by Richard Morrison
June 8, 2009
On this anniversary, the Competitive Enterprise Institute reminds those who value freedom of a more current threat – the crusade for global governance led by environmental activist groups in the name of combating global warming. With calls for limits on energy use, new global taxes and the regulation of individual behavior, the recent development of environmental policy has tended ever more toward greater government control and less personal freedom.
“Environmental campaigners have long benefitted from the
assumption that they have good intentions,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “Unfortunately, the
modern environmental movement has focused increasingly on policies that
increase government control over what business can sell, what consumers can buy
and what individuals can do with their lives. Truly harmful emissions have been
successfully restricted for the most part.
But with the war on carbon dioxide being escalated to extreme levels, as
demonstrated in the new Waxman-Markey bill, we see expanding government control
become a goal unto itself.”
CEI’s 90-second
video campaign dramatizes this threat. The video follows in the steps of
Apple Computer’s 1984 Super Bowl ad and the 2007 anti-Hillary Clinton “Vote
Different” parody. It shows – in place of Big Brother – Al Gore lecturing a
captive audience on the need to crack down on energy use, economic growth and personal
freedom.
Mr. Kazman stated: “Orwell’s nightmarish society rested on a
never-ending war fought on constantly shifting battlefronts. Nothing in our
experience comes closer to that war than the current campaign to restrict
humanity’s carbon footprint.”
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.
