Will the Transition movement be the Tea Party’s next target?
First, it was the birth certificate. Then Obamacare. Now, the Tea Party is coming after a new "socialist" threat -- sustainable development. Photo: Fibonacci Blue via Flickr.
Could Rob Hopkins become the US right wing's next Van Jones? Could the Post Carbon Institute become the next ACORN?
Thanks to Rob Hopkins for sending around a silly Tea Party video attacking the Transition movement. It features Rob himself along with PCI as part of a United Nations plot to "take away your land."
On the one hand, I smiled. On the other, I cringed, because I know that the Tea Party, as silly as they can seem, do mean business.
A big joke that's no laughing matter
Where I live in rural Virginia, the local Tea Party is very active. They've already held one meeting in our town on how land use planning is part of the United Nations "Agenda 21" plot to take over the USA, involving all the usual suspects: George Soros, the Trilateral Commission, maybe even the Bilderbergs.
And a new player: the Post Carbon Institute.
In a neighboring county, Albemarle, a more upscale and progressive place which plays home to Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia and has already made official commitments to cut their greenhouse pollution, Tea Party activists have even appeared before the board of supervisors demanding that they remove Albemarle County from a group with the sinister name Local Governments for Sustainability (known for some reason as ICLEI).
It's easy to laugh at this protest or the video or when you see on TV a bunch of cranky old white people with southern accents pulled from retirement homes to stand in front of the White House with signs that say "Government, Hands Off My Medicare!"
A front group for big corporate polluters
But behind them is lots of money from the same big corporate polluters who fund climate science deniers and helped kill the energy and climate bill last year, as flawed as it was, just because they oppose anything to do with fighting climate change. That money would be from the Koch brothers and other big polluters. They're the ones with the real agenda -- to protect their profits in oil and coal, and climate be damned.
Much as I hope I'm wrong, I fear this could be the next big push of the American right wing. And it could get Transition into the press in a big way. We should be prepared to present ourselves accurately and clearly.
This sounds like something invented by Jon Stewart. But if true, I guess that means we're part of the conspiracy too. So maybe we can get some money from Agenda 21 then? Mr. Soros, are you listening?
Watch the video here. It's less than a minute and guaranteed to make you smile. And then maybe frown.
-- Erik Curren
