I recently returned from a road trip to Florida and marveled at the lushness along highway I-95. Huge 40-foot trees lined the way in North and South Carolina then Georgia. Flowering plants grew wildly behind these mammoth giants of nature. Grassy plains spread far and wide along the Virginia route as cattle grazed behind the fences.

In a way, I can’t blame those who grew up in the Cold War for being pessimistic about the future. We lived then in an age of potential nuclear annihilation and Hollywood made sure that we knew about what would happen if it occurred. The studios rolled out film after film of post-apocalyptic dystopian worlds from Planet of the Apes to Soylent Green. These films were usually shot in vast desert areas in foreign countries because the truth is that America is still very, very beautiful.

I happen to live in the greenest borough of New York City: Staten Island. We have tons of parks, 3 golf courses and the best tasting tap water in the country. In the center of the island we have Moses Mountain, a testament to the efforts of conservationists who rallied again the construction of an expanded highway that would cut through the Green belt. Due to local opposition, this section was never completed. The mound of rock and soil remained where it was and came to be known as Moses Mountain after Robert F. Moses, the City Parks Commissioner and head of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, who had planned the parkway in the first place. Today Moses Mountain is well covered with a variety of trees and other vegetation. What started as barren rock and loose soil is now a wooded ecosystem that more resembles Vermont than NYC.

Therein is the difference between genuine conservationists whose primary goal is to provide clean air and water; and environmental wackos who want to control our behavior with useless governmental mandates in a Green New Deal. Vice President Al Gore became a global warming alarmist and billionaire with his ridiculous carbon credit scheme. So many people fell for his Inconvenient Truth film that nobody bothered to check its flawed data.

I have never been swayed by the hoax because the first thing I recognized is that it was based on data that was only a few hundred years old and our planet has existed for several billions of years before we did. Also there has never been a scientific consensus about global warming and if anyone tries to spout the nonsense that a majority of ‘climate scientists’ agree on climate change, they are conning you.

Most of the costly changes that the Green community is pushing don’t work but somebody is making beaucoup money selling turbine windmills and solar panels. The windmills kill anywhere from 140,000 to 328,000 birds annually. Why hasn’t PETA demonstrated against them? Of course, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has lots of skeletons in its closet that doesn’t bear scrutiny. It routinely euthanizes animals left in its overcrowded facilities. Amanda Schinke, a spokesperson for the organization, explained how "euthanasia is a product of love for animals who have no one to love them." Thank goodness, they’re not in charge of nursing homes.

It would be more charitable to describe the green advocates as misinformed rather than just plain stupid, but it’s getting harder and harder to do that. When I read that people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Hollywood liberals are hysterically pronouncing that the world will end in 12 years or so, doubts about their IQs grow.

I’ve written several columns debunking the global warming hoax in the New York Sun and Irish Examiner USA newspapers. But since these vehicles were merely preaching to the choir, I always recommend the late comic George Carlin’s YouTube video pointing out the absurdity of environmental junk science.

"The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages... And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference?"

The late and great author, Michael Crichton, was also adamant about exposing junk science.

"The global crisis is not 100 years from now - it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and antihuman doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world.... If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now."

While the uninformed or deliberately deceitful liberals in Congress spout the incipient danger of climate change which demands a Green New Deal policy here, they ignore the real villains in other countries causing pollution.

I watched the animated children's movie, The Lorax, with my grandchildren years ago. One of the villains is the Mayor, Aloysius O'Hare, who sells air to the gullible residents of the polluted town which has no trees. The subtle message here is that corrupt humans have destroyed all the oxygen producing trees and this has led to the town's disastrous environmental crisis.

In 2012, Global Post reported in an article by Liu Meng;

"Chen Guangbiao, a Chinese private entrepreneur known for his philanthropy, began to sell canned fresh air Monday, a move he claimed was to draw more people's attention to environmental protection. We've sold 1,000 cans in Tongzhou district today, earning about 5,000 yuan ($792)," Chen told the Global Times Monday, adding that he will donate all the earnings to the Chinese military to defend the Diaoyu Islands. The air is collected from revolutionary regions, including Jinggang Mountain in Jiangxi Province, some ethnic minority areas and Taiwan, and sells for four to five yuan each, he said. "One only has to open the can, directly 'drink' it or put the nose close to the can to breath deeply," said Chen."

Although California, with its ridiculous mandates has seen smog and dirty air undo past improvements, most of the country has done the most to reduce deadly emissions and pollutants. We didn’t need Paris or Kyoto accords to bully us. Trump was right.

Now the left needs to do one thing to get off the climate change merry-go-round.

Open your eyes and see how beautiful America still is.

Graphic credit: Pixabay