Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them [Hardcover]

Steven Milloy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2009

Everywhere you look, everything is going green. But soon, this trendy green lifestyle wont be voluntaryit will be mandatory. Milloy shows how the government will soon have you under its green thumb.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Big Brother Has Turned Green

The environmental movement has cultivated a warm and fuzzy public image, but behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" lies a dark agenda. The Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life.

In this stunning exposé, Steve Milloy unveils the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation.

Steamrolling nearly all opposition with its apocalyptic predictions of environmental doom, the Green movement has gained influence throughout American society--from schools and local planning boards to the biggest corporations in the country. And their plans are much more ambitious than you think, says Milloy. What the Greens really seek, with increasing success, is to dictate the very parameters of your daily life--where you can live, what transportation you can use, what you can eat, and even how many children you can have.

Citing the tactics and goals of Green groups as explained by their own activists and leaders, Green Hell demonstrates:

* How Green pressure campaigns threaten the safety of your home and your car, and public health overall
* Why the election of President Obama portends a giant leap forward for coercive Green policies
* Why Greens obstruct the use of all forms of energy--even the renewable sources they tout to the public
* How wealthy Green elites stand to profit fabulously from the restrictions and regulations they seek to impose on the rest of us
* How Green pressure campaigns are hamstringing the military and endangering our national security
* Why big business is not only knuckling under to the Greens, but is aggressively promoting the green agenda to the detriment of its own stockholders
* What you can do to help stop the great Green machine

A one-of-a-kind, comprehensive takedown of the entire environmental movement, Green Hell will open your eyes to a looming threat to our economy, our civil liberties, and the entire American way of life.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Green Hell

"Green Hell explains why Americans can't afford to fall for Al Gore's `the debate is over' line on global warming. While we're all for the environment, Green Hell explains why we need to oppose the environmentalists."
--Fred Barnes, Executive Editor, the Weekly Standard

"Green Hell is the `inconvenient truth' on extremist, growth-killing environmentalism. A must-read for those interested in keeping America free and prosperous."
--Steve Forbes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes

"Regardless of whether you believe global warming is a fraud, the fact is that the current depression, the past spike in oil prices, and the coming technology of electric cars are all going to solve whatever problem exists. Liberals want to use climate change as an excuse to take over the economy and regulate everything and this book exposes their plans."
--Dick Morris, FOX News commentator and former political consultant to Bill Clinton

"This book describes why the world can't afford to fall for global warming alarmism and environmental hysteria. Steve Milloy shows how to avoid the environmentalists' vision of our future."
--VACLAV KLAUS, President of the European Union and President of the Czech Republic

"Free market capitalism is still the best path to prosperity. Green Hell is a must-read for anyone who wants to keep America on that path and away from Soviet-style command-and-control environmentalism."
--Larry Kudlow, Host, CNBC's The Kudlow Report

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (March 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596985852
• ISBN-13: 978-1596985858
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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378 of 479 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Political Left Then and Now, March 19, 2009

By 

Fritz R. Ward "dayhiker" (Crestline, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Hardcover)

It was not that long ago that the main complaint of left wing critics of the American economy was that it produced poverty and appalling social conditions. "Capitalism" was simply a code word for the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer. And it was certainly true that the "rich" did get richer, often by improving the life of their customers. Rockefeller did not make money by raising the price of oil; he made money by lowering it and improving the standard of living for millions. But, while the original critique was flawed, the sentiment was one of generating wealth for average Americans. Even as late as 1962 when Michael Harrington wrote The Other America this sentiment still dominated left wing politics. How things have changed.

Today, the political left is "green" and their main complaint is not that capitalism produces poverty. They know capitalism produces affluence. And they oppose it. Americans, they complain, consume "too much" and need to make do with less, because the planet is threatened by a whole host of potential ills that require we act now, regardless of the cost. Global warming is only the latest of their concerns, having replaced the completely discredited 'population bomb' threatened in the late 1960s. And their proposed solutions, outlined in their own words, are truly frightening. The old left proposals did not produce affluence, but the new "green" proposals will surely accomplish their goal of impoverishing people if they have their way and increasingly, as Green Hell author Steve Milloy warns, they are.

Green Hell is not a book which discusses in any detail the "science" behind global warming or the actual effects of pesticides, the relative benefits of nuclear power v. coal, solar etc. Readers who are interested in such topics will find an abundance of information on the author's website, Junkscience.com. But what this book does, and does very well, is to outline what "Greens" want for the rest of us, their proposals and what they will cost in terms of freedom and even basic necessities, how they "sell" their ideas, and their hypocrisy. It is a frightening book in many respects, and very well documented with 36 pages of small print end notes.

Before describing some of the Green proposals, one should ask who the "Greens" are. Simply put, they are the leaders of a variety of organizations such as the National Resource Defense Fund, Rainforest Action Network, the US Climate Action Partnership, and a variety of similar groups with non-profit status but which nonetheless bring in millions of dollars from companies with "green products" that they cannot sell on a free market. These companies hope to make money the old fashioned way, by government regulations mandating their products. They also get money from various idealistic individual donors and no small amount of government tax dollars in the form of various grants. Milloy, of course, recognizes that these groups do share identical agendas, and he is certainly not creating a "green" bogeyman. Indeed, he has a great deal of fun discussing the travails of Seattle where one green group will use a variety of lawsuits and public actions to limit the building of new freeways, in favor of "rail" transport, while another green group will work to oppose the building of rail. But the net of effects of all these actions is to lower everyone's standard of living all in the name of an ideology that is basically anti human.

So what are the "green" proposals that Milloy documents in this book. We know several of them. Drive less. Use "smart" "energy-efficient" technology, limit your "carbon footprint" and a host of other platitudes that sound so wonderful you have to wonder how anyone could oppose this sort of thing. Who, after all, is opposed to "smart" and "optimal" lifestyles, "choice" in transportation, and limiting emissions. Well, quite a few people when you read the actual proposals, which is why so many of the green proposals are so vague in the way they are phrased for public consumption. Indeed, as Milloy points out, the manipulation of language is one of the great triumphs of green political activism. But when you examine the details of these proposals, it quickly becomes clear that "drive less" actually imposes significant costs on people, especially when the proposed alternatives are fuel cell buses which cost a mere 3 million dollars a piece, break down frequently, are costly to repair, and do not get you where you need to go. And why not take fewer vacations? Carbon hog that I am, I will leave to go hike Yosemite after I finish this review, but many greens favor centrally planned communities where I need never drive a car, and will certainly not have access to one when I try to visit other places. Virtually no one is talking about the significant impositions of freedom these plans will cost, and few (of the proponents anyway) are honest about rather mundane costs in taxes, both direct and indirect, to subsidize these plans. What's a few thousand per family when we are saving the planet?

But the Green proposals do not stop with simply limiting personal freedom and cutting back what people can afford to do. As Milloy documents, they are also busy creating a water crisis by limiting supplies to fresh water. They were markedly successful in California by drastically cutting back the water supply of the California Aquaduct from the Delta River. The ostensible concern was the protection of the 3 inch Delta smelt, but the reality was that the Fish and Wildlife Service found no evidence the smelt was threatened. Oh well. But southern California now faces mandatory water rationing. And rather than honestly admit that the problem is caused by a political intrusion into the water market, these same Greens are blaming drought and our inability to "conserve." So naturally enough, emboldened by their sucess in California, these same green activists are busy opposing desalinization plants along the coast and limiting access to the Great Lakes, where 82% of the fresh water in North America is found. The goal of "conservation" is so important that these activists will actively work to create a crisis event if none exists to further their agenda.

One could go on and on. Perhaps the most frightening element of the Green agenda Milloy documents in this book is the extent to which it costs human lives. From preventing the use of DDT to fight malaria, and other insecticides to combat west nile virus (for which, he now notes, CDC is limited to suggesting century old proposals) to preventing the use of adequate fire retardants, Green proposals cost lives, and the numbers here are growing. Milloy does of course recognize that there is no free lunch. Pesticides are not entirely risk free, though neither is getting up in the morning. But used properly, there is not a single documented case of a child dying from pesticides. There are many cases of diseases born by pests harming children. But the green analysis of protecting our kids by virtually banning pesticides in schools (by the simple expedient of regulating their use to the point of making them too expensive to use on a regular basis) simply does not make any sort of cost benefit comparison in terms of human lives. And the costs of their proposals are enormous.

All of which makes the hypocrisy of the very wealthy green activists even more galling. We all know that Al Gore uses far more energy than virtually anyone else in Tennessee. But what Milloy details is that Gore is hardly an isolated case. Many of the uber wealthy green supporters, including the ubiquitous T. Boone Pickens and Google founders Paige and Brin are equally keen to raise prices for all of us, but quite happy to continue to waste energy themselves. Even President Obama, after lecturing Americans on the campaign trail to give up the 72 degree thermostat setting has found the oval office a bit too cool for his taste, and has actually increased his energy consumption. "Conservation for thee and not for me," would seem to encompass his view of the "leadership" he promised on this issue. Indeed, the World Wildlife Fund, which is forever urging the rest of us to give up our consumerism, is not above offering exclusive wildlife viewing trips for the uberwealthy at $64,500 a pop on private jets. Milloy took great pleasure in using the WWF's own carbon footprint calculator to find the "cost" of the trip. It should not surprise anyone that the "costs" exceed the yearly energy allotment many greens would like to see you and I live with for the rest of our lives.

There is far too much in this book to cover in one review, but the one topic which Milloy did not discuss is how today's "greens" are destroying one of the great accomplishments of modern civilization: the conservation movement. There is a great deal of irony in this. Modern green leaders like to pretend that they are following in the footsteps of Muir, Pinchot, and others, but the reality is if they have their way, we will all lose some of our most precious heritage. One of the great accomplishments of capitalism was to make food so widely available that land could be put aside for aesthetic, and especially recreational uses. In the early 20th century, national parks, monuments and state parks were created to promote recreation and give people an escape from civilization. But the new Green agenda changes that dynamic drastically. In the first instance, it inhibits travel for recreation. But beyond that, the anti human aspect of green thought prevents enjoying these resources to their fullest. Muir once argued no one had fully experienced life until they had camped under the Sequoias. But under pressure from modern activists with dubious scientific... Read more ›

218 of 288 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Green Hell right on the mark!, March 23, 2009

By 

Robert Clark (Monroe, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Hardcover)

At one time in my life I was proud to be an educated scientist (honors degree in Physical Chemistry with advanced studies in large scale thermodynamic systems), but suddenly to see so-called UN experts with no college degrees at all, folks with degrees in civil engineering or others with no backgrounds in science at all touted as CLIMATE EXPERTS going around calling for 3 trillion dollars in carbon taxes and bogus claims about climate change and global warming, makes me ashamed of the SELL OUT OF AMERICAN SCIENCE to GREED.

Large grant suppliers give massive amounts of money to colleges and universities to pay off these so-called scientists to swear by the CO2 caused global warming when in fact they all know that it is impossible for that to happen at 380 parts per million. It would take 500 times that concentration for CO2 to even come close to 10% of the greenhouse gas effect of water vapor that occurs each night as the sun goes down to prevent the nighttime temperatures from going to 65 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Steve Milloy sounds a wake up call for all Americans here! If you want to wake up someday and find that some Federal Judge just shut down the electricity to your home and business because the natural gas power plant that supplies it to you has somehow ENDANGERED some useless critter somewhere, then go back asleep! Then you can wake up the next month and find your brownout ridden electrical service is costing you 10 times what it did in 2008!

76 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Environmentalism exposed: a review of Green Hell, April 7, 2009

By 

Benson Shays (Out West) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Hardcover)

[..]
Contemporary environmentalists maintain a respectable popular image. They fashion themselves as citizens of the world who share "a concern for the conservation and improvement of the environment". This popular image, however, is quite cartoonish and serves as a smokescreen to disguise their often radical socialist ideologies and extreme political ends, according to author Steve Milloy.

After reading Milloy's latest offering, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, you could safely conclude that modern environmentalism is a regressive, anti-growth, anti-life movement whose end goal is totalitarianism. If you're skeptical of such a harsh charge, read the environmentalists' own literature, as Milloy has done exhaustively, and see for yourself.

The truth about environmentalists becomes evident once you recognize their preferred method of political activism. Whatever is in question their answer is always more restrictions on consumption and excessive government intervention.

Instead of advocating real solutions to the disasters they claim are imminent, "greens," as Milloy dubs them, typically pursue only those solutions which hurt your standard of living and require you to submit to coercive, sometimes-dangerous public policies. This is the reoccurring green tactic documented throughout the book.

For example, after drumming up panic over alleged water shortages what answers did the greens offer? Forced conservation in the form of "a nationwide moratorium on withdrawals from, and diversions of rivers [...] groundwater use restrictions [...] and redirecting federal efforts away from designing new water development projects [...]" Now what about efforts that could actually increase the supply of freshwater such as desalination plants? When a California community opted to build one such plant to provide more water local environmental groups argued that the plant would "increase energy use, kill sea life, encourage sprawl, privatize water, and waste money." Similarly, importing freshwater from countries with bountiful supplies is opposed by groups like the Sierra Club because commercial water exports have "serious ecological, trade, and human rights ramifications." What exactly those are is unknown.

But water rationing is small potatoes. The defining issue for the modern environmental movement is anthropogenic global warming. After all, global warming "is the most urgent environmental crisis of our time," according to Greenpeace. If this is so, how do the greens suggest we address global warming? Do we pursue viable, emissions-free energy options like nuclear power? Nope. We litigate those out of existence and allow utility companies to remotely control the amount of electricity private homes can use. Better yet, say the greens, we implement a carbon rationing scheme in which the federal government will regulate how much carbon dioxide businesses and individuals can emit.

The most abhorrent characteristic of the greens, however, is their view of humans. We are a burden on mother earth and the fewer of us there are the better. It is this cheerful view of human life that leads people like population biologist Paul Ehrlich to suggest population control as a means to protect the environment. If only the technology was available, Ehrlich and co. would like to add temporarily-sterilizing chemicals to the world's food and water supplies. In fact, Ehrlich decried this inability to sterilize entire populations as a "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research."

Fortunately, not all hope is lost. Green Hell ends with dozens of ways to get involved and prevent an environmentalist takeover in America. While you have to read the book find out all the details, the general theme is, get involved and voice your opinion. The environmentalist movement is well-organized and composed of dedicated activists. If we want to stop them we must be as well.

In summary, Steve Milloy does a fantastic job of busting the greenies PR campaign and exposing their foolish social engineering schemes. Green Hell is a master resource on the environmental movement that every freedom-loving American should own.