Posted on 04/22/2003 1:52:17 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.
The fundamental goal of environmentalists is not clean air and clean water; rather it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Their goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness and human life; rather it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, they have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees.
No instance of the progress which brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.
Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action which changes the environment is necessarily immoral.
Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.
The ideal world of environmentalists is not 21st century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment."
Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation environmentalists would cheer at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.
The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is the enemy of man, the enemy of human life.
Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature.
But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For the environmentalists, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds and bacteria somehow do.
They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists.
"The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in "Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics," "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!' "
In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature," biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet. ... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: It mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.
The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives.
But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the non-human.
To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment.
To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy which makes life on earth possible.
Visit your local Enviroweenie office!
"The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in "Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics," "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!' "
In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature," biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet. ... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
These mentally ill Enviral Whackos are probably cheering for SARS and hoping that it goes world wide.
No it isn't, because G-d put man in charge of the Garden "to tend and keep it." The enviroterrorists envision an Eden without human, and without G-d too. They would put the Snake in charge.
With the eclipe of Christianity, primitive nature religions come creeping back in all of their superstition and barbarism. Feminists, in reacting against "patriarchal" religions such as Christianity, try to restore goddess-worship. Environmentalists stress how the whole planet constitutes a single interdependent ecosystem. It is as if we are all individual cells of a larger organism, a living being long worshiped as Mother Earth, the goddess Gaia.
--Postmodern Times, A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture--Gene Edward Veith,Jr
The county I live in is run by environmental groups(Central Sierra Resouce Council) and the local paper is owed by them(Sierra Club).
Whereas modernism sought human control over nature, postmodernism exalts nature at the expense of human beings. While a love of nature and a concern for the environment are laudable, many environmentalists go to anti-human extremes. David Brown, former head of the Sierra Club, sees the destruction of human life as being no more tragic than the destruction of the wilderness, "While the death of young men in war is unfortunate," he says,"it is no more serious than {the} touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind."
--Postmodern Times, A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture--Gene Edward Veith,Jr
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