The Last Word : "environmentalist" saboteurs

insight mag ^ | November 9, 2001 | Ralph de Toledano

[Stand Watch Listen]

The next time "environmentalist" saboteurs launch a campaign against Alaskan oil drilling — or any other project to improve life in these United States — they should be encouraged to review the videotapes of the collapsing World Trade Center twin towers. "You are not responsible for the terrorist attack," the enviros should be told, "but you are directly responsible for the collapse of the towers and the related loss of more than 5,000 lives."

Is this true?

These are the facts: When the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and other New York skyscrapers were being built, the steel columns that supported them were insulated with concrete, making them safe from a meltdown disaster. This was an expensive process, so the builders of the World Trade Center towers sought an equally effective new one. Such a process was developed — a sprayed thermal insulation of asbestos and mineral wool that could resist tremendous heat for a minimum of four hours before the girders might topple.

The twin towers were so designed, the plan being that they could withstand even the most catastrophic fire long enough to evacuate those in the higher floors by helicopter. The towers also were designed to withstand the impact of a fuel-loaded Boeing 707. But while the towers were being built, the enviros launched one of their hysterical campaigns against the use of asbestos, and the poltroons of the New York City Council voted to ban it — in no matter what form.

The direct result was that from the 64th floor up, the girders of the twin towers were deprived of the necessary fireproofing. At the time, Herbert Levine, an expert in the insulation of steel building columns, warned: "If fire breaks out above the 64th floor, the building will fall down."

And that's precisely what happened. Those on the floors struck by the fuel-heavy 757s died immediately. Many below the fire made their way out. But most on higher floors were doomed. Properly insulated, the twin towers would have remained standing for four hours — enough time for rescue by smoke-equipped firefighters in helicopters. But the first tower collapsed after 1 hour and 40 minutes, the second after 56 minutes. Those watching could see the steel columns glowing a fiery orange before they gave way, taking with them the lower floors, which could not bear the falling weight.

More than 5,000 people died because the enviros dislike processed asbestos, which never has been proved to have killed anyone.

But the more-radical enviros do not even mourn. Some of their leaders preach that this planet will not be a safe place for "endangered species" until the human race greatly has been reduced by cataclysm and the Earth is restored to its primeval state. So hurrah for the terrorists. And hooray for the anopheles mosquito, for instance, which is killing large numbers because of the ban on DDT, a chemical that caused not a single human to die.

And the enviros are still at it. When oil strikes in Alaska revealed the need for a pipeline, the enviros, who oppose the internal-combustion engine, set up a horrific outcry. Drilling for oil would destroy one of the Luddite treasures — the bleak and empty frozen tundra. The caribou that roam the Alaskan wilds would perish, starving Eskimos who depend upon such beasts for food. But the enviros did not get their way. The oil wells and the pipeline were slowed but eventually built. And guess what? The caribou thrived and in the coldest months snuggle up against the pipeline for warmth. The Eskimos cheered.

But the febrile imaginations of the enviros being what they are, these people never give up. There are vast stores of oil in Alaska vital to the U.S. economy, which now must rely on the not-so-tender mercies of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. But the enviros still moon over the caribou, the Eskimos and the great paradise of the tundra. They blocked the development of vital petroleum resources there until Arab terrorism struck, and they still muster enough support among Senate goo-goos to delay legislation to open new Alaskan oil fields and make us less dependent on the Arab oil lords.

Taking a page from the terrorists, an enviro recently opened up on the pipeline with a gun, costing more than 234,000 barrels of oil before the ensuing leak could be stoppered. Immediately, enviro concerns about pipeline "safety" were floated on an arctic sea of crocodile tears.

This hardly touches the extent of enviro sabotage. At every turn, they throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of orderly economic progress and the lives of people who depend upon it. As one example: In the name of the spotted owl and other fauna, they have attempted and sometimes succeeded in whipsawing the logging industry and those who make their living from it. They paint a picture of an America without a tree standing — but the hard fact is that there are more trees today in these United States than there were in 1850 because the logging industry plants more trees every year than it harvests.

The enviros get away with lies about this sort of thing because they have the ignorant media and the malevolent hate-America brigades with them. The cause of the quick collapse of the twin towers and resulting loss of life was suppressed by the media out of sympathy and fear of the enviros. You discover the same sickness in the school board that banned the display of American flags and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance after Sept. 11 because somebody might resent such a show of patriotism.

This goo-gooism has got to stop!

Ralph de Toledano is a frequent writer for Insight magazine.

[Tailgunner Joe]

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