Time magazine recently doctored the iconic photo of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima in order to "celebrate" Earth Day. Instead of Marines valiantly struggling to lift the stars and stripes, they are depicted planting a tree.

No doubt Time's editors think they will be celebrated in poetry and song for generations to come for their high-minded cleverness.

Still, if the symbolism wasn't clear enough, Time writer Bryan Walsh spells it out: "Green is the new red, white and blue."

There are any number of problems here, starting with the fact that this is simply a lie. Green is not the new red, white and blue. Concern over climate change may be the most honorable and vital thing imaginable. But if "the red, white and blue" means anything, it means patriotism or love of country. Patriotism and environmentalism simply aren't synonymous terms. Two things can be good without being the same. Fatherhood and all-you-can-eat chicken wings, for example, don't describe identical phenomena.

Even if Walsh and his bosses at Time were merely trying to be descriptive of American attitudes, they'd still be flat-out wrong. If Americans saw environmentalism as the purest expression of patriotic sentiment - like, say, buying Liberty Bonds during WWI - Time's declaration might be defensible. But Americans don't think any such thing.

The latest Gallup environmental survey shows that only 37 percent of Americans worry about global warming "a great deal," a drop from 41 percent last year. Indeed, the share of Americans greatly concerned with climate change is about the same as it was a decade ago, which still sounds a bit high since the globe pretty much stopped getting warmer in 1998. Even among environmental concerns, climate change isn't priority No. 1 for most Americans.

The editors of Time surely know this, which explains their real motive: They want to persuade Americans otherwise. And they are honest about it. Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor, who recently admitted that he doesn't much care about "objective" journalism, insists that "there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate change."

"The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases," Time reports, "... and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn't intend to do a whole lot about it." Continued...