Environmentalists:

Modern Environmentalists encourage a world that respects the Earth by getting rid of our greedy Capitalistic ways and redistributes Earth's wealth amongst all people. The Industrial Revolution has destroyed our world leaving it polluted as Global Warming and nuclear waste accumulate in their disasterous effects that may even end life on the world as we know it. The people should elect delegates, so the government can clean up the pollution and end the long train of Earth abuses by Big Corporations. If not, the world's resources may be depleted and life may end as soon as 2050 according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The trees and wilderness should be owned all society, not by loggers or privateers. Mass demonstrations are a good way to show the government that the Environment is to be taken seriously, although blatant terrorism may work too. Anything is better than those SUV driving, rainforest cutting, endangered animal killing, smog producing, Kyoto-bailing, greedy, right-wing Capitalists.

Environmentalists, because nothing says "Clean Earth" like "Socialism WORKS!"

But does it really work?

respects the Earth:

A lot of thinking behind Modern Environmentalism lies in the espousing of the values of "nature" above the values of mankind, as if the two were in conflict with one another. Thus man-made structures and societies are somehow amoral compared to naturally produced ones. This "respect the Earth" mentality often defeats the idea that the Earth and natural resources should be used for anything, as the natural structures of the Earth morally outweigh man-made ones.

getting rid of our greedy Capitalistic ways:

Often the first target of Environmentalists are the Capitalists, because they feel Big Corporations and industry have "polluted our planet" and that they stand in the way of a "clean Earth" by "controlling our resources". However, a link between big industry being able to operate freely in a market and pollution rising as a result are often not provided.

redistributes Earth's wealth amongst all people:

Environmentalists, because of this collective identity of "Earth-dwellers", often believe in the purely Socialistic principle of wealth redistribution. Because the planet is "everyone's", no one has a right to private property. As it usually is, a link between private property and the ability of the Earth to naturally produce enough to sustain everyone is never shown.

The Industrial Revolution has destroyed our world:

Despite creating high technology in health, quality of living, and a various number of cleaner resource-healthy energy sources, Environmentalists view movements like the Industrial age as being the worst period in human history, because of the explosion of consumerism and urban sprawl. These two events are often unlinked to real-life sources of pollution, which stem more from government regulated markets than free ones. One argument is that primitive societies are better because they do not threaten to grow to use Earth's resources, they can theoretically live out timeless histories, however, this is often due to primitive-age factors that make their quality of living, life expectancy and general liberty very low. In some of these "infinitely sustainable societies" the population was a community that only had a few hundred people with average life expectancy not above 30 years of age. These systems, however, are viewed by most Environmentalists as superior to ours today.

polluted:

Pollution is often blamed on the free market's "inability" to force private property owners to stop the spread of contaminants. However, in a free-market system with the proper legislation, pollution would be considered an illegal form of trespass of property, and thus it is conceivably very enforceable. This attempt at legislation has not yet been made, in favor of market regulations and emissions/disposal rules, that often in and of themselves cause more pollution, not less.

Global Warming:

One of the Environmentalist movement's flagships is Global Warming, the claim that the Earth is heating up due to airborn contaminants polluting the atmosphere. The only problem with this claim is that the negative effects of Global Warming and even it's existence can be questioned with few people offering supporting arguments. Of course, it often follows that these Global Warming advocates claim our free markets have no solutions to a problem like Global Warming, however, their claim is not ever really substantiated. Linkless arguments lead nowhere, as do most Environmentalists when talking about Global Warming.

nuclear waste:

Another key issue is the issue of nuclear waste. Since it takes thousands of years to decontaminate and become stable, Environmentalists view it with a bane, saying free markets have no guarantees against radiation contamination over time. This is in spite of nuclear energy plants having no other emission, and proposed waste elimination/long term storage methods. A 1 MW coal burning plant produces 5 million tons of coal ash for one year, stored airborn in the atmosphere, the preferred Environmentalist alternative to it's nuclear energy equivalent of 5 pounds of nuclear waste buried deep underground for decontamination. The preferred method of energy production even produces more radioactive uranium in it's coal ash in that one year than nuclear fission would, or ever has, in all of it's history of operation. The success of modern Environmentalism here is evident in it's ability to point out a "better alternative".

the government can clean up the pollution:

The single worst polluter, according to the Boston Globe, is not the chemical plants, the nuclear plants, or oil companies. It is the federal, state and local government. The government's cleanup costs could exceed $300 billion, 5 times the cost of environmental damage done by all private industry combined. Federal agencies are exempt from environmental legislation, and individual bureaucrats are immune to criminal prosecution, giving, as the Boston Globe says, the government a "license to pollute". This is not by any means including failed environmentalist policies handed down by the government that has contributed to an increased trend in pollution elsewhere, and it's even overlooking the fact that the government has a poor record of cleaning up after itself. Government is the Modern Environmentalist's solution for our private trade pollution - but is it really a better alternative, or does the evidence suggest that it will be indeed, many times worse than all private trade pollution combined? In 1988, the EPA demanded that the Departments of Energy and Defense clean up 17 of their weapons plants which were leaking radioactive and toxic chemicals, which they estimated would cost $100 billion dollars and take over 50 years. Their request was ignored. These are the same people that lease, rent and otherwise use 40% of the U.S.'s land mass, which is often depleted of resources quickly and left barren and polluted on account of the land renters having no incentive to clean up after themselves (paying the fine and walking away is a better solution to them than cultivating the land, by not owning it they have no reason to care).

end the long train of Earth abuses by Big Corporations:

The ever-present "Big Corporations" are the wrongdoer in the Modern Environmentalist campaign. Ending their control over private means of production is the only method seen as being feasible towards ending pollution and corruption of our environment by most environmentalists. This overlooks that free trade systems are characteristically more reliable than authoritarian ones when it comes to holding people responsible for pollution.

as soon as 2050:

The World Wildlife Fund estimated that in 2050 the world will expire in natural resources compared to the growth of human numbers. This is based on the prediction of Thomas Malthus, that as a population grows and consumes more, there will be a continual decline in living standards. This is good and great, if it were true. Observations show that as the population grows, innovations are found to make more of natural resources, and thus the production levels raise to match increased consumerism, keeping the standard of living at the same level or at a higher level than before. This means that resources actually become cheaper over time, and more available. Julian Simon was so confident in this principle that he bet money against a prominent environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, in 1980 that after a period of 10 years a set of 5 natural resources, picked by Ehrlich, would be cheaper and thus, less scarce, then they were in 1980. Every resource Ehrlich picked, metals he thought were damned to increase in price, actually did fall in price, most by considerable margins like 40% (chrome), 57% (tungsten) and 72% (tin). Simon received his payment in the form of a check in 1990. Food reserves have grown since 1961 by 51%... so by 2050, there is little reason to believe that it, along with other natural resources, will actually decline.

The trees and wilderness should be owned all society:

Environmentalists are often fanatic about the ownership of old growth forests by the general public, and not logging corporations that will undoubtedly cut down and destroy old growth in their slash and burn forestry tactics. This might be true for government land-renting loggers who have no incentive to upkeep their land, they make more money paying the fine and leaving the land destitute than upkeeping it, because they don't own it. However, it's a old forestry practice to not slash and burn on land that is privately own, and for good reason - long term gains are not held in a massive single slash-burn effort, since it requires a large effort to process an entire forest and has little gains when you can't just "pay the fine" and move on to the next leased property. Real estate is harder to buy continuously for such a practice, and harder to sell when it's ruined by slash and burn. That's why most private logging companies that land own do not engage in this practice, instead using a replanting schedule to get the most of out their land. As for old growth, some loggers actually practice preserving old growth to get tourist income from campers and sight-seers year-round, as they freely continue their schedule of cutting/replanting in the rest of the forest. One might think that this is the most efficient way to run a logging business - thus, it's stupid to assume that a Capitalist market would discourage it in favor of quick gains slash and burn practices.

Mass demonstration:

Mass demonstrations, usually very well organized, are often declared peaceful but turn violent quickly. Environmentalists fare the same as Anti-Globalizationists in this sense, and often anticipate a brutal riot, it even seems that there are groups of "professional protesters" coming with medical aid kits and other riot tools - why would you need a medic if the protest is planned to be peaceful? This makes their claims that the protests are "peaceful" very questionable.

blatant terrorism:

The Earth Liberation Front, an extremist eco-terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for over $30 million in damages against businesses and private individuals they claim "abuse nature's resources". The ELF spikes trees so loggers become injured when their chainsaws attempt to cut the trees down, they torch offices and homes of people who they feel are "against the environment", and commit all sorts of acts of vandalism. The FBI ranks the ELF as the highest domestic terrorist threat right now, and, like Al-Qaeda (the highest ranking foreign terrorist threat), the ELF is extremely hard to locate because it operates in small cells. Whatever WORKS!, I guess?

SUV driving:

Sports Utility Vehicles have come under fire recently because they supposedly consume more gas and provide more emissions. Some even consider SUV driving "unpatriotic" and the Earth Liberation Front, a environmental terrorist group, has been known to firebomb SUV's and SUV retailers. This is ignoring that SUV's are far safer on a roadway than smaller cars (a SUV crashing into a tree will do less damage to the occupants than will a smaller less fuel-consuming cars). A National Academy of Sciences report estimated CAFE, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, caused vehicle sizes to reduce by changing limits on fuel consumption, and that this lead to 1,300-2,600 deaths annually, simply because people were getting into car accidents in smaller cars that would protect them less. Reported in the USA Today, if SUV's follow the same pattern of cars (lighter builds for higher fuel efficiency) the cost of every mile per gallon gained in fuel efficiency will be 7,700 deaths.

rainforest cutting:

The slash and burning of the South American rainforests is often blamed on profiteering logging companies. The actual reason behind much of the rainforest's destruction lies in South American governments subsidizing logging corporations to cut it down for social agricultural purposes, such as making new available farmland and ranches. It's unfair to blame a free market for public government endeavors, but Environmentalists aren't really known for "playing fair".

endangered animal killing:

The Endangered Species Act claims it's success lies in all the delisted animals in it's endangered species list, it's more or less a government sponsored regulatory agency doing anything possible to preserve whatever species it deems are "endangered". The only problem is, the ESA doesn't work. The agency has not yet even breached the 5% mark in delisting animals, and a vast majority of the delisting comes due to factors like: extinction, data errors, living on federally owned lands (and thus, already "protected"), and recovery outside the ESA's legislation. A very small fraction of the very small fraction of delisted animals are actually recovered due to ESA spending. The billions spent are on top of a mountain of government paperwork restricting all manner of private trade, job loss, construction halting, business closing... all for someone "protecting" an endangered specie, which typically dies anyways.

smog producing:

The Clean Air Act, one of the Environmentalist movement's crowning victories, has a dizzying array of regulations, government-run inspection programs, zero-emission sale quotas, carpooling requirements, that cost taxpayers millions just to run. The cost of the programs themselves have not been shown to be reflected in any solving of any major smog problems. The CATO Institute recommended an alternative approach - remote emissions testing, using readily available remote sensors to scan drivers in major roadways for warning and fining based on high emissions. This alternative, costing the taxpayers little and discouraging drivers directly for the pollution they create, encourages respect for property rights by showing individuals their own specific emission problems, while not having the megamassive regulatory bureaucracy required to legislate manufacturers. Of course, government limiting of free markets, in any situation, tend to stop problems from getting solved, not visca versa.

Kyoto-bailing:

The Kyoto Protocol is an international program designed to reduce the still questionable event of global warming. The only problem is, that in the next hundred years, even if the Kyoto Protocol is abided by on all it's signees, it will prevent the global warming scales from growing only by a few years. Those few years will come at the expense to the U.S. taxpayers of $350 billion dollars a year and a new megamassive bureaucratic authority, according to Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist". By 2050, if the protocol is obeyed, standards will be harder to meet and costs will skyrocket to $900 billion a year, which is roughly the cost of potential global warming problems. In other words, Kyoto is paying for global warming twice. Kyoto was dropped by the U.S. after originally standing in favor of it, due to the apparentness of these problems, however Environmentalists are pushing for our ratification of the treaty.

greedy, right-wing Capitalists:

These "greedy" Capitalists support a system of private property rights that America is founded on - a series of principles Environmentalists hold secondary to their shallow aims at "fixing" the environment. Have their efforts succeeded and are their goals amicable, or by taking away property rights have they made it harder to find and solve the real problem behind pollution and land misuse? While asking questions, we should also consider whether this mentality is in fact in favor of the environment, or just in favor of Socialist political reforms. Here are a few quotes for the reader to take into consideration while contemplating these questions.

"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects... We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land."

- David Foreman, Earth First!

"If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels."

- Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run."

- Economist editorial

« Go back to Socialism WORKS!