A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

You too can be a right-wing hack!

This piece at Reason.com is really kind of embarrassingly bad, but it does serve a useful purpose in collecting many of the right-wing anti-environment tropes in one place for easy reference:

Point out that environmentalists want to run your life and take away your money (they’re basically communists in other words).

Feign(?) misunderstanding of scientific claims (e.g., Those crazy greens think CO2 is a “pollutant” – but we exhale CO2, so obviously that can’t be right!).

Explain that environmentalists are Luddites who hate modern life and the blessings of capitalism.

Compare environmentalism to religion (n.b.: this is a bad thing).

Quote dubious figures from a corporate-backed “nonpartisan” think-tank about the catastrophic cost of addressing global warming.

Pretend to be for “sensible” and “common sense” (preferably “market-based”!) solutions to (nonexistent) environmental problems.

Optional: make disparaging reference to Al Gore.

You might want to print this out for easy reference in case you’re called upon to a) write an angry letter to the editor of your local newspaper about some positive coverage of Earth Day they ran, b) argue with someone in a blog comment thread, or c) write an op-ed for a major conservative or libertarian magazine/think-tank.

2 responses to “You too can be a right-wing hack!”

  1. Dammit! When I saw the phrase “right-wing hack” and a reference to environmentalism, I made a little bet with myself that Ron Bailey would be involved–with either a quote from Norman Borlaug on how much more land organic farming takes up, or a repetition of the lying “blame Rachel Carson for malaria” meme.

  2. Oh yeah, Rachel Carson causing the deaths of millions of African children definitely belongs on the list.

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