Remember when freon from air conditioners was said to be destroying the ozone layer? A huge “ozone hole” had been appearing over the South Pole. It had been doing so forever, it seems. While wags were suggesting that penguins should be fitted for sunglasses, greedy, clever people were at work. They claimed “irreversible damage” was occurring to the “precious atmosphere” because of freon.
Before the “ozone hole” scare, we used to be able to go to a K-Mart and buy cans of freon for a dollar to recharge our car’s air conditioning system. When stores and businesses needed to recharge their air conditioners, chillers, and freezers they simply bought freon and put it where it was needed.
The “ozone hole” was said to prove there was “man-made destruction of our fragile atmosphere”. Enough legislators suddenly believed in it that over-the-counter purchases of freon were stopped. Now, the same amount of freon in the .99 cent can costs fifteen dollars. The cost of freon hasn’t changed, but the profit margins have gone through the roof.
Those profit margins funded a generation of “environmentally concerned” groups. Since those high prices have been institutionalized, many people can no longer afford to be comfortable.
Those same margins also allowed huge bribes, oops, “campaign contributions” to be made. Since most elections are close, an extra few hundred thousand dollars makes the difference between winning and losing. The “ozone profiteers”, mostly freon makers, put their candidates in office.
That success allowed the big thinkers on the Left to go farther. Disregarding volcanoes, forest fires, and dust storms, they insisted that “It is the duty of all mankind to clean up all the land, air, and water to protect future generations.”
Now, the lies have reached even more gargantuan proportions. “It is the duty of all mankind to maintain the temperature of the entire planet.”
Babylon, in all its glory, never thought of lies so big.
