As examples of how “‘green’ has become a religion … un-quantified and undefined,” the CORE leader relates the stories of two women, one in the urban United States and the other in a poverty-stricken village in Africa. The relatively affluent Chicago woman was complaining about the price of gas. Asked if she would be in favor of opening an oilfield about the size of O’Hare airport on a small part of the isolated Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), she adamantly objected because of “harm to the environment.” Asked if she had been there, was going there, or even knew anyone else who might be interested in ANWR, she answered “No,” but still refused to consider such drilling to gain an ability to use domestic oil thus giving less control to foreign sources and ultimately lowering her fuel prices.
An ocean away the second woman was mother of a child sick of malaria and very likely to die. She was admonished to use DDT to rid her hut and her village of the Anopheles mosquito. While this would probably not save her baby, at least it would prevent similar occurrences in the future. She refused. Why? Even though approximately one million African children die of the disease that can be controlled by applications of DDT, an insecticide so safe that a human can eat a teaspoon a day without harm, this poverty-stricken woman has been sufficiently filled with environmental extremist propaganda that she will trade her family’s and fellow villagers’ lives rather than rick using DDT.
“Coal and natural gas are the new civil rights battleground,” says Innis, “because without these sources, ‘we’ cannot enjoy this great society.”
Regarding the oil man constantly on television promoting wind energy from Canada to Texas, Innis is anything but equivocal: “T.B. Pickens is part of a conspiracy against decency.”
Photo of Roy Innis: Elijah Childs
