Man’s method of survival — transforming nature to meet his needs — must be defended against environmentalism’s attack.
The good news: a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon, has indicted 11 people on charges that they committed acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, now one of the FBI’s “highest domestic terrorism priorities,” according to director Robert S. Mueller III, is to prosecute people who commit crimes “in the name of animal rights or the environment.”
Nevertheless, it remains worrisome that we still dismiss such terrorists as deranged individuals who pervert the ideology of environmentalism. Even more worrisome is that few of us intellectually grasp, and then rise to defend, the irreplaceable values under attack by environmental terrorists. Their targets are not, fundamentally, a particular ski resort, logging company, meatpacking center or medical research project, but what these represent: human technology, human progress, human life.
Man’s life is sustained — and made longer, healthier, happier — by industrial development and technological progress. The hospitals, antibiotics and chemotherapy treatments which keep our bodies free from disease — the pesticides, bioengineering and shopping malls which make possible our consumption of almost any food imaginable — the oil rigs, dams and nuclear power plants which keep our lights on and washing-machines running — the trucks, telephones and computers which make an hour of our time vastly more productive — the large homes, MP3 players and ski resorts which make our newfound recreational hours more enjoyable — it is these products of industrial civilization that are responsible for the vast increase in the quantity and quality of life that we enjoy today.
Imagine for a moment being transported back to Western Europe nine hundred years ago (or parts of Africa today). Imagine the daily, excruciating physical labor required to grow meager crops or to haul water from miles away — assuming there is no drought. Imagine the filth and disease, because there are no sewage systems. Imagine the pain and misery as rotting teeth go untreated, broken bones go untended, failing eyesight goes uncorrected. This is a glimpse of life without industry.
The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists — namely, scientists, inventors and businessmen — are the creators of industrial civilization. As heirs of Newton, scientists discover truths about the workings of nature. As heirs of Edison, inventors use these truths to create new products which improve human life. As heirs of Ford, businessmen figure out ways to perfect and mass manufacture these products profitably.
These three categories of individuals represent the exploiters of nature, those who transform wilderness to support man’s life. They find plains and forests, dangerous jungles and insect-infested swamps, in which man’s life is precarious, and they build a human environment by creating houses, electric heaters and chemical pesticides. They teach man his method of survival: using his mind to reshape nature to his needs.
As monstrous as it sounds, it is precisely because these heroes are the sustainers of human life that they are targeted by those who are willing to take up arms for their cause, environmentalism.
Despite common belief to the opposite, the ideology of environmentalism is not concerned with improving man’s life on earth. If it were, it would not oppose but champion industrial progress — luxury homes, dams, highways, bioengineering, food irradiation, etc. — and the individuals who create it.
Environmentalism instead champions wilderness (including wild animals). On this premise, science and technology are irredeemably evil. If the supreme value is a world untouched by human hands, then in logic man and industry are destroyers of value, to be eliminated by force if necessary.
Committed environmentalists openly voice this hatred of man and industry. The founder of Green Peace reflects: “I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot kids who shoot birds.” A biologist with the U.S. National Park Services states: “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to return to nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” The head of the 1992 Earth Summit wonders: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Environmental terrorism is a consistent expression of environmentalism’s worship of wilderness. By making the preservation of untouched nature the ideal, environmentalism necessarily makes man, who survives by exploiting nature, the enemy.
If we value our lives, we must never make common cause with environmentalism, no matter how appealing a particular environmentalist project may seem. We must fight not only against particular environmental terrorists but also against the ideology that inspires them. But even more important, we must fight for rational values: man’s life and industrial civilization.
Full disclosure: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10943089/
I worry about wild-eyed radicals too, but it cuts both ways.
“Man’s life is sustained — and made longer, healthier, happier — by industrial development and technological progress.”
Industrial and tech ‘progress’ have always been fueled solely by people’s desire for advantage over others. Trying to spin the greed of modern pharmaceutical companies, ‘health maintenance organizations’ and their legions of attorneys as something more exalted is flagrant hyperbole.
“Imagine for a moment being transported back to Western Europe nine hundred years ago…This is a glimpse of life without industry.”
It looks more like a melodramatic misdirection. Tree-huggers can send us all back in time? Please.
“The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists — namely, scientists, inventors and businessmen — are the creators of industrial civilization.”
Though they stand on the shoulders of giants, they’re actually no taller than you or me. “Scientists and Inventors” don’t pave square miles of virgin woodland to put up Megamall parking lots. Teamsters with bad attitudes and gigantic bulldozers do. I can tell you from direct personal experience that they do this with no thought for any ideals more noble than a long lunch and a fat paycheck.
“If we value our lives, we must never make common cause with environmentalism”
Sorry, I don’t see much difference between Green’s myopic hysteria and OG’s variety.
People who commit vandalism or arson because of “the voices” are delusional. It doesn’t matter if the imaginary voices are those of My Neighbor’s Talking Dog or Fluffy the Happy Woodland Creature. The freaks eventually get caught and then put away.
But, on the upside, OG’s Holy Trinity of Science, Industrial Development and Technological Progress will surely have them mentally healthy in no time! The poor wretches won’t just be chained up and brutalized as they might have been in medieval Europe . . .
The case you cite in Oregon highlights only one part of the problem, and a small part at that. The lunatic fringe has always been with us, but they have not always had the kind of sway they now hold. Their influence, however, is not within themselves. They still get locked up for vandalizing property, making a nuisance, or making threats. The real problem is that environmentalism has become mainstream thought and business as usual. Intelligent non-activists frequently repeat the mantra of environmentalism as though it was gospel, and unthinking millions lend it support rather than risk ostracism.
The dire prediction of ozone depletion never came to pass. Yet, government is still mandating CFC replacement, and the air conditioning industry and professional associations have become major proponents of it. Why? One answer, and the one most cited, is that CFC’s are also global warming agents, but that is an insufficient driver of itself. The more persuasive reason is that environmentalism is now a thriving industry with an interest in self-perpetuation, no matter how absurd. These interests are to be found in the service and design industries, infrastructure industries, investment, compliance entrepreneurs, advocacy organizations, government, and in every other strata of our culture. Even religious organizations have woven it within the fabric of worship, and are now committed to its defense.
Back in the late 1980’s, environmental pseudo-scientists warned us that, even if CFC’s were phased out by 1996, the chemicals already in the stratosphere would continue to increase the size of the ozone hole, that the tropics would be uninhabitable by 2015, and the mid-latitudes by 2040. No such ozone-hole growth has been noted and no habitable area made inhabitable. To be sure, there has been fluctuation in the hole-size, but no more than occurred prior to the early 1980’s when serious measurements began and with much of the fluctuation explained by natural phenomena; this despite increases in CFC growth in third-world countries that more than offset reductions in the industrialized nations. When ozone depletion failed to materialize, the argument was simply shifted to the new global warming theory so as to avoid ever having to admit being wrong. Note, that the big shift toward mainstream acceptance occurred once Dow Chemical came up with the first CFC replacement. Before that Dow and the HVAC industry had been ranked among the stalwart opponents of this junk science.
With their development of R-134A, Dow began to change sides, and, the moment it was ready for the market, they did a complete about face. Soon, ARI and ASHRAE were closing ranks and small entrepreneurs lined up with cobbled together equipment to recover and destroy the offending CFC’s. It was quickly realized there is far more money to be made in replacing R-12 and R-22 (the mainstays of air-conditioning and refrigeration), than in defending an existing system. Equipment makers climbed on board, including all the major compressor makers, to retool machines for the wholesale replacement of perfectly good equipment. The stock market found there is far more profit to be had by investing in replacement technologies than in existing ones, even though the replacements were, pound per pound less efficient than the old. Even those not directly affected enjoyed the trickle down effect on the market.
Proponents say they are vindicated because the combined equipment and refrigerants of today are more efficient than those prior to R-134A. This greater efficiency has the side benefit of saving fuel for other uses. However, the refrigerants themselves are not more efficient. Rather, it is due to improvements in equipment design alone that we can credit these improved efficiencies. The refrigerants themselves are what they are and cannot be improved on, only replaced by something else. Some of the still newer refrigerants are more efficient, but none more so than the old mainstays. R-134A is 8-15% less efficient (depending on operation) than R-12 and R-22 in the same machinery. That means we are burning that much more fuel and generating that much more greenhouse gas using R-134A. Some of this increased equipment efficiency would have happened whether or not we’d made the shift to alternate refrigerants, but, as with automobile standards, much of the performance improvement has been pushed by government. That much is well and good, but it has been done in large part under false pretense regarding the environment rather than to stretch shrinking energy supplies. And, it is only a matter of time before some new anti-technologist comes along to decry the replacement refrigerants, and we begin a new cycle of perfectly profitable replacement.
Another big vestment is in the organizations that have grown up around each of these hysterias. Today, we have dozens of them vying for attention and for our dollars. Their army of idealistic teenage activists is to be found on every street corner and high school pledge drive gathering wealth for these organizations. Adult activists are to be found engaged in intimidating chief officers of major corporations to support their idiocy as though virtue, with visible monetary support to give it weight. If they don’t, they find themselves the object of environmental attacks. Where are their opposites to be found collecting to make counter argument? The principle officers of these organizations earn enviable salaries, and the organizations are staffed by zealots with few scruples regarding squeezing money from others. They are tax exempt, despite the fact they perform no useful community service nor return anything of value to the community, other than to safeguard their own right to hobble others. Basically, they are government protected shakedown artists. Greenpeace, the organization most notably connected with this has annual revenues of $21-million dollars and assets of $2.5-million. And Greenpeace is not even one of the more profitable environmental organizations.
Finally, we have government itself. The EPA, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, and other departments have been inhabited from their inceptions with those who most fervently believe in this nonsense and have most to loose by being proved false. The rest, in the employ of these agencies, have simply acquired the philosophy that under-girds their jobs much as any of us do in long term employ. Many of those who got in on the ground floor are now heads of large departments and wield great power. Others are ‘scientist’ of the least rigorous sort, with a vested interest in validating what began as mere assumptions. Thus, their studies (the ones most frequently cited as proof) are biased and untrustworthy. These departments write anonymous law at will, not subject to any Congressional oversight, and making decisions our lawfully elected officers are impotent to overrule. Elected officers, too, are co-opted into taking the popular position of “protecting” the environment rather than defeating it as costly hogwash. Environmental lobbyists are many and well funded, while their opposites are non-existent; making the chances a war-chest hungry politician will vote for commonsense highly unlikely.
Whether it is ozone depletion, global warming, Alar and DDT scares, anti-nuclear hysteria, the Exxon Valdez and the closing of ANWR, not so endangered species, or Peak Oil, the evolution from sincere hysteria to vested interest is the same; and the problem of uprooting these costly misanthropies is made far harder by the latter than by the former. It is easy to say a thing should be done or not done because to not act may risk something. It is only slightly less easy to raise a concern to the level of Armageddon. But, it is not responsible husbandry to do so, especially as it most often results in unwitting waste or even starvation. Rather than protect an environment, we end squandering resources we will later need.
Interestingly, I regularly encounter activist postings that automatically and viscerally label all conservatives a ‘vast right wing conspiracy’, and as irrational bigots who can’t get our collective heads out of the sand. There are some few who may rightly deserve such a label, but most of the complaints I’ve seen against environmentalism are reasonably lodged in the excess and destructiveness of the credo, rather than unsupportive of good husbandry. Our air and water is cleaner than in the past, and the Greens can take some credit for that. However, that does not automatically make every environmental concern a vital one. The division has grown wide, and the reaction is now forming against the too frequent abuse and misrepresentations which environmentalism has generally come to represent.
Regarding comment #1 above by Ninus and Baal (interesting pseudo-names):
““Scientists and Inventors” don’t pave square miles of virgin woodland to put up Megamall parking lots. Teamsters with bad attitudes and gigantic bulldozers do. I can tell you from direct personal experience that they do this with no thought for any ideals more noble than a long lunch and a fat paycheck.”
As an engineer and formerly a mechanic, I am one of those you refer to as a “teamster with bad attitudes and gigantic bulldozers”. I have done a great deal in my long career to pave over little bits of the world to create things people need. In so doing, I have fulfilled the needs of corporations, but also of little people. I have created or improved the places where people live. I have enabled others to have jobs that put food on their tables and to clothe their children. I have made the indoor air healthier for countless people to breath. I have brought energy to where it was needed so that people can live and work in greater comfort. I have re-engineered equipment and processes to be more efficient and, therefore, less wasteful of resources. Those gigantic bulldozers make it possible for one man to do the work of many, multiplying the benefits to thousands. I am proud of the work I have done, and I have not become inordinately wealthy for the doing of it other than in pride. I know this to be true for me, and I am certain most of those other ‘teamsters’ you put down feel much as I do. If this is a bad attitude, it is a common one and I don’t see the harm in it. I do see the harm of those who cast stones because it makes them feel superior to those with whom they disagree.
Scientists and Inventors (those you clearly idolize) are no more and no less part of the system behind all the planetary ‘devastation’ that concerns you. They too play their role, and so do you as a consumer.
Apparently, you are one of those who see wealth as a one way street with all benefits flowing to those on top. The true model is a multi-path grid of streets with money flowing in all kinds of directions, not all of which accrue to money grubbing pickpockets stealing milk out of the mouths of babies. In fact, that’s quite a rarity. If it weren’t, our system would be hemorrhaging for lack of participation, and still be a feudal society with very little money in it. Industry begets wealth, and it is not a finite commodity. Those who do most to invest and labor create that wealth, and cannot do so without benefit to others. This is so because people do not pay simply to be fleeced. They pay for the best service they can get at the lowest cost. Thus, the entrepreneur who takes an inventor’s new idea and translates it into something useful does as much or more to benefit society as a whole as does the inventor himself, without which his idea remains stillborn. Most of the wealth in the modern world is not sitting in some bank vault of the wealthy gathering moss. It is on the street moving faster than a bullet. Most of it can’t even be seen, and only exists as a concept. It does not belong to giant corporations who use it to control our lives; indeed, it liberates Joe Average as never before. I recommend you study a little economic theory before you make such outlandish and embarrassing remarks.
The model I prefer for the way the market works is of one man lifting a blanket. The lift is the effort he makes to create and accrue something useful. As he lifts, his part of the blanket rises higher than those near him. However, the blanket also rises a little in the vicinity of his neighbors, the closest neighbors sharing most in his singular effort. Seeing how he has gotten ahead, his neighbors decide to make a similar effort and their part of the blanket rises also; and still more people are benefited. Some few decide to sit it out and are satisfied with the small improvement they have just by laying close on to those who do all the work. On the other hand, those who do nothing hold the blanket down; limiting the height to which it can rise. Thus, it is not he who labors for wealth who steals from his fellows unfairly; it is those who sit on their hams all the while bemoaning the unfairness of it and looking down his nose at those who get ahead. Yes, the ones who do the most get more than their fellows. The question is why their fellows do less.