Posted on 12/07/2002 2:26:11 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Most of our radical left-wing environmentalist group members are college-aged (sometimes college-professor-aged) white upper-middle-classers. Most are either college students or faculty members. And there’s a reason they tend to be journalism, art, literature, and basket-weaving students and professors, and not chemistry majors, ecology majors, botanists, biologists, or economists – the people with real expertise know better.
There are two main reasons the environmentalist extremists should just shut up: The environment will take care of itself, and we’ll improve it more if we’re left alone than if we’re coerced. It’s not a terribly long story, but it is a colorful one.
First, there is no stable or balanced ecosystem, and there never have been such things. We have witnessed many that have not changed in recorded history, but our recorded history is short. In geologic time, the ecosystems we see now are but a blink. The earth has been bombarded by giant asteroids, volcanoes have changed the amount of sunlight reaching the entire planet, and critter-populated islands appeared and disappeared. What we have on this planet is plant and animal life constantly in search of a new, better home. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence for everybody, not just humans.
An atoll in the Indian Ocean, Aldabra, is a case in point. Its age is estimated at only 50,000 years, but already there is a host of developed animal life. Two kinds of birds have made a permanent home there; and the absence of predators has resulted in their building their nests in plain sight, on top of the trees. Life is so easy for them that the nests often abut each other. A third bird has already become flightless, living off whatever seeds and junk it finds on the ground – the ground being mostly coral. A sea turtle has made its home there, and already become a distinct species: While other sea turtles tend to be herbivores, these turtles eat whatever they can find among the paltry pickings on the atoll. I’ve seen a photograph of them dining on the decaying corpse of one of their own. It takes changes in the digestive tract to accommodate meat if you’re an herbivore. These turtles decided to go with the digestive flow. Ah, but PETA members elevate these cannibals to a moral status equal to our own.
Buy yourself a beautiful meadow or a tract of forest land. Clear it. Burn everything there. Then sit back and watch. There will be natural reclamation measurable within a few weeks. Give it a few years, then a few decades. No one would ever know it was cleared. Life on earth is hardy, ambitious, and omnipresent. And it is infinitely adaptable. Mangrove trees, living in estuaries, show one unique adaptation: The soil is inhabitably acidic and oxygen-deprived a few inches beneath the surface, so the mangrove builds root systems extending all around, sitting on top of the soil. The roots make giant nodes above ground that absorb moisture and nutrients from high tides (mangroves live in swampy estuaries). The fish – mudskippers – that make this area their home have developed arms out of their front flippers, and walk around out of water much of the time. They are still fish, and make little homes underground, under the water line. You can find three distinct species of mudskipper, each with its own skills and diet, at different places along a single estuary; they have adapted to different levels of water, air, and predators.
And what of people, and what they do to the environment? In recent times, it has been found that once nations reach a certain level of economic development, the environment starts getting cleaner. Our own United States started getting cleaner in the 1950s, before the EPA was even a proposal. Once people have their basic needs met, they start meeting less basic needs, such as art, culture, and a clean environment. Uncle Ben’s Rice is one example. This Mississippi-based firm is energy self-sufficient. When they separate the husks from the rice kernels, they burn the husks to provide the energy for their other operations. An American copper-mining firm in the northern plains uses toxin-eating bacteria to purify the effluent produced by mining operations, and the mine’s offal is cleaner than the spring water it takes in.
Much of what makes manufacturers more environmentally friendly than before owes to technology, virtually none of which has been produced by government. Even were we to de-emphasize the environment, it would still take care of itself. In the deep ocean, superheated water vents from volcanic fissures. A host of bacteria, worms, fish, and other life has taken up residence in and near these superheated, sulfuric waters. There is no environment on earth that hasn’t been colonized. The most hard-frozen, wind-beaten, ostensibly sterile ice on Antarctica is permeated by pink algae.
But let’s not poison the environment. We should release economic resources to be used in its preservation and purification. The best way to do this is to make everyone wealthy, so they have time to think about the natural world, and money to spend on it. It has been established worldwide that people turn their minds to the environment naturally, once they reach a certain level of wealth. But the technology to preserve the environment comes not only from concern, but from money. Here’s the solution: Get government out of the picture, get government’s economic dead weight off everyone’s back, and watch how clean the environment becomes without the Earth Firsters and Petans annoying everyone and burning laboratories (and now, vandalizing SUVs at auto dealerships). None of these ecoidiots realizes that it would take over 100 brand-new SUVs to put out the same exhaust pollutants as one smoke-belching 1960s Volkswagen van festooned with flower paintings and rainbow decals.
One caveat: Don’t expect to see a stable ecosystem. The continents and weather will continue to change. The animals and plants will take care of themselves anyway.
The place is fenced, so they actually have to "break in" from their wilderness to get there.
We used to chase'm out, but gave up because it's a waste of time, they just come back anyway.
Will the removal of government regulation help prevent incidents like the Prestige and Exxon Valdez in the future?
EggsAckely how old are you?
But let's get series now, and look at an excerpt from the article:
Our own United States started getting cleaner in the 1950s, before the EPA was even a proposal. Once people have their basic needs met, they start meeting less basic needs, such as art, culture, and a clean environment....Frankly, only the laisezz-faire lunatic freaks at lewrockwell.com could make the PETA kooks look reasonable. The environment didn't just magicly begin to improve itself due to the "invisible hand" of capitalism prior to the EPA. Regulations and standards were initially imposed at the local level to initiate clean-up. The EPA was created, in part, to "standardize" the many different and often conflicting standards that existed throughout the nation.
Much of what makes manufacturers more environmentally friendly than before owes to technology, virtually none of which has been produced by government.
In subsequent years, the environmental movement was hijacked by political extremists, and has become a major thorn for business and industry. But history isn't the alternate reality that is written by the revisionist libertarians.
True. If two businesses have equal levels of expense and one decides to begin operating so as to produce fewer pollutants (which increases its expenses), while the other does not, the second company will have a competitive advantage. In a low-margin field, this can mean the difference between success and going out of business.
OTOH, if the government forces all such businesses to institute the low-pollution procedures, then they all remain on a level playing field.
Hasn't the author heard of the "Tragedy of the Commons?"
Not sure what your point is here. If there IS a point at all, I missed it.
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