RUSH: ‘Glaciers on California’s Mt. Shasta Keep Growing.’ The AP amazingly reporting this: ‘Reaching more than 14,000 feet above sea level, Mt. Shasta dominates the landscape of high plains and conifer forests in far Northern California. While it’s not California’s tallest mountain, the tongues of ice creeping down Shasta’s volcanic flanks–‘ oh, speaking of that, I saw the funniest thing. These volcanoes in Hawaii, there’s a lot of lava flowing out of these things, and Fox had pictures of it with the Chyron graphic: ‘Experts Eyeing Closely Lava Flow.’ Yeah, what are they going to do about it? Watching it closely? Anyway, ‘With global warming causing the retreat of glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere in the Cascades, Mt. Shasta is actually benefiting from changing weather patterns over the Pacific Ocean.’ Do you remember what was funny about Mount Shasta, and this goes back, I was still working in Sacramento, remember the term harmonic convergence? This is back in the Cold War era when the American left was afraid that Ronaldus Magnus was going to push the button and nuke the Russians and kill us all. They decided to have this convention up there at Mount Shasta, harmonic convergence. They were all going to go up there and they were going to do their mantras — ohmm, ohmm — and try to send good vibes. Well, they didn’t go up to the top, but they went to area because they thought the vibes from the Mount Shasta area would go all the way to Gorbachev and to Reagan.
So we have another stupid global warming cause and effect, things change, they evolve, they grow, they diminish. In the old days we would call this erosion or nature or weather or life, but now we call it all climate change.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
We learned yesterday that plasma televisions and LCDs contain a gas that is really accelerating global warming that is not happening. Now from TIME Magazine, your computer is the next target. Bryan Walsh has the story: ‘Coal, steel, oil — we think of these old-economy industries, and we picture pollution. Smoggy skies, fouled rivers, toxic waste.’ See, that’s it; that’s exactly what the left sees when they see coal, steel, and oil. They don’t see the Golden Gate Bridge. They don’t see all of the wonderful things that are made via steel and oil and coal. They don’t see cooled and heated houses. They don’t see houses. They don’t see electricity. They see smoggy skies, fouled rivers, and toxic waste. ‘As we make the transition to a new economy –‘ what transition to a new economy, Bryan? ‘We imagine that industrial pollution will become a thing of the past.’ See? Yes, why, there is perfection out there, why, we can have energy and plentiful supply just as we do now with zero pollution, zero. Nirvana. Utopia. These are supposedly smart people. No culture has ever existed where pollution doesn’t happen. ‘Industrial pollution will become a thing of the past.’
Anyway, ‘Mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players — they conjure images of spotless semiconductor factories and the eternal summer of Silicon Valley where the digital economy was born. But the tech industry has a dirty little secret: it has toxic waste of its own. Phones and computers contain dangerous metals like lead, cadmium and mercury.’ Of course, mercury is okay if it’s in your stupid lightbulbs. Mercury can ‘contaminate the air and water when those products are dumped. It’s called electronic waste, or e-waste, and the world produces a lot of it: 20 to 50 million tons a year, according to the UN — enough to load a train that would stretch around the world. The US is by far the world’s top producer of e-waste.’ Of course we are. We’re evil. ‘But much of it ends up elsewhere — specifically, in developing nations like China, India and Nigeria.’ Oh, yes. So, in addition to destroying ourselves, we are polluting the rest of the world. You see the formula here? You see the template? You see the narrative? You see the action line here? Everything liberals think of this country is — I just read four or five sentences out of TIME Magazine, basically we suck, we deserve to be cut down to size. Yes, we send our pollution, our e-waste to nations like China, India, and Nigeria, ‘to which rich countries have been shipping garbage for years. There the poor, often including children,’ are hardest hit.
They ‘dismantle dumped PCs and phones, stripping the components for the valuable — and toxic — metals contained inside. In the cities like the southern Chinese town of Guiyu, they work with little protection, melting down components and breathing in poisonous fumes. What can’t be recycled is simply dumped.’ I throw up my hands in frustration. (interruption) Yes, Mr. Snerdley? Well, Mr. Snerdley asked a somewhat relevant question. ‘How can we be the leader when we have no more manufacturing jobs?’ We are the leaders in consumin’. And so while all these products, many of them are made in China, they are exported from the ChiComs to us and we buy them, we use them up, and then we throw them away, and we send ’em back to the ChiComs, subjecting them to double jeopardy. They could die manufacturing these devices; they could die tearing them apart. But that’s not the point, Snerdley. The point of this story is, plasmas, LCDs, everything that makes life better, everything that enhances our quality of life and standard of living, the left suggests is sinful. In two short paragraphs here in TIME — and it goes on, the story is much longer than this — we get the full illustration and depiction of what this country is in the eyes of your average socialist. I’m sure he does, I’m sure he reuses a lot of these. I’m sure that he wrote his column on one of these deadly computers. But, you see, he’s sophisticated, and he’s smart, and he understands the danger, and therefore he’s permitted. But he’s also doing important work. He is a journalist. And as such, he is immune from the all the other restrictions and laws which might be forthcoming to limit our use of such devices, because his work is important.
We are killers. We are polluters. We are destroyers. This is how they see the country. And, by the way, one of them has secured the nomination of the Democrat Party’s presidential race. Barack Obama’s no different than this guy, Bryan Walsh writing for TIME Magazine. I’ll bet if I finish reading this story Bryan Walsh will suggest everybody learn to speak Chinese so that when they complain about us killing them, we’ll understand what they’re saying. ‘What’s certain,’ Mr. Walsh concludes here, after we’ve off-loaded the problem on poor nations, poor unsuspecting nations, ‘What’s certain is that if we don’t act, the e-waste will continue to pile up, as we buy more electronic devices and the lifespan of those products grows shorter. If we could see the dumps of Guiyu,’ the Chinese city that we’re destroying, ‘we might rethink the purchase of that new iPhone. ‘A lot of people may think electronic manufacturing is a clean industry, but it’s not,’ says Zhao. ‘It’s a dirty process.’ Just because we don’t see the dirt, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’ You know, I’m surprised TIME Magazine has any advertisers with gunk and garbage like this. They are literally running down and criticizing every American institution that counts for anything.