Reality Check 101

Like many cities across the country, Holland Michigan is in the clutches of a sustainability assault.  It is an assault because the efforts to define its energy future are being driven by the worldview, legal threats and resources of radical environmentalism.

 There is no doubt that as energy needs grow, municipalities must meet the demands in creative, flexible, safe, affordable and efficient ways.  But the United States has, in contradistinction to Europe, a very successful system in place for such things.  It rests on free enterprise, civil liberties, personal property rights and private innovation.  Michigan is not Germany or the Netherlands and Holland is not Mannheim or Copenhagen (Holland’s “Benchmark” cities).

Most Americans are not interested in, actually should be offended by, European Union-style central manipulation of their freedoms to choose toilets, room temperature, light bulbs or how to make it to work.  At the same time, they are not economically or environmentally suicidal or sadistic.  That is why genuinely free markets always work and socialism is always abusive and doomed to fail.

Like so many other Community Energy Plans (CEP’s), Holland’s is steeped in environmental socialism, autocratic market manipulation and false assumptions – all to be funded on the backs of tax payers.  If this sounds over the top, take time to work through the voluminous plan.

Here is an example:  “Successful implementation of the CEP requires an energy literate population supported by appropriate skills, resources and decision-making processes”.  [The implementation] “will ensure that thousands of individual decisions … will deliver [the plan’s] long term goals.”  Interpretation:  If environmentalists (Holland’s Sustainability Committee and the likes of the Sierra Club) control the tools and the process, Holland’s willing subjects will deliver; all the while believing they made up their own minds.  The CEP shamelessly purposes intensified indoctrination of our children through our schools.

There is more.  The “energy zoning” proposal specifically mentions using the idea to avoid unwanted competition.  Another section refers to citizens as members of “the collective”.  Yet another section tells the reader that community knowledge and energy must be “channeled” to where “it is needed”.  The greenhouse gas management recommendation includes using “Climate Reserve Tons (CRT;’s) – municipal cap and trade.  Finally, there are the so-called “transparency” labels and “retro-fit initiatives.  In the CEP as in others, transparency means private citizens opening their personal property choices to environmental loyalty examination by government.  Retro-fit is simply a sophisticated way to say “remodeling to standards of the ‘collective'”.

Everything in this push to save Mother Earth is predicated on a worldview that depicts man as ruthlessly “exploiting” supposed “scarce” resources, this in spite of massive evidence to the contrary.

Worst of all, the philosophy driving this CEP and others all over the world inadvertently elevates creation to a kind of mystically alive victim to whom we owe moral deference.  By doing so, that worldview denigrates our Creator.

God knew what he was doing when He arranged for the Earth’s resources to exist.  His intention was for mankind to responsibly develop, master and use all those resources.  By the time any particular resource begins to dwindle or become corrupted, the Designer of our abilities will have, if we humble ourselves before Him, already guided us to the next level.  If God is Master of His creation, His agenda for the environment’s future is the rule, not man’s intentions or abuses.  Scripture indicates that the environment is not fragile, ready to irrevocably slide into disaster at the hand of man, but is strong, self-renewing and robust because its Creator is strong renewing and intricately involved.

Man’s sin is not the use of God’s magnificent mineral gifts.  Creation was given to man for our sustenance, pleasure and advantage.  The two most egregious environmental sins are the idolatrous elevation of creation over its Creator and the ungratefulness of mankind who refuses to enjoy God’s freely-bestowed treasures as if he knows better than his God what is best.