The left and the right have been engaged lately in a battle of policies, ideas and . . . name-calling over health care. Each side has been eager to prove that the other is engaged in “Astro-Turfing,” a clever name used to imply fake or “orchestrated” grassroots organization.

The Left accuses the anti-public option crowd of being bought and paid for by Big Pharma, while the Tea Party crowds are obviously contrived by Big Oil (according to the Left). Meanwhile, the Right has pointed to political groups such as Progress Now, MoveOn.org, and ACORN as examples of liberal “astro-turf” organizations. The evidence includes their nice, printed signs, their mass emails, as well as their buses bringing supporters to Obama’s town hall meeting.

So who is right and who is wrong when it comes to labeling the other side as ‘astro-turf?’

Well, the Constitutional Reporter staff attended events on both sides to get a sense of their different strategies. Here’s what we saw:

The Right

The right is legitimately afraid of ObamaCare, which has made it more excited and engaged in politics that at any point in recent memory. You can see their activity in the conservative blogosphere, but there is no money trail. People are making signs, going to town halls, and calling their congressmen because they’re authentically frustrated with the legislation not because the RNC or some other organization is paying them to do it.

And what’s even more interesting, the vast majority of people who attend the protests have not been connected to any GOP leaders. Having attended several Lincoln Day dinners, GOP breakfast clubs, etc., this year, our staff was surprised to see many new faces. These are people who didn’t even know that there were local breakfast clubs on ObamaCare and other bad administration policies until this bill came along.

The Left

Here’s where it gets interesting. Bloggers from The Constitutional Reporter sat in at an important activism meeting held by some Democrat organizers. They were looking to hire some field reps to go out and spread the word about Cap and Trade. Here is their game plan:

The Environmental Defense Fund has hired a national political consulting firm called Field Works. They want to lobby the ‘blue dog’ Democratic US Senators to convince them to vote ‘yes’ on Cap and Trade.

Field Works is hiring 12 people at $90/day. For 40 hours a week, their job is to talk to people about supporting Cap and Trade to protect the environment. Each of these 12 people will be responsible for finding 12 other people, per day, to make a phone call directly to Colorado Senator Michael Bennet’s office to urge him to support Cap and Trade.

Additionally, each of those 12 field reps will be working to get 28 people, every day, to fill out a post card for Senator Bennet. Field Works is providing the cell phones and post cards as well as postage to support the effort. This campaign will run until October 2nd and will be conducted in six other states as well.

Now, if this isn’t “astro-turf” then what is it? Fertilizer?

Folks on the Right better be prepared for the well-oiled machine of the Left. If there was ever a time to call our U.S. Senators and tell them to oppose Cap and Trade or the public option, now is that time. Ask your Senators to support productive, free market solutions to health care and environmental problems instead of raising taxes and imposing costly regulations. Politicians need to hear from you because they’ll certainly be hearing from lobbyists and consultants on the left.

This article is a submission from the staff of TheConstitutionalReporter.com. It was originally posted on their blog.

Car sales are beginning to slow down as the frenzy behind “Cash for Clunkers” is fading. The “Cash for Clunkers” program initially ran through its appropriated $1 billion, estimated to last until November 1, in just one week.

The Senate, last week, appropriated an additional $2 billion to keep “Cash for Clunkers” running. After the initial rush, however, interest in the program has decreased substantially, according to industry experts.

“We see that interest dying down,” said Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Michelle Krebs.

Yet the program remains politically popular. “Cash for Clunkers” has been praised by both liberals and conservatives for providing economic stimulus and environmental benefits.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer proclaimed that “Cash for Clunkers” is “stimulating the economy for real.” Conservative economist Lawrence Kudlow also wrote a glowing op-ed
about the program.

What issues matter most to redheads like me?

That’s not a question many people are asking these days, but it should be. From Napoleon Bonaparte to Winston Churchill, redheads have long held substantial political clout. This has always been especially true in America, a country that has elected seven redheaded presidents, even though only about 1 in 40 Americans has red hair. Indeed, five of America’s first eight presidents had red manes — including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — as did Patrick Henry, General Marquis Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton and countless other American revolutionaries. So while some scholars talk about America’s “Christian founding,” it may be more accurate to call it a “redheaded founding.”

Sadly, America is no longer redhead-friendly. Redheads are no longer respected, and the issues that redheads care about are no longer addressed.

This needs to change. And it can. But first we need to answer the question: What issues matter most to redheads?

Ozone Depletion: The depletion of the ozone layer, a portion of the lower stratosphere that absorbs ultraviolet light, worries redheads because ultraviolet light can damage their DNA and give them skin cancer. All pale-skinned people are susceptible to skin cancer, but redheads are especially susceptible.

Climate Change: Redheads are worried about climate change because rising sea levels could eventually destroy redhead habitats, like Ireland and South Boston. This is disconcerting because, unlike fish, redheads cannot survive underwater.

Medical Marijuana: Studies suggest that redheads are more pain sensitive than non-redheads. As a result, redheads living in the 37 states where medical marijuana is illegal suffer through unconscionable pain.

Anti-Redhead Discrimination: Anecdotal evidence suggests that in recent years, anti-redhead prejudice — or “gingerism” — has reached new heights, even as Americans seem to have become less racist in general. Redheaded children are bullied in schools, redheaded women are fetishized in the media and redheaded men are mocked in the workplace. Gingerism has always been a problem in Great Britain, where in 2003 a Yorkshire man was stabbed three times in a gingeriest hate crime, but the fact that gingerism has reached America’s shores is deeply disturbing.

Demographic Decline: Skin cancer and the increasing diffusion of the gene that causes red hair are causing redheads to die out. According to one study, redheaded babies could disappear within 100 years. Though that estimate is almost certainly false, the claim that redheads are becoming less common might be true.

Fortunately, there are steps that can be taken to save the gingers.

First, the government can start subsidizing sunscreen. Sunscreen is the most effective way to protect against skin cancer, but for the average redhead, it is prohibitively expensive. Unbeknownst to most non-redheads, sunscreen can cost as much as $50 per ounce. At that price, a family of four that consumes four ounces of sunscreen per week will spend a total of $10,400 per year on the stuff. Middle-class redheads simply can’t afford sunscreen at those prices, and as a result, redheads are often faced with a stark choice: buy sunscreen and risk going bankrupt, or go without sunscreen and die.

Second — and this is even more important — we need to give tax incentives to redheads who choose to marry other redheads. Selective breeding may be the only way to stabilize the redhead population.

Finally, we need to focus the scientific community on a single scientific field: genetic engineering. Genetic engineering — the manipulation of an organism’s DNA — could be the saving grace of the redheaded race. One day it may be possible for parents to genetically engineer their children so that they are born with red hair. But that day lies decades in the future. In the meantime, society needs to invest heavily in genetic engineering.

Redhead extinction would be major loss for mankind and a major blow to civilization. It would mean no more George Washingtons or Thomas Jeffersons, no more Dwight Eisenhowers or Andrew Jacksons, and no more Lindsay Lohans or Kate Winslets.

Can you imagine such a world?

I can, but I’d rather not.

The delta smelt is a blue, 2-inch long fish native to California’s Sacramento River delta.

It’s also a symbol of environmentalism gone awry.

Two years ago, Federal District Judge Oliver Wanger imposed restrictions on how much California’s state water authority can pump out of the Sacramento River, on the grounds that the water pumps were drawing in and killing the endangered delta smelt, in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act. The pumps supply millions of Californian farms, businesses and consumers with water.

The pump restrictions may be good for the delta smelt, but they’re awful for California. As a result of the restrictions, thousands of acres of farmland in the once fertile western San Joaquin Valley are drying up, 85,000 Californian farmers and laborers are out of work, and whole towns are dying. In Mendota, a century-old farming town west of Fresno, unemployment has reached 41 percent. In nearby Firebaugh, the unemployment rate has reached 40 percent. Overall, the pump restrictions are expected to cost California’s agriculture industry upwards of $500 million per year, indefinitely.

In April, thousands of farmers gathered at the San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos, Calif., to protest the pump restrictions. The Stockton (Calif.) Record interviewed one of those protestors, a 55-year-old almond farmer named Sharon Wakefield. At the time, the federal government was preparing to completely shut off the flow of water to Wakefield’s farm. Without water, Wakefield’s almond trees will die.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Wakefield said. “My family came out [to California] with the Dust Bowl, and I’m not going back.”

Wakefield is one of the human victims of modern environmentalism, a movement that increasingly ignores the human costs of its efforts. What was once a movement dedicated to serving humanity and grounded in reason has gradually morphed into an ideological crusade grounded in hysteria. And what was once a campaign to improve the quality of life of humans is now fighting to improve the quality of life of fish — at the expense of humans.

This is insane. And yet, this sort of environmental radicalism creates an opportunity that the Republican Party can easily exploit: an opportunity to steer the environmental movement down a more moderate path by offering pragmatic solutions to America’s environmental challenges.

So far, Republicans have failed to do that. According to a 2008 Pew Research Center poll, 65 percent of voters believe that Democrats are better at protecting the environment than Republicans. Only 21 percent of voters told Pew that Republicans are better than Democrats at protecting the environment.

With environmentalism surging in popularity, Republicans can no longer afford to be seen as the anti-environmental party. According to a 2008 ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford University poll, 41 percent of Americans now describe themselves as environmentalists and 42 percent of Americans now say they prefer to vote for environmentalist candidates over non-environmentalist candidates. Only six percent of Americans would prefer to vote for a non-environmentalist candidate over an environmentalist candidate.

In the coming years, environmentalism is likely to grow even more popular — which is why the GOP can no longer afford to cede environmental issues to the Democrats. Instead, the Republican Party needs to engage in environmental debates, gain credibility with voters on environmental issues, and start to influence and shape environmental debates, from what to do about global warming to what to do about delta smelt.

For this to happen, the Republicans need an environmental vision. They need to define what a Republican approach to environmentalism would look like.

It could look something like this:

First, a Republican approach to environmentalism would recognize that, while new environmental regulations may be necessary, those regulations don’t need to be oppressive and economically debilitating. Liberty and a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive.

Second, a Republican approach to environmentalism would emphasize personal responsibility. This means relying on individual initiative instead of government mandates; and on private-sector, free-market solutions to environmental challenges instead of on massive government interventions in the economy.

Finally, a Republican approach to environmentalism would consider environmental needs in light of human needs.

In the context of the delta smelt debate, a Republican environmentalist would have a simple solution: install filters on the Sacramento River’s water pumps. This would save most, but not all, of the delta smelt, and would spare California’s farms and farmers from economic destruction.

As Republican strategists prepare to revamp the GOP’s overall message in preparation for the 2010 and 2012 elections, they’d be wise to incorporate some form of environmentalism into that message. Doing so would benefit both the Republican Party and the country.

One of the most annoying assumptions in current politics is that Republicans and conservatives don’t care about the environment. I’ve lived on a river much of my life, so I know from experience that a clean environment is an essential part of a healthy culture. I’ve seen people dump latrines and trash into my front yard, a water-way that thousands of people use every day. The health hazards of pollution and the real world effects of mutilating natural keepsakes are readily apparent for anyone willing to look closely.

But looking at the current Waxman-Markey Climate bill, I don’t see any hint of responsible environmentalism. Driving the razor thin passage of the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill in the House on Friday was the reasoning that global warming and the growth of man-made greenhouse gases present such a serious problem that decisive action must be taken to stem its effects. According to Al Gore and his acolytes the time for science is over, and the time for action is now.

This troubling contention, that scientific debate must be suspended and replaced with hard charging policies, has been made in the past with disastrous consequences. Let‘s take a trip back through the last fifty years and examine some of the other times we were told Mother Nature was in danger and the apocalypse was nigh.

Claim #1: DDT Poses a Major Environmental Threat

The impetus of the current environmental movement was the campaign to ban Dichloro-diphenyl-dichloromethane, otherwise known as “DDT.” Most grade school kids have read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which told of the horrible consequences DDT use had on bird populations and humans. To this day, many people do not know that much of the evidence Carson presented was exaggerated and even incorrect, including her incendiary claim that DDT is carcinogenic.

The fledgling environmental movement seized on this book, and instead of practicing scientific due diligence on Carson’s claims, they pursued an alarmist course of action that had grave consequences. Carson may have been correct that large amounts of DDT can hurt specific populations of birds, but the environmental pursuit of an outright DDT ban ignored the chemical’s utility in controlling malaria.

After WWII, the chemical saw widespread use for mosquito and malaria control in the Third World. It was incredibly successful. Ronald Bailey at Reason Online writes, “In 1943 Venezuela had 8,171,115 cases of malaria; by 1958, after the use of DDT, the number was down to 800. India, which had over 10 million cases of malaria in 1935, had 285,962 in 1969. In Italy the number of malaria cases dropped from 411,602 in 1945 to only 37 in 1968.”

When Carson’s book came out in 1962 environmentalists pushed hard to ban the chemical. Their campaign worked; many countries and international organizations banned the pesticide. Without DDT, malaria resurged and killed 1 million people each year according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2006, the WHO reinstituted indoor DDT spraying citing its effectiveness and saying that “DDT pose[s] no harm…to humans.” Many environmental groups part of the rush to judgment, such as the Sierra Club, have now revised their positions and endorse the WHO stance.

The unjustified worldwide ban on DDT let a contained disease make a deadly comeback that has claimed at least 47 million lives in the last 50 years. In fact, some in the environmental movement realized deaths were mounting, but viewed it as a good thing. An official with the Agency for International Development was quoted as saying it was preferable that Third World peoples were, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”

Claim #2: Overpopulation Poses an Immediate Existential Threat

This brings us to the next environmental scare, overpopulation. Environmentalists stubbornly tell us that overpopulation means food shortages, a larger carbon footprint, and a miserable future for human existence. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, wrote, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

Huh? Obviously, none of this came true, and none of it was based on scientific evidence. Depressingly, despite being utterly wrong, Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation genius award in 1990 for his contributions to “greater public understanding of environmental problems.” In keeping with a mistaken belief in “the population bomb,” some environmentalists continue to insist we’re killing the planet by having babies. One woman in Britain not only aborted her baby, but had herself sterilized because she says, “Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet.” This type of reaction is extreme, but who can blame her, considering the daily influx of doom and gloom we hear about the fate of the world?

Claim #3: Genetically Modified (GM) Food is Dangerous

The Population Bomb hypothesized that population growth would outstrip food production leading to mass starvation. If that’s true then it is imperative we find new ways to increase food production. GM crops hold great promise for realizing this by increasing the nutrient levels in crops, increasing crop yield, and increasing crops’ resistance to drought, disease, and insects.

Yet, many environmentalists have sounded the alarm about this new resource. Instead of embracing this opportunity, environmentalists have taken to calling GM foods “Frakenfood,” scaring people with stories of how GM foods might lead to environmental disaster and using non-representative research experiments to encourage panic. Greenpeace, the leading light of environmentalism, convinced Zambia, a starving African nation, not to accept hundreds of tons of GM food aid on trumped up charges the food was unusable. We’ll never know how many people starved because of this lie, but the environmental movement has a disturbing tendency to dictate Western environmental standards to people in poverty, often with dire consequences.

These might be the worst excesses of environmentalism, but the next is my favorite because it shows environmental rhetoric stubbornly clings to alarmism despite having made similar predictions that, with the benefit of hindsight, now appear ridiculous.

Claim #4: Global Cooling

Global cooling, when the Earth chilled slightly between 1940 and 1970, is often cited as proof pro-warming climate scientists are mistaken about anthropomorphic climate change. This isn’t quite right, because it’s perfectly consonant with scientific principles to shift positions as new evidence comes to light. But this episode illuminates how unwise a rush to action can be. Newsweek ran an article in 1975 that considered this phenomenon such a dire problem that it suggested melting the polar ice cap by covering it with soot to counteract cooling trends. They also, in their wisdom, admitted that such a solution might cause more problems than it solved. Just a few years later temperatures began to rise, rendering such extreme measures unthinkable in hindsight.

Those drastic measures sound similar to so-called geo-engineering solutions being talked about by scientists today, such as launching satellites to block the sun’s energy. We should take heed of the arrogance we previously displayed trying to predict natural trends.

Why it matters?

Given the track record environmentalists have predicting ecological disaster, let’s take a step back, a deep breath, and admit we still have some work to do enhancing our scientific knowledge. The desire to take action and solve problems is admirable, but doing so without a clear picture of what we’re facing is a recipe for disaster and can lead to legislation like the Waxman-Markey debacle.

Do all these erroneous predictions mean that global warming isn’t real? No. But when you hear environmentalists, liberals, and legislators braying at the top of their lungs that the time for action is now, that the science is settled, that the end draws near, consider the track record of those screaming the loudest.

In fact, I would encourage everyone to read the Newsweek article from 1975 and a similar Time Magazine article from 1974. The pieces are strikingly, and eerily, similar to any number of climate stories written today.

Environmental stewardship is important, but the alarmism we see today isn’t going to help us make better decisions.