury, comfort, and convenience.
Their goal is to make us all do with less.
Jason Ivey was born 1975, conservative since 1976. He lives deep in enemy territory on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and works as an assistant director in film/TV.
American Thinker
