Earth Day: a Pro-Human Perspective vs. the Anti-Industrial Revolutionaries

As I've said in past years, Earth Day grew out of the New Left's anti-industrial revolution. It's still true that Earth Day carries a bias against industrialization, man's great achievement at turning a hostile natural environment brimming with potential into a great place to live.

That's because “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow”, as Ayn Rand observed. So Earth Day powers on as an unthinking celebration of hostile pre-industrial Planet Earth.

One such uncontested (except by Rand) absurdity was inaugurated on April 22, 1970…the first Earth Day. The inability or unwillingness of Americans to understand and appreciate the actual meaning behind that concept has allowed Earth Day to evolve into a powerful symbol of an ideology that is anti-human life.

Ayn Rand coined the term “anti-industrial revolution” to describe the “ecology” movement of the 1960s and 1970s. That movement was the precursor to the modern Environmentalist movement* [I use an upper case 'E' to highlight its ideological nature].

The basic premise of Environmentalism is that “nature” in its raw state—which means unaltered by human intervention—has intrinsic value. But the concept "value" cannot be divorced from the concept valuer. Nothing can have intrinsic value ... i.e., value in and of itself. But that is exactly how Environmentalism sees nature. The consequences to human freedom and well-being by the acceptance of that doctrine are horrendous. Mark Levine puts it thus:

  If nature has "intrinsic value" then nature exists for its own sake. Consequently, man is not to be preferred over any aspect of his natural surroundings. He is no better than any other organism and much worse because of his destructive existence.

  Is not man, therefore, expendable? And if he is, is not the suppression of his liberty, the confiscation of his property, and the blunting of his progress at all times warranted where the purpose is to save the planet - or any part of it - from man himself? After all, it would seem that there can be no end to man's offenses against nature if he is not checked at every turn. (Liberty and Tyranny, pages 121-122)

Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, puts it another way—in terms of a moral standard of value. The environmentalists' standard of moral value is unaltered nature, not human flourishing. Since man's means of survival is to apply productive—i.e., reason-guided—work to the task of transforming the Earth nature gives us into an environment suitable to human living, everything man does above the level of the higher animals is immoral. Man is not to improve his natural surroundings; not to maximize his well-being while minimizing the negative consequences of his industrial development. He is to minimize his impact on the Earth, regardless of the consequences to his life. This is the underlying meaning of Earth Day, of "going green"—deindustrialization, not as a means to a better environment for humans, but for deindustrialization’s sake. Earth Day stands for anti-humanism.

Think of what it means if unaltered nature is the moral standard; if nature has intrinsic value. It means that whatever nature "does"—raw nature—is valuable and not to be altered. A volcano erupting and destroying Mount St. Helens, taking with it millions of trees and wild animals, is raw nature, and thus good. Man clearing a forest and “destroying” an ecosystem to build a housing development is not "natural," and thus bad. Animals devouring one another to survive is raw nature. Man using animals for the purpose of testing (human) life-saving medicines is not. Crop-destroying insects or plant diseases is raw nature. Insecticides and bio-engineered pest- and disease-resistant crops is not. A black primordial goo lying underground is raw nature. Refined protroleum products like gasoline and heating oil and plastics are not. Natural climate change is acceptable. Human-caused climate change is not. A natural 400 foot rise in sea levels is not bad. Let human activity contribute a couple of inches in the last century to the 20,000 year trend, and its a catastrophe. Modern agriculture, transportation, health care, buildings, amusement parks, even household appliances—everything manmade—results from altering raw nature in some way, which destroys intrinsic value and is thus immoral and needs to be minimized and ultimately stopped and reversed.

The common denominator of that which is not “raw” nature is that it represents the application of human intelligence to the advance of man’s well-being and survival. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. Every living species, from the lowest bacteria to the most advanced mammals, must act according to its nature to sustain its life. In other words, every living species is provided by nature with some means of survival, which it must rely on and exercise.

There is one crucial fact of nature that sets man apart from every other living species. Every other species must essentially adapt itself to its natural environmental background. It has no choice in the matter, since it basically has no way of altering that environment. It is thus equipped with the basic means of survival determined by its nature to survive in that manner. Any species that lacks or loses the means to adapt perishes. Man, however, is not equipped to adapt to raw nature. He must, if he is to survive and thrive, adapt his environmental background to his own needs ... by building homes, inventing medical treatments, developing advanced agriculture, producing fuel for transportation and heating ... all produced from exploiting the materials found in raw nature.

Environmentalism’s elevating of nature to the absurd and logically indefensible status of having intrinsic value is a direct assault on, and denial of, man’s method of survival; his need to transform raw nature as dictated by his very nature. That man is himself a product of nature does not daunt the environmentalist mindset. They champion nature, except the one creation of nature that sets man apart. Since man’s primary, basic means of achieving this is his rational mind, the anti-science of Environmentalism is thus anti-mind, which means anti-man.

Environmentalism should not be confused with the idea of developing cleaner methods of producing and consuming that which we need to survive and thrive. Pollution--ingredients around us that is harmful to humans above a certain scientifically validated threshhold--can and should be cleaned up. That is not what the leaders of the environmental movement have in mind. It is human production and technology itself that is the enemy. That's why, for example, Environmentalists oppose nuclear power as a sollution to what they call the "climate crisis" induced by human emissions of carbon dioxide.

Following are some quotes from some of those leaders:

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.

—Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet ... Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

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

I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.

—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels.

—Carl Amery

We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!

—Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue).

This last is the ideal that drives environmentalism…the return of mankind to a pre-industrial age--a new Stone Age, essentially--when man lived “in harmony” with nature. A time when nature was worshiped, rather than exploited for human gain. Rather than a warm winter home, they long for an existence of savages cowering in fear of natural forces. The name itself, “Environmentalism”, captures the very essence of its meaning, just as Communism or Theocracy captures the essence of those systems. In fact, statists of every stripe have latched on to the environmental movement to further their anti-capitalist agendas.

But make no mistake. The agenda of Environmentalism is to thwart, roll back, and destroy the life-giving technology and industrialization of the modern age. This is not to say that I believe that they will succeed (although the seeming popularity of the Green New Deal questions that assumption). Most people don’t equate Environmentalism with an anti-man’s-life agenda. There is a real danger, though, that they will succeed at advancing a statist (socialist) agenda under cover of Environmentalism, leading to a deteriorating economy, rising impoverishment, and possible dictatorship. I submit in evidence the two news items cited in my 2010 Earth Day post.

By celebrating “Earth Day”, we should be aware of the enemies of man that we are helping to bring to power in America and around the world.

Rather than celebrate raw nature, as embodied in “Earth Day”, we should instead look around at all of the life-giving benefits we enjoy as a result of industrialization. We can celebrate Industrialized Earth Day, celebrating man's great achievement at transforming raw nature into a human-friendly planet. Here some articles for a pro-human perspective:

Forget “Earth Day”…Celebrate Life On Earth Day!--Michael Hurd 

THIS EARTH DAY, SHRUG OFF ENVIRONMENTALIST FEAR AND GUILT—Amanda Maxham for The Ayn Rand Institute 

An Unnatural Amount of Happiness — Why I Celebrate Transforming the Earth--Alex Epstein 

5 Environmental and Human Trends Worth Celebrating This Earth Day--Ronald Bailey
Peak population, expanding forests, more abundant resources, falling air pollution, and plenty of farmland.

Exploit-the-Earth Day by Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

The Great Enrichment by Deirdre McCloskey

State of Fear by Michael Crichton  

The ‘Anthropocene’ and Hatred of Man

A vigorous debate has been going on inside the world of geology science. The question is, are we in a new geologic age marked by human influence on the planet? The answer—No. According to a New York Times report, 

The highest governing body in geology has upheld a contested vote by scientists against adding the Anthropocene, or human age, to the official timeline of Earth’s history.

The vote, which a committee of around two dozen scholars held in February, brought an end to nearly 15 years of debate about whether to declare that our species had transformed the natural world so thoroughly since the 1950s as to have sent the planet into a new epoch of geologic time.

On the face of it, this seems like a rather ho-hum subject for most people outside the scientific community. But an article applauding the decision drew my interest because it highlighted something I’ve long believed and said—the Environmentalist movement is fundamentally anti-human. In Scientists Just Gave Humanity an Overdue Reality Check. The World Will Be Better for It, NYT guest essayist Stephen Lezak is quite blunt: 

The world’s leading institution on geology declined a proposal on Wednesday to confirm that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch, doubling down on its bombshell announcement earlier this month. The notion that we’re in the “Anthropocene” — the proposed name for a geologic period defined by extensive human disturbance — has become a common theme in environmental circles for the last 15 years. To many proponents, the term is an essential vindication, the planetary equivalent of a long-sought diagnosis of a mysterious illness. But geologists weren’t convinced.

The international geology commission’s decision this week to uphold its vote of 12 to 4 may seem confusing, since by some measures humans have already become the dominant geologic force on the earth’s surface. But setting the science aside for a moment, there’s a reason to celebrate, because the politics behind the Anthropocene label were rotten to begin with.

For starters, the word Anthropocene problematically implies that humans as a species are responsible for the sorry state of the earth’s environments. While technically true, only a fraction of humanity, driven by greed and rapacious capitalism, is responsible for burning through the planet’s resources at an unsustainable rate. Billions of humans still lead lives with relatively modest environmental footprints, yet the terminology of the Anthropocene wrongly lays blame at their feet. Responding to the vote, a group of outside scientists wisely noted in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution that “our impacts have less to do with being human and more to do with ways of being human.”

[My emphasis.]

"A mysterious illness," “the [rotten] politics behind the Anthropocene label,” "the sorry state of the earth’s environments," and "greed and rapacious capitalism" is how the author refers to the “fraction of humanity [that] is responsible for burning through the planet’s resources.”  

But what did that guilty fraction of humanity give us? The Great Enrichment is how historian Deirdre McCloskey describes the explosive, almost miraculous improvements in the living standards, over the past 250 years, of the fraction of humanity that Lezak blames for the “mysterious illness” that gave us “the sorry state of Earth’s environment.” But that “mysterious illness” was Capitalism, which McCloskey believes is more accurately labeled Innovism. And that political system, which Lezak labels “rotten,” is the system of rightful liberty that unchained ideas, individual productiveness, and commercialism to bless the large portion of the world with vastly enriched lives. "Lives with relatively modest environmental footprints" is how Lezak approvingly thinks of the large portion of the planet that still lives in devastating poverty—and the near stone-age state to which the author apparently dreams of reducing the rest of us. 

The rate of economic growth of The Great Enrichment, McCloskey argues, will “in a few generations—if the virus, pollution, war, and tyranny do not intervene—bring everyone on the planet to a level of prosperity well above that enjoyed now in Western Europe.” Lezak does not cheer that potential glorious development. He wants to prevent it—and roll it back. He wants to keep those “Billions of humans [who] still lead lives with relatively modest environmental footprints” in their current state of poverty and misery.

This is the definitive cold-blooded Environmentalist view of human progress, and all you need to know about the motives of anyone who speaks of "saving the planet.” It is from a flourishing human life that the planet-savers aim to save the planet. Lezak is not an aberration or outlier. Humans live, survive, and flourish by impacting the planet. The Great Enrichment could not have happened, and can never expand, on an ideology of modest environmental impact. It could not exist by limiting the “burning through the planet’s resources” to what Environmentalists call a sustainable rate.* Humans can’t live “in harmony with nature,” as animals do. Man’s primary means of survival is his reasoning mind. Man needs to apply his reason to his labor in order to vastly improve the planet to live and flourish. We either sustain the planet in its wild, dangerous, unimpacted state, or we sustain humanity and human progress. It’s either/or. The Environmentalists choose planet sustainability. Humanitarians choose human life.

Scientists Just Gave Humanity an Overdue Reality Check. The World Will Be Better for It goes well beyond the powerlust that politicians who use Environmentalism to gain power over our lives. At least they retain some respect for human progress, even though their policies would ultimately make progress impossible. What I sense when I read cold rubbish like Lezak’s article is pure hatred, and the resentment and envy of productive achievement that leads to it. 

* [Earth doesn’t actually give us resources. It gives us raw materials with potential. Turning those raw materials into actual resources comes from human thought and ingenuity.]

Related Reading:

Earth Day: a Pro-Human Perspective vs. the Anti-Industrial Revolutionaries

Greta Thunberg's Hatred of Man

Related Listening:

The Anti-Industrial Revolution, by Ayn Rand

The Would-Be Climate Dictators’ Trial Balloon

From ‘Authoritarianism’ May Be Necessary to Fight Climate Change, Cambridge Study Argues, FEE’s John Miltimore reports:

A recent study published in American Political Science Review, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University, begins with a teasing question: “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?”

For many, the answer is clearly no, concedes the study’s author—Ross Mittiga, an assistant professor of political theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. But Mittiga, in the abstract to the study, suggests otherwise:

“While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach.

This was inevitable. I have long argued that the normally mundane science of climate change had become a means to a political end—some form of totalitarian statism. The tactics used by politicians for fighting the "climate crisis" are invariably dictatorial, but they would never openly admit it. Now, with so many people duped into being conditioned to accept government coercion to "fight climate change," the climate crisis mongers appear to be getting ready to take the next step—openly declare that freedom cannot handle the crisis and then demand the dictatorial powers their policies always implied. 

Note also that the over-reaching COVID 19 freedom restrictions are being cited as the precedent for the coming climate attack on our liberty, which I also predicted.

The piecemeal advance of statism is often preceded by trial balloons to gauge how ready the public is for another erosion of their freedom and rights. That’s how I see this study. We'll see how far this trial balloon goes.

Related Reading:

New U.N. 'Study' Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

As We Endure Through COVID-19 Lockdowns, Dems Gear Up for ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism

About the 1960s . . .

This meme showed up on Facebook:

In The 1960’s Ladies Didn’t Have Tattoos, Nose Rings, Purple Hair… What A Wonderful Time!

Being the decade in which I “came of age,” I just had to weigh in:

Race riots, assassinations, a massive expansion of the welfare state, the drug “culture,” the New Left, a no-win war in Vietnam, the brink of nuclear war, the collapse of the Yankees Dynasty—not so wonderful. I’ll take Tattoos, Nose Rings, and Purple Hair (I actually like purple hair, and my wife, 2 daughters, and granddaughter have tattoos.)

Of course, there were a few silver linings—the end of Jim Crow, the rising influence of pro-Capitalist free market thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Frederick Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, and of course the Golden Oldies music. 

Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘How does Black Lives Matter differ from the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s? Which is stronger?’

Racism is Alive and Thriving on the Left

Joe Biden’s Despicable ,Unjust Blame Game

Joe Biden is the latest in a long line of politicians to blame private enterprise for the problems caused by their own policies. 

In Biden’s case, it’s inflation. From “greedflation” to “shrinkflation,” the recent (and ongoing) inflationary spiral is all the fault of business, according to Biden. Note the no-win situation these idiotic terms press onto business. Business is dealing with the same inflationary forces as everyone else—namely, the devaluation of the dollar due to excess money creation—and, like everyone else, must deal with it. So, if a business raises prices to deal with its own rising costs, it’s “greedflation.” If it reduces the size of packaging to avoid a price increase, it’s “shrinkflation.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Inflation, to put it in a somewhat oversimplified way, is defined as too much money chasing too few goods. In 2020, as COVID tightened its grip, the federal government under Donald Trump flooded the economy with $trillions in Covid “relief” money, all of it Fed-created out of thin air (“too much money”). At the same time, government’s were shutting down large segments of the productive economy, leading to  “too few goods.” You couldn’t get a more perfect inflationary storm. The stage for the coming inflation was set. (Don’t confuse price jumps in specific industries due to isolated problems like supply chain shocks with the general rise in prices that is inflation.) 

Onto this stage, Joe Biden roared into office vowing to “save” the economy, flooding the economy with $trillions in new spending for Covid relief and other spendings, pouring fuel on the emerging inflationary fire at a time when, contrary to Biden’s lies, the economy was already roaring back from the brief 2020 Covid Depression. 

Biden’s blaming of business for the inflation that his own policies fueled is despicable enough, but not unprecedented. Politicians have long resorted to this tactic—e.g. Nixon's price controls and Ford’s”WIN” (Whip Inflation Now) campaign. But Biden has gone further in what can only be termed gangster tactics that would make Al Capone smile—his “Strike Force” to assault private business for engaging in their rightful attempts to deal with their inflationary pressures. 

That a president of a country Founded on the principle that “government’s are instituted to secure these rights” could target private enterprise with such a gangster tactic, and with large public support, tells you all you need to know about where we are as a country. But that’s Biden, who even stooped to the lower low of targeting children for his cartoon economics propaganda, via the Cookie Monster. Shame on Sesame Street producers for embedding the idiotic term “shrinkflation” in its programing; and shame on Biden for channeling this Cookie Monster scene into his unjust attack on America's great business community.

Terms like “shrinkflation” and “greedflation” are senseless, made-up, albeit catchy, political terms geared to economic ignoramuses and other assorted useful idiots. Yet here is a president regurgitating these terms. It is Joe Biden who keeps shrinking, intellectually. Call it “shrink-tegrity.” 

Benito Mussolini, in his defining essay The Doctrine of Fascism,” explains the foundation of his political theory: “a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces.” Can anyone distinguish Biden’s “strike force” tactics from Mussolini’s? Joe Biden keeps finding ways to make it easier and easier to hate him. He is a lying, anti-American fascist reactionary.

Related Reading:

Memo to Jersey City Mayor Fulop: The Federal Reserve, Not Supermarkets, is to Blame for 'Hidden Food Inflation'

Economics in One Lesson—Henry Hazlitt

Did the New York Times Just Vindicate Reaganomics?

Republican Deplorables Win—and Guarantee a 2nd Biden Term

 Republican Deplorables Win—and Guarantee a 2nd Biden Term

In 2016, Hillary Clinton labeled Trump supporters as “deplorables.” This outraged a lot of people, including me. While not a Trump supporter, I did vote for Trump as the lesser of two evils.

But maybe Clinton was on to something. In 2016, there was no alternative to Trump, other than her. But in this election cycle, there was a quality alternative—Nikki Haley—and the Republican majority went for Trump anyway. Apparently, the Republican Party is not above going in a deplorable direction, after all.

I have no beef with those who vote for Trump this November as the lesser of two evils. Once again, there is no alternative. But those who enthusiastically supported Trump in the GOP primary fight, when there was a quality alternative, shows just how far the Republican Party has run from its fundamental principles that were once rooted in this country’s Founding.

What were these Trump Republicans thinking? Trump calls Haley a RINO—Republican in Name Only. This, from a person who has no idea what American Republicanism means. The fact is, Haley is more Republican than any president since Ronald Reagan. 

My belief is that Trump cannot beat Biden . . . or any Democrat. We can of course work and hope for a Republican Congress, or at least Senate. That will thwart some of the worst of Biden. 

I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, despite major misgivings. But Trump’s anti-Constitutional attempts to overthrow the 2020 election crossed a moral line that makes it impossible for me to do the same this time around. In November 2024, I will be abstaining from voting for president. 

Related Reading:

What Nikke Haley gets Right, and her Critics Wrong, about the Civil War

My Vote Will Go to . . . (ARRGGHH!) Donald Trump

Trump vs. Socialism: It’s Still (ARRGGHH!) Trump

Trump’s Ban-All-Muslims Policy Undermines the Fight Against Islamic Jihad