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March 02, 2009
Madman John P. Holdren as Obama's Science Adviser
Obama's Biggest Radical
FrontPageMagazine.com ....for complete article
By Ben Johnson
When Barack Obama nominated John P. Holdren as his Science Adviser last December 20, the president-elect stated "promoting science isn’t just about providing resources" but "ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology." In nominating John Holdren, his words could scarcely have taken a more Orwellian ring.
Some critics have noted Holdren's penchant for making apocalyptic predictions that never come to pass, and categorizing all criticism of his alarmist views as not only wrong but dangerous.
What none has yet noted is that Holdren is a globalist who has endorsed "surrender of sovereignty" to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime" that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits.
He has castigated the United States as "the meanest of wealthy countries," written a justification of compulsory abortion for American women, advocated drastically lowering the U.S. standard of living, and left the door open to trying global warming "deniers" for crimes against humanity. Such is Barack Obama's idea of a clear-headed adviser on matters of scientific policy.
First Lab on the Left
All of these positions are consistent with a man who began his career as a "dissident scientist." Peter Collier remembers Holdren working by day at a national laboratory and by night writing for Ramparts, the intellectual journal of the New Left. Holdren has authored numerous books and journal articles with his mentors Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the infamous doomsayers who predicted overpopulation would force most of the world's population to perish during the 1980s "great die-off." Holdren has gone on to a distinguished academic career in his own right. A longtime professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Teresa Heinz Kerry used her late husband's tax-exempt billions to endow a chair at Harvard for Ehrlich's disciple; Holdren is now the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, where his (and her) ideas influence the next generation of policymakers. Holdren himself has a background in political "philanthropy," serving for 14 years on John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Board of Trustees, steering its grants to far-Left organizations. He also pursued the intersection of science and diplomacy by joining the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an organization founded during the Cold War by former nuclear scientist and fellow traveler Joseph Rotblat. Pugwash hewed to the Communist Party line and was subsequently feted by Czechslovakian and Polish Communist leaders.
The Neo-Malthusians
Holdren gave a clear indication of his philosophical views in the 1977 book Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich. [1] In its pages, the authors noted, "The neo-Malthusiasn view proposes...population limitation and redistribution of wealth." They concluded, "On these points, we find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp" (p. 954).
Economist Thomas Malthus is one of the most literally anti-human theorists in human history. He viewed overpopulation as the fount of all woe, but one which could be staunched with enough blood. In "An Essay on the Principle of Population" Malthus wrote,
"All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons...if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use...and court the return of the plague."
Like their intellectual forebear, Holdren and the Ehrlichs proposed their own acceptable sacrifice to the environment.
Compulsory Abortion for American Women
The trio prescribed a rigidly enforced, government-imposed limit of two children per family. Holdren and the Ehrlichs maintained "there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated." Hiding behind the passive voice, they note, "it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." (Emphasis added.) To underscore they mean business, they conclude,
"If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" (pp. 837-838).
Moreover, if the United States government refuses to take proper measures, they authorize the United Nations to take compelling force.
"A Comprehensive Planetary Regime"
Holdren believed a world government might play a moderate role in the future: setting and enforcing appopriate population levels, taxing and redistributing the world's wealth, controlling the world's resources, and operating a standing World Army.
Such a comprehensive Plenetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable...not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes...The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade...The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits...the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. (p. 943.)
Part of the power wielded by this "Regime" would be in the form of a World Army. The trio wrote that the United States must destroy all its nuclear arsenal. But this would not render us defenseless against Communist aggression.
"Security might be provided by an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force...The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization" (p. 917
Far from distancing himself from this wooly-headed notion as he matured, Holdren explicitly reaffirmed it in his 1995 Nobel Prize acceptance speech on behalf of Pugwash, declaiming,
"The post-Cold-War world needs a more powerful United Nations, probably with a standing volunteer force -- owing loyalty directly to the UN rather than to contingents from individual nations." As recently as last January, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) the world needs "a universal prohibition on nuclear weapons, coupled with means to ensure confidence in compliance."
U.S. Blood and Treasure for the UN
The redistribution of blood and treasure were high priorities for Holdren, et. al. They advised the "de-development of overdeveloped countries...should be given top priority" (p. 926), and such nations -- e.g., the United States and the developed West -- should "divert their excess productivity into helping the poorer people of the world rather than exploiting them" (p. 931).
How much wealth redistribution would be sufficient? The authors favorably cited a proposal that "the rich nations devote 20 percent of their GNPs for ten or fifteen years to the task of population control and development of the poor countries." They comment, "We believe an effort of this magnitude is not only justified but essential." (p. 925). Reaffirming the goal in his 1995 Nobel speech, he stretched this to a program "sustained over several decades." (Emphasis added.)
He detailed the mechanism for global socialism just two years ago. In a February 2007 report of which he was a coordinating lead author, urges the United Nations to undertake "a global framework" that is "more comprehensive and ambitious" than the Kyoto Protocol. Holdren states the UN must mandate
"A requirement for the early establishment of a substantial price on carbon emissions in all countries, whether by a carbon tax or a tradable permit approach."
Although he prefers a global carbon tax presided over by a United Nations-strength IRS, he is open to a stringent global cap-and-trade program. However, that program must contain:
"A means for transferring some of the revenue produced by carbon taxes upon, or permits purchased by, countries and consumers with high incomes and high per capita emissions to countries and consumers with low incomes and low per capita emissions" (pp. 70-72).
Every Man a Duke
His thirst for economic redistribution (read: socialism) is not limited to foreign affairs. In a chapter of Ecoscience entitled "Changing American Institutions," Holdren and the Ehrlichs call for a "considerably more equitable distribution of wealth and income" in the United States, offering in passing,
"Possibly this would be achieved by some formal mechanism" (p. 875). Might that mechanism perchance be government force?
The text praises an economist's plan to limit American achievement at a $100,000 maximum annual salary, or just under $350,000 in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation (p. 850). Such would be the most socialistic proposal made in modern times. Even Huey Long allowed men a million dollars a year, in 1934.
"The Meanest of Wealthy Countries"
But the intervening years have not been pleasant ones for such as Holdren. In a 1995 article co-written with Paul Ehrlich, he lists among the factors preventing a "sustainable" world such "Underlying human frailties" as "Greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness." These, he expounds, "collectively have been elevated by conservative political doctrine and practice (above all in the United States in 1980 92) to the status of a credo."
Making You Poorer For Your Own Good
The function of such welfare is twofold: to enrich citizens of the Global South and to impoverish Americans for their own good. In a 2006 paper, Holdren noted that reducing "GDP per person" -- that is, cutting your personal wealth -- also reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions. True, it is "not a lever that most people would want to use to reduce emissions"; "People are not getting rich as fast as they think, however, if GDP growth is being achieved at the expense of the environmental underpinnings of well-being"
P.S.: He's Frequently Wrong
To understand the impact of those words, one must consider the source. In addition to his extremist, globalist views, Holdren is frequently mistaken in his pronouncements in his alleged field of specialization, environmental science -- often tremendously so. As with Ehrlich, he has been predicting global catastrophes since the 1970s, beginning with the global cooling scare. Modern critics have noted his role in Paul Ehrlich's famous wager with Julian Simon: Holdren chose five metals that he believed would be more expensive in ten years' time due to scarcity, while Simon predicted each would be less expensive. A decade hence, Ehrlich's group was $1,000 poorer (a chance to reduce their carbon footprint, perhaps). Holdren advised Al Gore on An Inconvenient Truth, a film that by one scholar's count contained 10 pages of falsehoods, exaggerations, distortions, and ignored evidence.
And there is the little matter of his prediction a billion people will die within the next 11 years.
Wild Thing's comment.........
Does being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, Obama has his own Mad Scientist on board. The thing is even if this man is nuts he is dangerous now since he is in our government thank s to the Muslilm in the Oval Office. What the heck! Did this picking this man come from Soros or what! ?!
Science magazine reported that John Holdren, is a professional environmental judgment day doomsayer. John Holdren is the ultimate example of the impurities that have recently flooded universities and academies throughout the Western world.
Obama himself is supportive of witholding life saving medical aid from an unwanted living baby, so it goes right along with that for Obama to appoint someone who would advocate mandatory abortion.
I really resent the waste of our money that will ensue with these cranks in government positions of influence.
It is a good thinig we can learn about our enemy within. I want to know our enemy better then they know themselves.
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at March 2, 2009 02:40 AM
Comments
Saddam Hussien, Hitler and others of their ilk had Top "Science Advisers". They developed new ways of killing people they do not like.
"would you like to super-size your gas attack meal, Sir"
This new guy is very scary.
Posted by: Steve Gaston, American-American at March 2, 2009 07:52 AM
The best Hollywood casting agents could not put together a cast of perverted characters to equal Obama's Administration. I expect to soon see Ward Churchill and Charles Manson with cabinet positions. The only good thing about all of this is that it shows America who the absolutely craziest and most dangerous people are by getting them all in one place, the Obama Administration.
Posted by: TomR at March 2, 2009 11:26 AM
Hitlers was Herr Doktor Mengele, looks like Rham 'the Ferry', latched on to a real winner for Hussein. This guy thinks all American Women should have abortions, we should devolve the country to let the rest of the world catch up. Malthusism should be the norm, another word for Eugenics.
We have got to get rid of this guy.
Posted by: Mark at March 2, 2009 01:45 PM
Tom R,
It couldn't have been put any better. Now I don't have anything to comment. Very good, keep commenting and kudos to you for an excellent comment.
Bob A.
Posted by: Bob A at March 2, 2009 07:20 PM
