Mark Steyn: The Fixation on Global Warming Is ‘An Elite Concern’
HANNITY: "A lot of people on the left, they don't want trees cut down. They want to save the owl, they don't want drilling and fracking. They're afraid of coal mining, et cetera. What are the real politics behind this?
STEYN: "I think the politics is you've got yours -- I think it's a very elite thing. It's anti-consumerist, it's anti industrial, it's anti innovative. So if you live in a nice neighborhood, it's nice to the drawbridge up and say in the interest of the environment, we're not having anymore development. But the fact is that as science, as science it's nonsense. There's been no global warming now for 17 years and none of the climate models, none of the scare mongering predicted that. They all told us -- the most famous one -- because the guy is suing me -- was the famous hockey stick graph which showed the last millennium as the shaft of a hockey stick and then this giant blade shooting up through the 20th century and disappearing out the roof. And you're thinking, 'oh, my god, the planet is going to burn.' And in fact, what happened? And they have no explanation of where the global warming -- they say it might be hidden in the oceans or it might be lurking somewhere in a crater under the North Pold. They don't know where it is."
HANNITY: "How much of this do you think is rooted in anti-capitalism? That we're raping and the planet for profit? With the energy and trees to build homes, et cetera."
STEYN: "Yeah, I think that's it's appeal. It's an appeal to rich people. The Prince of Wales who says, I think -- he's more accurate than Al Gore who says the world will end in 10 years. The prince of Wales said the world will end in I think it was six years and seven months or something. And he said the problem is all this -- when he lives in a palace, that's fine. But if everybody wants to live in a nice three bedroom house on a half acre lot, the planet will go to hell. And I think it's a concern of elites, that's why it appeals to princes, it appeals Hollywood. It's an elite concern.
HANNITY: "You know it's interesting. A couple years back we actually caught Al Gore getting off a Gulfstream II private jet. The only people on that plane besides the pilots were Al Gore and his wife. Gets off the plane, we've got the videotape we're running right now. Off he gets of the plane and into a chauffeur driven limousine. And then we hear about these carbon offsets. I've got a carbon offset company. Sort of like, to me it's if you're married and I want to buy some indulgences here."
STEYN: "Right, it's the equivalent of medieval indulgence. And the point is it's not for -- Barbara Streisand, she took her Gulfstream to fly into Washington to chew over climate change with the president. And it's fine if Barbara Streisand and Al Gore does it. But the rest of us are supposed to be beating our clothes with with the native women on the rocks down by the river. And so it's actually --"
HANNITY: "We shouldn't be driving caravans and SUVs."
STEYN: "No, no. And again, there's a nonsense about this. The Obama administration now wants to regulate bovine flatulence because they claim that's destroying that is planet. And again we -- it's the biggest excuse for big government ever. At their Monday night poker game in hell, Hitler and Stalin and Mao must be sitting around and saying, it's for the future of our children, if only we thought of that. From bovine flatulence. If you went to an 11th century medieval peasant and said, 'So peasant, I come from the king. You have to pay a bovine flatulence tax' he would say, ah get out of here. A medieval peasant would know that was nonsense. Now we take it seriously."
HANNITY: "Well, we do and we don't. The president actually said -- and this becomes a political agenda but a political question -- when he says 'the Republicans, their plan is for dirty air, dirty water.' I've got kids. It may shock liberals, but I want clean air and water and I think we can frak and drill and mine for coal and still be good stewards of the planet."
STEYN: "Exactly. A lot of this stuff is the -- the new eco-friendly things are just as devastating to the planet if you want to put it that way. The new ethanol in our gas tanks is apparently causing as much environmental damage. The wind turbines are causing as much environmental damage. t
HANNITY: "Except there's not one outside the Kennedy compound in Nantucket."
STEYN: "No, you can't have it there, but you can stick it in everybody else's back yard. And they do terrible things. The sort of 'condor cuisineart' I think they call it out in California. In Scotland all these ornithologists have gathered to watch the first appearance in Scotland of some rare bird that only shows up every 600 years. This thing flies, comes over, they've all got their binoculars. They fly straight into the wind turbine, poor fellow, filleted and that's it. So these things are just like crony capitalism, like the fellow that's bank rolling the anti-Keystone thing out in California, and bankrolling Democrats who are opposed to Keystone. It's crony capitalism costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for every fictional job."
