DISPLACEMENT THEORY: NPR, NEW YORK TIMES PROMOTE ‘AMERICA’S FIRST CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEES:.’
In The New York Times on May 3, reporters Coral Davenport and Campbell Robertson wrote an article headlined “Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’”. They asserted these were the just the first of many, even as some resist the payoff:
In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems.
“We’re going to lose all our heritage, all our culture,” lamented Chief Albert Naquin of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, the tribe to which most Isle de Jean Charles residents belong. “It’s all going to be history.”
The Times story acknowledged despite the headline that local flooding has been exacerbated by man-made actions that aren’t about the warming: “Channels cut by loggers and oil companies eroded much of the island, and decades of flood control efforts have kept once free-flowing rivers from replenishing the wetlands’ sediments.”
But they quickly added “What little remains will eventually be inundated as burning fossil fuels melt polar ice sheets and drive up sea levels, projected the National Climate Assessment.”
To place this article into context, over the last year, we’ve seen endless and often quite terrifying headlines of Islamic refugees flooding Europe. Not coincidentally, we also know that Obama — and wide swatches of his operatives with bylines — believe that fighting Islamic terrorism is an unnecessary evil, that Americans can “absorb” the next terrorist attacks, that Iran should have a nuclear weapon, etc. The Times article quoted above at NewsBusters this past weekend reads like a textbook example of a different kind of displacement theory defined by columnist Julia Gorin in the Christian Science Monitor a decade ago:
It’s a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming – at least that’s what some would have us believe.
Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. “I really consider this a national security issue,” says celebrity activist and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David. “Truth” star Al Gore calls global warming a “planetary emergency.” Bill Clinton’s first worry is climate change: “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it.”
Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you.
That’s why in 2004 we got “The Day After Tomorrow” – so we could worry about junk science that may or may not kill us in 1,000 years instead of the people who really are trying to kill us the day after tomorrow.
And once again we have language from the war on terror, and war in general, being adopted to push the greens’ crony socialism and concomitant war on energy.
Speaking of which, here’s your exit quote, via today’s Washington Examiner: “Navy secretary: Green energy saves Marines’ lives.”
What an enviro-hoss. He’s the Lee Ermey of global warming. But aren’t they all?