Celebrate Our Earth, not Earth Hour
Earth Hour came and went Saturday a week ago (March 23) without much fanfare. You may not even have noticed. This is a good sign. In the past few years the environmental movement has been dealt a number of setbacks. Credible scientific advances that refute claims about man-made global warming and other environmental doomsday scenarios have entered the mainstream. And revelations of corruption among environmental scientists have increased the skepticism about their predictions among the American public.
Despite the scientific setbacks for their movement, the environmental zealots at the EPA and other agencies, along with their environmental lobby partners in crime—the Sierra Club, the World Wild Life Fund (sponsor of Earth Hour), Greenpeace, and numerous others—are relentlessly pushing for more controls. Stricter emission standards for cars, forced use of “alternative” energy sources such as wind, solar, and ethanol, and restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, just to mention a few.
As Americans, by virtue of our benevolent can do attitude, by our desire to address real environmental problems—polluted rivers, smog, dumping, etc.—we have made a deal with the devil. We have allowed the environmental ideologues to hijack the political process and reduce our freedoms on an unprecedented scale based on corrupt scientific theories and false hypotheses.
Real environmental problems are technological problems, not political problems. The government’s only role is to step in when someone’s individual rights, including property rights, have been demonstrably violated. If a farmer’s pasture has been demonstrably polluted by a nearby mining operation, his rights have been violated. But if your eyes are itching, you cannot arbitrarily blame some factory or other without demonstrable proof.
Technological problems, including real environmental problems, can only be solved by men and women who are free to follow their own mind, to invent, to innovate. What political system best supports this process of free inquiry? You guessed it: Laissez-Faire Capitalism with total separation of state and the economy, including total separation of state and environmental concerns.
But to the environmentalists Capitalism is the great evil. This should tell you something about their motives. Philosophically, at the core, they don’t love nature but hate mankind. No, not all practitioners fit that profile, but to evaluate a movement and predict its direction you have to look at its essence. In this case, it’s hatred of Man. To environmentalists, Homo Sapiens is the invasive species that has to be made extinct. If love of nature were their primary concern, they would embrace Capitalism as the only system that solves real environmental problems.
Capitalism doesn’t celebrate Earth Hour; it celebrates Our Earth, with an emphasis on “Our”. Capitalism is Man centric; it puts humans first. This is anathema to the hard-core environmentalists and explains their hatred of it.
So what can you do? For starters, end your support of environmental organizations. Yes, those endangered Pandas are really cute, but beware of the WWFs political agenda. It wants to turn Homo Sapiens into an endangered species. And if the Sierra Club has its way, lack of gas will prevent you from reaching the National Parks its founder John Muir helped create.
Instead, support organizations that promote a pro-Capitalist view of the environment such as the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP). And of course, take every opportunity to oppose efforts to increase, and promote efforts to reduce, environmental regulations, be it federal, state or local.
Finally, how about turning the tables on the environmentalists? Let’s hijack Earth Day (this year it’s Monday, April 22) and turn it into a celebration of what solves real environmental problems. Let’s celebrate Capitalism and the ingenuity of free men and women. Let’s not celebrate Earth Day, but our “Day on Earth”.