OPINION: Remember Foxworthys You might be a redneck if

Sub­mit­ted by Martha Scog­gin

Dear Edi­tor,

Read­ers may recall the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Jeff Fox­wor­thys You might be a red­neck jokes, such as If you­ve ever cut your grass and found a car, you might be a red­neck and sev­er­al oth­ers. The pon­der­ance today is not whether you might be a red­neck, but you might be a use­ful idiot. Only you know if the term applies.

Where did the term use­ful idiot come from any­way? A quick search on Google, from Mer­ri­am-Web­ster, defines the term as a nave or cred­u­lous per­son who can be manip­u­lat­ed or exploit­ed to advance a cause or polit­i­cal agen­da. Fur­ther Google research uncov­ers the term as Use­ful idiot refers to peo­ple who are eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed, brain­washed. Peo­ple who are a great way to pro­pa­gan­dize a cause with­out ful­ly com­pre­hend­ing the caus­es goals, and the entire ide­ol­o­gy behind it. What is hap­pen­ing in our world these days? Lets take a look at a like­ly cul­prit.

Cli­mate change: Accord­ing to experts who are push­ing this nar­ra­tive, the plan­et is going to burn up unless we stop using fos­sil fuels. Recent stud­ies show that more peo­ple die from cold than from heat; con­duct your own research on that. We have been hear­ing for years that CO2 is caus­ing glob­al warm­ing. What is the so-called cul­prit? Fos­sil fuels.

Many have jumped on the band­wag­on; demand­ing to do away with fos­sil fuels. Lets all start dri­ving elec­tric vehi­cles, give up our gas stoves and gas hot water heaters. Lets con­vert to elec­tric! Hog­wash!

Those advo­cat­ing the push to elec­tric seem to for­get SOMEONE HAS TO MANUFACTURE the prod­ucts. They dont tell us about the destruc­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts of min­ing for lithi­um, cop­per, cobalt, and nick­el, which are used to man­u­fac­ture all elec­tric items. Strip min­ing to extract min­er­als requires 900-gal­lon diesel equipment.useful idiots?

Bjorn Lom­borg from the Copen­hagen Con­sen­sus Cen­ter recent­ly pub­lished Think­ing Smart­ly About Cli­mate Change where­in the con­clu­sion was that some of the typ­i­cal solu­tions West­ern coun­tries have embraced have very poor impact.

The arti­cle men­tioned the EU ini­tia­tive and the Paris Cli­mate Accords. As we all know, Chi­na and India signed on to the Paris Accord. Assum­ing ALL PARTIES do as they promised, an unlike­ly prospect, it will only deliv­er about 11 cents of cli­mate ben­e­fit for every dol­lar spent. The arti­cle went on to explain that by far the best invest­ments gov­ern­ments can make is in some­thing THAT IS NOT NEW but is quite old: inno­va­tion.

An exam­ple is the inven­tion of the cat­alyt­ic con­vert­er, which removed most air pol­lu­tion from car exhaust. Anoth­er cost-effec­tive solu­tion (return on invest­ment) is to do as the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic sug­gest­ed years ago; plant more trees. Trees take CO2 from the air to make oxy­gen­duh!

Our pon­der­ance today is not you might be a red­neck if instead it is you might be a use­ful idiot if. Lets demand our politi­cians fund inno­va­tion and less envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions.