RUSH: I have here, ladies and gentlemen, a full-fledged story at the Huffing and Puffington Post: “WWF Living Planet Report Warns That By 2030 Two Earths Will Be Needed To Sustain Our Lifestyles.” There is a single reason that they give this warning. And while I read this I want you to ponder what that single reason might be. Why might we need two earths by 2030? That’s just 18 years from now.
“Humans will need two Earths to support our lifestyles by 2030 because we are draining the worldÂ’s resources so quickly, a new report has warned. Produced by the World Wildlife Fund, the Zoological Society of London, the Global Footprint Network and the European Space Agency, the 2012 Living Planet Report measures humansÂ’ ecological footprint on the planet. At the moment, the picture is bleak, according to Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International, with resources being drained 50 percent faster than they can be replenished. He said: ‘WeÂ’re all familiar with the stories of what weÂ’re doing to Planet Earth, the ways in which weÂ’re changing the climate, depleting the worldÂ’s fisheries, destroying the worldÂ’s forests.'”
None of that’s true. There is more forest area in this country than at the time of the founding. Each time that stat is mentioned, the left goes nuts. But here we get to the real reason this is happening. Mr. Leape, Jim Leape, director general, WWF International, says, “The starting point for reducing our impact on the planet is to end our love affair with fossil fuels — ‘the energy technology of the 20th century’ — and switch to renewable energy.” That shift alone will make a huge difference on our footprint on the planet. So once again an all-out assault on fossil fuels and oil. You know, it could be argued — no, I don’t think it is arguable. Life on earth has never been better, has it? For more people on earth, life has never been better. It’s never been more full of opportunity. It’s under assault, of course, but the life expectancy, medicines, never been better. This is typical bunk.
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RUSH: I want to beg your indulgence for just for a second. I kind of glossed over this story that’s on the Huffing and Puffington Post from the World Wildlife Fund. I want to go back to it for just a couple of points. And I want you to stop when I read this opening sentence. I want you to realize that the people behind this are dead serious. “Humans will need two Earths to support our lifestyles [in 18 years] because we are draining the worldÂ’s resources so quickly,” according to a new report.
Now, to you and I, this is pure bunk. It’s insane. But college professors, high school teachers all over the country will likely pick this up, and it will become part of the daily lesson plan. It will be added to, just like Lexis and Nexis is a massive database of news stories, and whatever is published today on AP, say about me, will end up in LexisNexis and will be there forever. Lazy journalists will cite it, go back and look, “Oh, a story about Limbaugh? What else is there.” They’ll find stuff that’s been in the database for 45 years and they’ll run it. Same thing here. Need two earths. I want you to stop and think how literally ridiculous this is, but these people, and they are full-fledged liberals, leftists, whatever, they mean it.
It is another in a never-ending series of crises that the people of this country are inundated with practically every day now in the media. Now we’re going to need two earths. It’s all about climate change. It’s all about global warming. It’s all about our sinful, unacceptable use of oil and fossil fuels. We are destroying the planet. We are using up this planet’s resources so quickly we’re gonna need two planets to handle our needs. These predictions have been made for over a hundred years, that we’re running out of resources, that we’re gonna deplete the world of natural resources, minerals, food, and none of it has ever been true. None of it.
They have a statistic in this story that is just patently ridiculous. We are using 50% more resources than the earth can provide. That is not possible. If the earth can’t provide the resources, how can we use them? The simple fact of the matter is, the earth is providing the resources. Paul Ehrlich back in the seventies predicted that by now there would be war, pestilence, famine because of too many billions of people. We have shot past his prediction. We have not run out of anything. We continue to produce enough and more for what everybody needs. Look at the growing countries of China and India. Without getting into why, their economies are growing. People there are buying cars. They’re driving cars. They’re buying gasoline. They’re not having any problem finding gasoline. If they can afford it, it’s available. We’re not running out.
Whatever the demands, economic or otherwise, lifestyle, they are met, be it food or what have you. Now, you might be able to go to a country and say people are starving, but that’s not because the earth is being depleted. That’s because there’s a dictatorship likely starving his people in order to maintain power. Or you have a socialist or communist government which has no idea how to create wealth and doesn’t really want to. The only thing in short supply in the world is capitalism. We have an unequal, unfair distribution of capitalism. There simply isn’t enough of it. There’s way too much socialism in the world. There’s way too much Marxism. There’s way too much communism. There is way too much dictatorship, which, by the way, is the way humanity, for the most part, has lived since we first began walking the earth.
Human bondage is the story of human civilization. That is one of the things that is meant by American exceptionalism. Not that we’re better than anybody else, but that we are the first country to codify that freedom comes via our creation by God. It is innate in us. It does not come from other men, governments, people, what have you. That led to the greatest country in the history of humanity. The greatest standard of living. The greatest upward mobility lifestyle opportunity. Superpower status. This country to this day is blamed for whatever these people at the World Wildlife Fund find wrong on the earth. We’re too big. We’re stealing. Obama believes this.
“We’re stealing all those resources. The earth is actually losing its resources, Mr. Limbaugh. The United States is greedy and selfish and is stealing from all of these poor people and that’s why there are poor people.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re discovering more oil. There is more oil available for use in the United States than there is in Saudi Arabia. And that’s not me saying it. That’s people involved in the oil industry, and more than one group and more than one company. These people are wacko nuts. But they believe this stuff. And they teach this stuff. And their students end up believing this.
To show you how tough the challenge is, before the bottom-of-the-hour break I said the fact of the matter is, life has never been better on earth than it is today. And even Dawn frowned at me as though she didn’t believe it. I know why. Because she thinks her country’s going down the tubes, and it is. But even at that, compared to the rest of the world, we are still what Reagan called the shining city on a hill. That’s what we’re trying to save, by the way, in getting rid of this current administration. But by any measure, the amount of food — how in the world can you have an obesity problem in the United States if the world, if the earth doesn’t provide the resources? If there’s a shortage of things needed for the people to eat, drink, what have you, how can this be? How can 88 million people afford not to work in this country? They can afford not to work because the ones who do work see enough of their income siphoned off to be redistributed to these people.
Life expectancy, overall health, compared to ten years ago, 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, nobody, nobody can argue that in economic terms it was better 50, 100, 150, 200 years ago, a thousands years. The case cannot be made by any practical measure. But we’re caught up in what’s happening to us at present in our country politically, and so when you say life has never been better, people scratch their heads, “I don’t know, Rush,” because we’re fearing losing this great place that we have. But that’s the only reason. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not being Pollyanish here. All I’m doing is refuting the absolute hate speech that this article is and others like it. Gonna need two earths in 20 years the way we’re depleting? These people have never been right in any of their predictions, from Paul Ehrlich on, they’ve never been right. And all this is is another branch of the global warming climate movement.
They’re getting more extreme and more radical because people now realize it’s a hoax, don’t care about it, not as interested in it, and not willing to give up freedom and income in order to save the planet because more and more people realize it’s not possible to save the planet anyway by giving up your income or by buying a different kind of car. These people are looking more and more ridiculous each and every day. But to young skulls full of mush, why, this stuff gets soaked up, it gets believed, young idealist utopians think that there’s something to this, drastic changes in lifestyle are needed to save the planet, save the country, save this. Everybody wants to believe that we’re in the midst of a catastrophe and a crisis. It’s a natural characteristic of human nature. But the dead giveaway here is the starting point for reducing our impact on the planet. See, we are the reason the planet’s dying. But it’s not. The planet isn’t dying.
We are not depleting the planet. There are more trees now than are needed because of companies like Weyerhaeuser. If you’re in the tree business, what do you need? Trees. They plant them left and right. They plant far more than they ever chop down. The starting point for reducing our impact on the planet is to end our love affair with fossil fuels, the energy technology of last century. So once again a senseless, insane, unintelligent, dumb, stupid assault on oil. Oil destroying the planet. And our use of oil is destroying the planet. And you say, “Rush, why do these people hate oil?” It’s not that they hate oil. It’s that they have successfully demonized it to the point that it will allow them to assert more control over all of our lives and dictate our behavior. Give them more power. Take from us more of our money. That’s all this is about.
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RUSH: You know what the real crisis is in this country? You know what the real catastrophe is in this country? It’s not global warming. It’s not that we’re gonna need two earths in 18 years. It’s none of this crap. The real crisis in this country is out-of-control spending that is destroying the United States private sector, because the solution to the world’s problems is the United States of America continuing to lead the world as a bastion of freedom. The United States is the solution to the world’s problems, a capitalistic, free market, entrepreneurial pursuit of excellence, United States of America, is the solution to the world’s problems. But with somebody like Barack Obama and his Democrat Party in charge, the United States will not solve anything, including our own problems. Our own problems are being made worse, are being amplified.
Our country is going through a transformation where not only will we no longer be the solution to the rest of the world’s problems, we will not be able to solve our own. And that’s what has to change. Not our use of oil. Not our use of fossil fuels. Not our use of natural gas. We don’t have to get rid of airplanes. We don’t have get rid of cars. We don’t have to start driving around with things powered by batteries. We don’t have to do one thing the environmentalist wackos say. What we have to do is get rid of liberals and socialists from positions of power who want to dictate their way of life to everyone else. That’s the catastrophe. That’s the crisis. That’s the biggest problem the world faces, is the end of the United States of America as the lone outpost of freedom, guidance for greatness, pursuit of excellence, and happiness.
That’s why everybody, the rest of the world, wants to come here, if not to live, but to go to our schools, or to visit our hospitals, or to visit our theme parks, or whatever. And many do want to live here. That’s the challenge we face, is reasserting the traditions and institutions that led to and defined the singular greatness of this country, which is all under assault. These idiots say that we’re using 50% more resources than the earth can provide. Logically that’s not possible. If the earth can’t provide the resources, how can we use any of it, much less 50% more. If you’ve got a cup of sugar, how can you use two cups? If all you’ve got’s one cup, how can you use two?
The real problem is that we are spending 50% more money than we have, if not more. We’re maybe spending a hundred percent or 200% more money than we have, in large part because we’re giving it away to Looney Tunes like these people at the World Wildlife Fund through research grants to come up with studies to tell us that in 18 years, we’re gonna need two planets to sustain us. And they are serious! These people are true believers. Ten years ago, ladies and gentlemen, the great Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental scam artist, the former Vice President Algore, claimed that we only had ten years. We only had ten years to reverse global warming. And then it was over.
Now, in those ten years, others have come along and said we’ve got 20, we’ve got five, we’ve got 15 years. Others have come along, “It’s too late now, there’s nothing we can do.” They’ve been all over the place. I just want to tell you, when he said that, I ordered Koko to put a ten-year countdown clock at RushLimbaugh.com. And it’s been up there every day since I ordered it up there. And, as we speak, there are only three years and 254 days left on our website doomsday countdown clock that we started when Gore said we only had ten years left. The bottom line is, we’re not gonna get to 2030 anyway. It’s all gonna be over in three years and 254 days, if you want to believe Algore.