Posted on 05/23/2008 3:57:46 AM PDT by mkleesma
I ADMIT IT: I'm no environmentalist. But I like to think I'm something of a conservationist.
No doubt for millions of Americans this is a distinction without a difference, as the two words are usually used interchangeably. But they're different things, and the country would be better off if we sharpened the distinctions between both word and concept.
At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It's a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. "If you look carefully," author Michael Crichton observed, "you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."
Environmentalism's most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as "selfish, conceited creatures." Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: "The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
I heard Gore on NPR recently. He was asked about evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee's absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for New Orleans' sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man's energy sinfulness. It struck me that the two men are not so different. If only canoodling Big Easy residents had adhered to "The Greenpeace Guide to Environmentally Friendly Sex." Environmentalists insist that their movement is a secular one. But using the word "secular" no more makes you secular than using the word "Christian" automatically means you behave like a Christian. Pioneering green lawyer Joseph Sax describes environmentalists as "secular prophets, preaching a message of secular salvation." Gore, too, has been dubbed a "prophet." A green-themed California hotel provides Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" next to the Bible and a Buddhist tome.
Whether or not it's adopted the trappings of religion, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.
It often seems that displaying faith in the green cause is more important than advancing the green cause. The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving -- their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book "Cool It!" Yet 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them. What's cheaper -- trillions to trim carbon emissions, or a push for a ban on polar bear hunting?
Plastic grocery bags are being banned, even though they require less energy to make and recycle than paper ones. The country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.
Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element as well, but that stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism.
Economics is the study of choosing between competing goods. Environmentalists view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic. Lomborg is a heretic because he treats natural-world challenges like economic ones, seeking to spend money where it will maximize good, not just good feelings among environmentalists.
Many self-described environmentalists are in fact conservationists. But the environmental movement wins battles by blurring this distinction, arguing that all lovers of nature must follow their lead. At the same time, many people open to conservationist arguments, like hunters, are turned off by even reasonable efforts because they do not want to assist "wackos." In the broadest sense, the environmental movement has won. Americans are "green" in that they are willing to spend a lot to keep their country ecologically healthy, which it is. But now it's time to save the environment from the environmentalists.
A few weeks ago, a former conressman was filling in for Bill Bennett on the radio and he said “We’re all environmentalists.” I took the opportunity to school him on the critical difference between an environmentalist and a conservationist, using many of the same arguments as Jonah Goldberg did.
It’s amazing that when the rain forest was cut down for food the world rose in opposition. When the same rain forest is cut down for ethanol there is deafening silence.
Yup.
Leftists do not want him to own it.
Leftists do not respect property rights. In fact, they are contemptuous of them.
Leftists are Marxists, and Marxism does not acknowledge property rights.
It is property rights that make prosperity possible. People are willing to invest in the U.S.A. because they know that their investments are secure. This attracts capital.
People are reluctant to invest in countries in which properety rights are not protected--for example, in which there is a likelyhood that the government could confiscate the property.
This is fundamental to the reason why the United States is the richest and most prosperous nation the world has ever known.
For example: if a citizen of a foreign nation wants to buy a house or a farm in the U.S., he believes that he will own it, that no one will take it away from him, and he is comfortable in spending his money for it. He's not likely to buy a house or a farm in Zimbabwe, where the government is likely to take it away from him.
The security of property rights has made commerce, investment, and prosperity possible--and is a sine qua non of a secure and prosperous economy.
This presupposes capitalism, of course. Capitalism is liberty. It is not a perfect system, but it has brought more prosperity to more people than any system ever devised--and with it has come the possibility of other liberties and the protection of human rights.
Marxism, on the other hand, requires an autocratic government for its establishment and implementation. It cannot co-exist with liberty. It has also destroyed the economy and prevented prosperity wherever it has been implemented, and it is responsible for far more deaths than Naziism or any other system ever imposed on people.
Those who advocate Marxism refuse to acknowledge these realities. Many insist that Marxism will work if they just keep trying and are determined to keep trying.
Leftists are Marxists. They are anti-capitalists. They are opposed to liberty, because it cannot co-exist with Marxism, and they are opposed to private property and property rights.
The good news is that when it comes down to war, the environmentalists aren’t going to have the guns. Guess who will?
Not only has environmentalism become a religion it has become a cult little different than the Warren Jeffs polygamist group, the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult or even Jim Jones and Jonestown.
We have no asset that cannot be taxed and taken away from us anymore by “our” Government. We are indentured servants to our elected masters.
Yet property rights are more secure in the U.S. than anywhere else. That's why the U.S. attracts so much capital.
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