I never cease to be amazed at how un-democratic environmental zealots can be. Their cause is so just that any means are justified in ramming it through the policy agenda, down people's throats and into public life. For people espousing such a nominally liberal concept as environmentalism, environmental advocates are often the most closed minded and authoritarian in their approach.

It doesn't matter if the action they are promoting doesn't actually do anything — it raises awareness! — so it must be good. Everything is justified on the basis on the founding ideology which is premised on a set of constructs that are both faulty and morally derived:

* that consuming resources is wrong
* that consumption is bad
* that over-consumption of resources is the cause of environmental decline
* that the environment is in decline
* that world is over-populated
* that a world without people would be pristine and harmonious

So Earth Hour, although it didn't actually affect climate, is good because it r[ais]es awareness; Inconvenient Truth is good, despite its factual errors, because it raises awareness; hybrid cars are good, even if they are more expensive and less fuel efficient than diesel, because they raise awareness; carbon taxes are good, even though they will be ineffectual, because they raise awareness.

Yesterday, in his Rose Garden speech on climate change, President Bush proposed a “national goal” of freezing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2025, with reductions to follow thereafter.