PUBLISHED: 23:20 EST, 22 April 2012 | UPDATED: 23:44 EST, 22 April 2012
A liberal environmental analyst sparked a firestorm after he used an outlandish example that suggested those who deny the existence of man-made global warming should have their houses burnt down.
Steve Zwick used the example of the fire department in a small Tennessee town allowed several houses to burn to the ground because their owners had not paid the mandatory $75 fee for the service.
Equating the actions of global warming denialists to those of the people who did not pay the fire fee because their actions contributed to the problem and therefore, he argued that who did not cause the global warming crisis be saved first.
Eco terrorism: Some vigilante eco terrorists in Maryland burned down houses in 2004 and a recent column slightly endorsed the concept
‘We know who the active denialists are… Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn until the innocent are rescued,’ Mr Zwick wrote in Forbes on Friday.
‘Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.’
He started the article essentially likening denialists and shirkers to addicts in need of hitting the proverbial rock bottom before changing their ways.
The point that he was trying to make was the people who have denied the man-made nature of global warming have been extremely detrimental to the global population at large because they have prevented money and attention from being paid towards the issue.
Fire starter: Steve Zwick is a columnist for Forbes
He pushed the point that scientists believe that the people who will be the most effected by the worsening global weather conditions that prompt drought, floods, and famines will be the poor people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America as opposed to wealthier people in more developed countries who generate the damaging carbon emissions.
Predictably, his suggestion caused an immediate backfire from conservative critics who likened him to eco-terrorists and InfoWars called him ‘a demented idiot’.
The reactions prompted him to write a follow-up piece on Sunday that clarified his ‘intentionally provocative’ position.
‘Instead of a challenging debate on a sticky issue, I found myself accused of telling people to go out and burn down houses,’ he wrote in the second piece.
‘I said no such thing, but after reading my piece with fresh eyes, even I have to admit that the analogy is more of a distraction than a point of departure for debate.’
Let it burn: Forbes columnist Steve Zwick said that his ‘intentionally provocative’ comparison was misguided and denied that he called for arson
Emerging Truth 
The U.S. needs to straighten out its finances and quit worrying about climate change. If we can’t do that, what hope is there for climate change abatement? The retirees on fixed incomes are now about to be financially scalped with higher inflation, taxes and new medical costs. Sadly, many will be forced to live abroad, a rising trend.
Yes, I definitely agree with you. Under our current President, our national debt has already increased by $5 trillion dollars and he has not even finished campaigning for his reelection! As long as the US government has the Federal Reserve to print money out of thin air, the US can overspend it’s money until the economy collapses due to hyperinflation. It’s not fair for the many baby boomer retirees who worked hard during their lives to save for their retirement and then to have a large part of their retirement disappear due to fact that several companies failed and caused the collapse of the stock market back in 2008. The several companies that failed received government bailouts mean while the millions of people who lost their money in the stock market did not, and it just goes to show you where the real interests of the government lies, in the big corporations. As for the climate change ,aka global warming, is really not the result of humans but is the result the Sun as lots of scientific evidence has shown, contrary to the faulty science that says its due to humans. The leaked climate gate emails in 2009 confirmed that anthropogenic global warming is a scam for the government to find more ways to regulate and restrict how people live their lives.