Protecting the Environment, a noble idea which morphed into fascism

Maybe I should go on vacation more often. I took 3 days off to take my daughter on a whirlwind tour of Washington, DC and while I was gone an interesting discussion broke out in the comments for this post on the dangers of compact fluorescent light bulbs.

So, from on board Amtrak, DC to NJ, here are a few thoughts.

To get things rolling Trestin made a sweeping generalization:

Every environmental solutions ends up being worse for the environment than the problem. It's not about the planet, it's about control.

And Nadz quite reasonably responded:

That's flat wrong, @trestin, on two counts. One, there have been countless "solutions" that actually have solved environmental problems. Two, it's never been about the "planet". The planet can take care of itself.

And then later he on added:

You said EVERY environmental solution fails. So I just need to give you just one counter example. Here it is: indoor plumbing. Modern sanitary sewers probably save millions of lives a year.

Of course, Nadz is right on this point. Sanitary sewers, and many other "environmentalist" solutions are beneficial to mankind. Garbage collection, sensible landfills which avoid polluting groundwater, control of hazardous waste discharges from manufacturing and refinery operations, conservation of scarce natural resources, these sorts of restrictions are reasonable and necessary. (As for the ancient Romans not being "environmentalists?" Yup. Perhaps they did what they did for selfish reasons, yet it can't be denied that "don't shit where you eat" is not just a saying, it's a way of life.)

But Trestin is right too. Modern environmentalism is about control. Somewhere during the 1970s the environmental movement morphed away from seeking to steer mankind into harmony with nature. They felt their power, and the power went to their heads.

Indeed today's eco-warriors lust for power. Their decrees have a religious quality about them, their principles require dogmatic acceptance. Naysayers are denounced and publicly humiliated. Even the most outrageous alarmist predictions (remember no Himalayan glaciers by 2012?) must be accepted as Gospel Truth, regardless of how many times the predictors have turned out to be full of shit.

The "settled science" of Global Cooling / Global Warming / Global Climate Change, aside from being hard to keep straight from one decade to the next, inspires a ferver in its adherents which accepts no compromise and leaves little room for contrary evidence. It also serves as a battering ram with which to establish total control over every breath we exhale. (CO₂ is bad, whether it comes from coal-fired power plants, cow farts, or all of us huffing and puffing as we run to catch the alternative fuel bus to Nirvanna. Or, is it?)

When we allow worry-warts upset about habitat for a bait fish to disrupt the livelyhoods of every resident of Central California and significantly raise our food prices in the process I'd say we've lost sight of what's really important.

Back to that quote from Nadz, in the context of refuting the assertion about "control":

The planet can take care of itself.

Not according to the eco-warriors it can't. Evolution is another "settled science" which apparently can't ever be permitted to run its course. At one point the dinosaurs were an endangered species too. Would that we should recreate Jurassic Park to "conserve" them? (Was there a Richard Nixon of the Cretaceous Period? Did he go to China?)

Of course not. And I hate to break it to the Sierra Club, but the earth won't miss the delta smelt.

And one more thing, (the train has almost reached Newark, time to wrap this up!), I'd like to personally thank the dinosaurs for dying off and leaving us all that oil in their place. Now if we only had a sensible policy for extracting it from the bowels of the earth…

Posted at 16:42 by Chris Wysocki   [/agw]   Comments | Perm Link |
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