ST. LOUIS/ Behind The Headlines -- "Back in the 1970s," recalls business and science writer Alan Caruba, "California put on its green- colored glasses and pretended that you don't have to build the power plants necessary to generate electricity or the transmission lines to get it to people's homes and places of business." Thirty years later, a self-inflicted energy shortage has finally made it "obvious to Californians -- and hopefully to the rest of America -- that a modern, technologically advanced nation simply must have power. It must have it all the time," says Caruba. "Pay no attention whatever to the notion of 'sustainable development,'" he advises. "It is intended to make you think we're running out of coal. There's enough coal, just in the US, to fuel all our electric needs for centuries!"

In his weekly internet commentary, Warning Signs, posted at anxietycenter.com, Caruba blames environmentalism for putting California "into both an energy and a financial crisis. Environmentalism," he contends, "is why the Clinton-Gore Administration put 58 million acres of federal lands off limits for any of the tremendous and valuable natural resources they contain. It is environmentalism that has driven up the costs of . . . getting rid of your garbage. It is environmentalism that contributes to the rising cost of gas to fuel your daily commute. It is environmentalism that has attacked your property rights. It is environmentalism that is opposed to this nation's sovereignty over its borders and land mass."

Caruba calls the Kyoto Climate Control Treaty an "evil effort to reverse progress" and says President Bush has "done this nation and the world a favor" by rejecting it. He contends that the goal of the treaty is "to force the industrialized nations of the world to cut back their energy use while letting others like China and India ignore such restrictions." Caruba warns that the energy shortage Californians have brought upon themselves "awaits the rest of the nation if it continues to yield to the insanity of environmentalism. People have got to understand that electricity is not delivered by magic. It has to be fueled by coal, natural gas, hydroelectric power, or nuclear power," he insists. "It requires mining. It requires drilling. It requires large dams and reservoirs. It requires fission. But mostly it requires common sense."

Caruba acknowledges the widespread popular belief in global warming and blames the mainstream media for telling "this Big Lie since the 1970s. If you hear something often enough, you naturally assume it's true. It's not," he says. "The best meteorological measurement instruments, the satellites that circle the Earth, have not found any indication -- zero -- of a warming trend. Other measurements support this finding." Caruba sees the mainstream media as "part of the problem. Listening to environmentalists," he quips, "is listening to liars. As for the weather, you have a fair chance of making an accurate decision on whether or not to bring an umbrella with you if you read tomorrow's forecast. Beyond that," Caruba concludes, "it's anybody's guess."

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