by Joseph Ben-Ami

Created on: April 08, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to say that she was happy when her opposition resorted to attacking her or her colleagues' character. It meant, she said, that they (her opponents) could not win the battle of ideas.

If that is true, then the eco-extortionists are definitely on the run.

For almost four decades, the left has been using the environment as a weapon in their ongoing war against free markets and free societies. "The world is on the verge of an environmental catastrophe," they claim, a calamitous event that can only be averted if you guessed it we give them complete political control.

First it was the population explosion and the moronic argument that families had to stop having children or the human race was doomed. When this failed to seriously impress anyone but the emerging (at that time) left-wing academia, the eco-extortionists discovered global cooling. "We need to curb industry, surrender our cars and hand over our economic freedom to the planning experts before it's too late!" the left trumpeted while the rest of us yawned.

When the global cooling crisis failed to move voters to shut down industry, surrender their cars and hand over their economic freedom to the expert planners, the left discovered a new crisis acid rain. The world may not be in the process of freezing after all, they conceded, but it was in the process of dissolving. Unless we shut down industry, surrendered our cars and handed over our economic freedom the expert planners, they claimed, the complete deforestation of eastern North America was inevitable with dire consequences for all of humanity.

Once again voters refused to shut down industry, surrender their cars and hand over their economic freedom to the expert planners and the forests failed to disappear. Unfazed, the left discovered o-zone depletion. Neither starvation due to over-population, nor freezing due to the impending ice age, nor poisoning due to acid rain mattered anymore because now we would all die of skin cancer before anything else could get us - unless, of course, we agreed to shut down industry, surrender our cars and hand over our economic freedom to the expert planners. All that and give up hair spray and deodorants as well. In Canada, this campaign against hair spray and deodorant was joined by an equally solemn campaign to prevent Canadians from selling fresh water to the Americans or I kid you not risk running out of fresh water and being unable to quench our thirst while we are

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