Environmentalism

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"City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be). This is a scientific, technological problem—not a political one—and it can be solved only by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is whole-sale death."-- Ayn Rand

Philosophically, the essential principle of the ideology of environmentalism is the belief that “nature” has inherent moral value, and therefore the influence of man, and especially that of industrial civilization, is evil. Politically, this means the advocacy of various limits on industrial civilization, since all productive human activity has some kind of byproduct. While few (but alarmingly many) advocates of environmentalism recognize it as such, the ultimate goal of the environmentalist movement is the total destruction of industrial civilization, and the vast majority of the human race whose existence is made possible by it.

The Environmental Movement

The evil, man-hating philosophy at the root of the environmentalist movement is hidden by the superficial nobility the campaigns in the public consciousness, and the good intentions of the majority of the environmental or ecology movement. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so it is crucial to examine just where the leadership of the environmental movement is leading us. Here are some quotes from leading environmentalists and ecologists: David M. Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service

This [man's "remaking the earth by degrees"] makes what is happening no less tragic for those of us who value wildness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. I, for one, cannot wish upon either my children or the rest of Earth's biota a tame planet, be it monstrous or — however unlikely — benign. McKibben is a biocentrist, and so am I. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value — to me — than another human body, or a billion of them.

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line — at about a billion years ago, maybe half that — we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.

It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

The Premise of Intrinsic Value

What environmentalists fundamentally oppose is not the destructions of the planets ability to support human life, but that man’s exploitation of nature to improve its ability to sustain human life will destroy unaltered “wilderness.” In the words of popular environmentalist Bill McKibben, "The problem is that nature, the independent force that has surrounded us since our earliest days, cannot coexist with our numbers and our habits. We may well be able to create a world that can support our numbers and our habits, but it will be an artificial world. . . ."

A Fundamental Disregard for Truth: The Absurdity of Environmentalists Claims

Global Warming

http://www.rationalmind.net/2006/12/04/earth-2020-three-outcomes-to-global-warming/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

"Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heat waves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colorful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That leveling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago."

Regulation of Industry

(This is from http://www.rationalmind.net/essays/our-techno-utopian-future-fallacies-and-predictions/ )

The companion to the fear of resource depletion is the fear of a global ecological catastrophe. The threats are numerous — mass species extinction (1960s), global cooling (’70s), ozone holes (’80s), acid rain and global warming (’90s), or climate change (2000s) — which conveniently includes warming and cooling. It is impossible to refute every new scare, but an examination of history provides a dose of healthy skepticism.

The distinguishing factor of human beings over other living things has been our ability to change our environment to improve our situation. Most of the increase in life expectancy from 18–33 years during all of prehistory to 70+ today has not been due to better treatment of illness, but due to the manipulation of nature to create healthier environments: agriculture, cities, sewers, running water, heating and cooling. Human industry comes with unavoidable byproducts like pollution, but the costs have been minute relative to the benefits. Only when the focus of industry has been subverted to destructive purposes — such as war or meaningless production quotas, as in the Soviet Union — has the destructive side of industry outweighed the benefits.

Today, our ability to manipulate the environment is more powerful than ever, as is our awareness of the byproducts of industry. There is no evidence that these skills are declining — as evidenced by the continuing growth of life expectancy in both developing and developed nations. Is there any reason to believe that we should suddenly prove incompetent to deal with nature?

Even if some environmental dangers are real, we would be much better equipped to deal with them by embracing unhindered technological progress rather than surrendering to the indisputable peril of nature to those who give up their primary means of controlling it. In the words of Ayn Rand, “City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be). This is a scientific, technological problem—not a political one—and it can be solved only by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is whole-sale death.”

The current phase of global wealth expansion is due both to the increasing productivity of industry made possible by the global division of labor, and the increasing efficiency of resource utilization due to improvements in technology. Any attempt to control or scale back technology only shifts production into less-efficient outcomes. For example, by liming and taxing the carbon output of developed nations, the Kyoto protocol shifts industrial production to exempt developing nations, which not only requires more resources to produce an equivalent volume of goods and services, but creates far more harmful byproducts.

Animal Rights

http://www.rationalmind.net/2003/07/01/fox-hunting-and-the-politics-of-compromise/

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001=bsq9lqzmw1.app1a&page=NewsArticle&id=11197&news_iv_ctrl=1084

"Animals do not survive by rational thought (nor by sign languages allegedly taught to them by psychologists). They survive through sensory-perceptual association and the pleasure-pain mechanism. They cannot reason. They cannot learn a code of ethics. A lion is not immoral for eating a zebra (or even for attacking a man). Predation is their natural and only means of survival; they do not have the capacity to learn any other. ... The granting of fictional rights to animals is not an innocent error. We do not have to speculate about the motive, because the animal "rights" advocates have revealed it quite openly. Again from PETA: "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth"; "I do not believe that a human being has a right to life"; "I would rather have medical experiments done on our children than on animals." These self-styled lovers of life do not love animals; rather, they hate men."

Mainstream Environmentalism’s Support for Domestic Terrorism

"The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement," said John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism.

Talk about PETA’s support of terrorism http://www.rationalmind.net/2003/05/23/peta-madness/

The Threat to Developing Nations

How the Green Revolution saved billions, and how ant-GMO movements prolong starvation.

Market-Based Solutions to Pollution

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=198

"The standard view of environmental problems is that they are inherent in a free society. If people are left free to pursue their own self interest—to produce, and consume whatever they want, how and when they want it—the result will be polluted air and waterways, littered streets, and depleted natural resources. Pollution and environmental degradation are often cited as evidence that Adam Smith was wrong. People pursuing their own self interest may not advance the well-being of society.

This view, unfortunately found in many economics texts, misunderstands the nature of both a free society and a free market economy.

Environmental problems occur because property rights, a requirement of free markets, are not being identified or enforced. Problems of air, river, and ocean pollution are all due to a lack of private property rights and/or protection. Since clarifying and enforcing property rights is the basic function of government in a free society, environmental problems are an example of government failure, not market failure.

In a free society, environmental problems should be viewed in terms of how they impinge on human liberty. Questions should focus on how and why one person’s use of resources might interfere with the planning and the decision making abilities of others. Since, legitimately, people can only make plans and decisions with respect to resources that they have “rights” to, environmentalism that has human well-being as the focus of its analysis, must center on property rights.

From this perspective, all environmental problems arise when different people attempt to use the same resource for conflicting purposes. This can only occur if property rights to the resource are not clear or are not being enforced. Two simple examples can highlight the possibilities. Imagine a community that has a cement factory that emits cement dust into the air. This dust causes people in the community to have to wash their cars and house windows more frequently and creates respiratory problems for those who have to breath it. This is clearly a property rights enforcement problem. Note that the problem is not that the dust is emitted into the air but that it lands on people’s property—their cars, houses, and lungs—and interferes with their use of it. In this case ownership rights are clearly defined, but are not being enforced."

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