June 12 is “Carbon Belch Day”

Take that, Gore and co.:

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by “hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.”

The point: the group wants to “help Americans break free from the ‘carbon footprint guilt’ being imposed by Climate Alarmists.”

Grassfire.org says it’s skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions — from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants — are raising the Earth’s temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. “It’s time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us,” Elliott said.

Grassfire.org said it chose June 12 as the day it wants Americans to rev up their SUVs because it coincides with expected debate in Congress over a $1.2 billion carbon tax rebate program. “Carbon Belch Day will have at least as much impact on the so-called ‘planetary emergency’ of man-made global warming as the goofy save the earth mandates telling us to turn our lights off for an hour,” said Elliott.

Cities around the world went dark for an hour on March 31 to mark “Earth Hour,” an event created by the World Wide Fund for Nature to inspire people to find ways to use less energy.

Grassfire.org is the latest group to question whether global warming is a real phenomenon, or whether it’s as severe as portrayed in Gore’s film. London’s Daily Telegraph this week called environmentalism “the new secular faith.”

The paper said the United Kingdom’s carbon credits program for industry is “just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution.”

Wonder if Czech President Vaclav Klaus will be observing Carbon Belch Day, or if he’ll continue to press The Goracle for a global warming debate, as he did today:

Washington – Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. “I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he’s not too much willing to make such a conversation,” Klaus said. “So I’m ready to do it.”

Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles – What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.

“My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our prosperity,” he said.

[...]

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

“Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,” he said.

“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat – this time, in the name of the planet,” he added.

Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

How refreshing. Now if only the GOP nominee took the same approach …