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| The Atlantic Affairs Security. Ideologies. Multiculturalism. |
If environmentalism succeeds, it'll make life impossible
By Michael S Berliner
Posted: April 18, 2006
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 environmentalism is not clean air and clean
water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization.
Environmentalism's 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, environmentalists 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 that 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 that
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 environmentalism is not twenty-first-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 eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that
consistent 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 fundamentally anti-man. 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
environmentalism, 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, October
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 nonhuman.
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 that makes life on earth possible.
### ### ###
Dr Michael S Berliner is a member of the board of directors of the Ayn
Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif.
By Michael S Berliner
Posted: April 18, 2006
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 environmentalism is not clean air and clean
water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization.
Environmentalism's 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, environmentalists 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 that 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 that
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 environmentalism is not twenty-first-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 eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that
consistent 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 fundamentally anti-man. 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
environmentalism, 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, October
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 nonhuman.
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 that makes life on earth possible.
### ### ###
Dr Michael S Berliner is a member of the board of directors of the Ayn
Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif.
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