Posted by
The Sapper Lounge on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 12:01:30 PM
Environmentalists come in many forms, from the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do celebrity jet-fuel guzzling crowd to the whacked-out fringe environmental radicals. Those radicals wield surprising political and social power mainly by disguising their true aims in snappy bumper-sticker slogans that sound clever and bright on the surface but reflect little applicability in the practical world.
Those radical environmentalists oddly want the same thing that many oil execs rely upon for hefty profits, that is artificially limited supply and artificially high prices for energy. And in the radical environmentalist's world, the United States is the number one target. The U.S. has enjoyed many years of relatively inexpensive energy coupled with vast supplies of natural resources that has fueled an economy unmatched by any other nation ever since the Industrial Revolution. But in the minds of the radical environmental everything that many of us love about the United States has a dark side of pollution, exploitation and militarism. Secretly (or not so secretly) rather than bringing the rest of the world up to U.S. and Western standards of living, the radicals would tear us down. We are not to be allowed to consume. And if we do, we must pay a steep price.
But that view is based more upon propaganda, self-guilt and ignorance than actual fact. The facts paint a different story. Life before the age of the Western Democracies around the world was short, brutish, often violent, and with little personal liberty. Very few people controlled the resources, the power and made decisions for themselves. Most people lived lives not unlike worker ants, toiling away, killing other worker ants from neighboring hives, and serving the few. In short, it was far from an enlightened existense. It was crude and animalistic, possibly moreso than that of our stone-aged ancestors.
Much of the world is still like this. And what's more, the radicals would seem to prefer that we live like this as well rather than how we live now. No, they don't say it that way, but that would be the effect of their policies if carried out. But would that help the environment? Unlikely. Our modern United States, while our economy has grown leaps and bounds, is cleaner now than it has been in decades. Our wealth enables us to devise ways to produce in more effecient, cleaner and better ways all the time. The same is true in the rest of the Western Democracies. No one wants to live in filth and given free choice, people will generally make the right decisions.
Conversely, where people have little control over their lives and their living conditions, the ecology is raped for the benefit of the few. Over the past 100-years China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Brazil and the like were some of the worst polluted and ravaged lands in the world. And it's people are often the hardest hit with toxic wastes, disease, famine, displacement, and disaster. Why? Because by and large, they have little say over their own lives.
In short, bringing the Western economies to their knees will not lead to a cleaner, better world. Quite the opposite.
Update:
Ann Coulter adds her voice to the growing chorus of reality.