Tea Party held in Schenley Park

More than 1,000 people from as far away as Ohio and West Virginia gathered this morning at Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park for an Independence Day Tea Party, a protest organized against higher taxes, "big government" spending, universal healthcare and a variety of other issues.

The event's speakers denounced President Barack Obama's plan for universal healthcare as "socialism," global warming as a hoax and equated tax hikes with taking away their freedom. The crowd responded with cheers and chants of "Vote them out!"

Scott Ott: Mr. President, This is What the Critics Really Say

Critics say that you're ...
-- devastating the petroleum-based economy that has fostered the most prosperous nation in history,
-- ignoring atomic energy despite its limitless capacity to offer clean power, and
-- forcing taxpayers to gamble on so-called 'green' technologies which, despite years of research and billions of dollars of investment, still consume more energy than they generate.

Killing mother nature with our green creed | Charles Clover - Times Online

So it is all the more surprising that Britain has got as far as it has in considering a scheme that takes state-funded environmental damage to a new level of absurdity: the Severn barrage. This £20 billion energy-generating monolith would, under the five options being considered by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, generate up to 5% of Britain’s energy needs. It would cut greenhouse gas emissions at a massive cost to wildlife. The 85,000 overwintering birds that use the Severn mudflats to feed would have nowhere else to go. And the returning salmon, sea trout, lamprey, twaite shad and allis shad of the rivers Severn, Wye and Usk – also protected under European law – would be chopped up by the turbines.

This scheme would not get funding any other way because it requires billions in subsidy and damages ecosystems that have international protection. It is being contemplated ostensibly because a government has decided climate change is the most important environmental issue facing the world. That may be how things turn out – or it may not. I say that not because I am a climate sceptic but because of the uncertainties involved. A case can be made that the destruction of ecosystems on land, species in the sea and human population growth are problems of equal magnitude for the human future and the health of the planet. But I don’t see the same priority being assigned to them.

Therefore the Severn barrage is a test case for a new political proposition: that it is all right to cause massive environmental damage in order to tackle other potentially catastrophic environmental problems – such as the warming and sea level rise that will come with climate change.