Sustainable coercion

I took my wife to a meeting of local company representatives today in Beloit. The subject was Wisconsin's "Green Tier" law. This was first signed into law by Tommy Thompson with a five-year sunset - and made permanent by Doyle in 2009. It's a facet of the UN's Agenda 21. The local Tea Party tipped me off to this meeting, and I thought there would be an opportunity to oppose these initiatives. Little did I know.

"Green Tier" is a law administered by the Wisconsin DNR. What it does is "grease the skids" for companies and communities that drink the sustainability Kool-Aid and commit to approved environmental control procedures. These organizations can have environmental "incidents" that would result in instant legal action by the DNR, but if they confess their sins immediately, they get off with no fine or other punishment.

I am struck with the similarity to medieval indulgences, where people could confess their sins in advance, pay a fee, and receive absolution in advance of the actual act.

A company can sign up for an expensive environmental control procedure that is equivalent to an ISO approved process - note that the DNR does not charge for this, it's environmental consultants getting all the money. They get approvals for permits in days that take unbelievers months, if not years - and, of course, they get to skip the sanctions for spills and emissions that would be applied if they had not been confirmed in the Church of Green - as long as they clean it up in 45 days. Unbelievers get fined, if caught, whether or not they clean up the mess promptly.


Environmentalism is as much a religion as Scientology or Islam, and as vicious as either in its' persecution of infidels and apostates.

One thing that I noted from the presentation by the DNR guy was that companies in Wisconsin need to get permission, evidently, to launch any new products or expand production lines. I was naive enough to think that if you owned a commercial building and had a business license that you could go ahead and produce X, and then Y without asking for permission. Stupid me.

All in attendance except for us four Tea Partiers had already drunk the Kool-Aid. I can see the attraction for big companies - compliance costs are tax-deductible, and passed on to the consumer in any case - and they get preferential treatment for permits and avoid paying for violations.

A handout had bar graphs of emissions of various pollutants by Green Tier participants (200 in Wisconsin) versus non-participants (thousands). The graphs were in total tons of emissions for each group.

Not surprising was that the aggregate emissions from 200 organizations are a lot lower than those of a few thousand - but presented so as to convince us that "Green Tier" is greatly reducing pollution.