Anti-human Environmentalists

I like James Delingpole, but in his recent article, “‘Climate Change’: the new Eugenics,” he makes the common mistake of addressing a non-essential issue which misses the all important principle that is actually being violated.

He’s discussing the fact that environmentalists, such a President Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Science And Technology Policy, John Holdren, revere as their, “key philosophical guru,” the pro-eugenics environmentalist author of, The Challenge of Man’s Future (1954), Harrison Brown.

He quotes Brown:

“Thus we could sterilize or in other ways discourage the mating of the feeble-minded. We could go further and systematically attempt to prune from society, by prohibiting them from breeding, persons suffering from serious inheritable forms of physical defects, such as congenital deafness, dumbness, blindness, or absence of limbs.”

So what’s wrong with genetics? Delingpole writes: “Brown, you’ll have gathered, was a keen eugenicist. Well, fine: so were lots of people back then, despite the setback their junk-science philosophy experienced with the end of Nazi Germany.”

This is the same argument that is used against environmentalism and global warming itself—”it is bad science.” The fact is, science is not the issue at all.

Ethics, Not Science

It is not the “junk-science” of eugenics that is wrong with it. It is, in fact, much more scientific than environmentalism, especially “warmism.” What’s wrong with eugenics is not its science, or lack of it, but that it is immoral.

The truth is, the part of eugenics that is based on genetics, not evolution, is not junk science at all. It’s used all the time in animal breeding and works very well.

The point is, science is not the issue. The issue is the one that everyone evades. The issue is individual liberty and the fact that nothing justifies political control of any individual’s life. It wouldn’t matter if global warming was a fact, or if over-population were truly imminent and mass starvation, death, and destruction were the certain consequence, it would not justify government oppression or control of anything, much less the lives and fortunes of individuals.

Individualism, Not Society

Global warming, and all the rest of environmentalism, as well as eugenics, are always put over in terms of collectivism, that is, in terms of society, or mankind, or the earth itself. When human beings are addressed at all, it is never in terms of individuals, but always in terms of some vague “humanity” or “human life.” And the issues are always negative ones, alway pending disasters, or catastrophes, and they are always used as an excuse to impose ever more draconian government regulations and controls.

Those who oppose the environmentalists and social planners, unfortunately, never counter the essential collectivist lie, but instead attack “the science” so-called, or whatever social doctrine is being pressed. When a scientist protests the imposition of carbon limits because the “science” on global warming is wrong, it implies, if the science were correct, carbon limits would be just ducky. When a researcher demonstrates the fallacies of impending starvation due to overpopulation or damage to the environment by “non-sustainable” development in protest against laws which are a clear violation of private property rights, it implies, if there really were impending starvation or damage to the environment, laws violating private property rights would be perfectly acceptable.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter whether the science is right or not; it doesn’t matter if the environment is damaged; and it doesn’t matter whose pet interest might or might not be hurt or endangered. The only thing that matters is individual human beings and that they be free to live their lives as they choose and that no one be able to force their own views of how others ought to live on anyone else.

There can be no moral justification for any individual, group of individuals, or any agency to be able to force others to conform or submit to their view of how things ought to be. The environmentalists and social planners have convinced the world that they hold some kind of moral superiority which sanctions their forcing their views of what is good and right on the whole world, and all the governments of the world are in their service. If anything, these social manipulators are moral pariahs, but even if they were Gods, there could be no moral justification for their forcing their views on others.

No Apologies

It annoys me to see article after article by good honest scientists attacking the pseudo-science of global warming or environmentalism in general, but I cannot bear it when such good men and women apologize for their stand against this immorality.

“We’re all concerned about the environment,” they invariably begin, and I want to scream, “SPEAK FOR YOURSELF.” See, I don’t give a damn about the environment and I wish nobody gave a damn about it, because those who do have never and will never do anything but harm. They are not even do-gooders, they are evil-doers, and have no interest in anything but the control of others.

No one needs to apologize for defending individual freedom above all things, there is nothing that justifies abridging the freedom of individual human beings.

A Couple Of Questions—A Terrible Evil

Whose environment is it? Who has the authority to decide what the environment ought to be? Suppose there really were man-made global warming? So what? Who decides the climate ought to be cooler. Why should those who prefer a cooler climate be able to force their preference on those who would prefer a warmer climate?

This is no idle question. The whole of environmentalism has nothing to do with any fundamental principle concerning environments, the whole question has to do with individual values and preferences. One person just loves purple toed toads. Another person just wants to drain the swamp in his back yard so he can use it without fear of mosquitoes infecting his children with equine encephalitis, or worse. It just so happens the last of the known purple toed toads live in that swamp. Now what is the moral principle that says someone who loves purple toed toads has a right to force another, who loves his children, not to take action to protect them for the sake purple toed toads? There is no such moral principle. Even to suggest it is a great moral evil.

That is exactly what environmentalism is, however, an evil that allows some to force their preferences on others, even when it means their death, even when it means their death in the millions. The greatest example is the banning of DDT, the insecticide that saved millions of lives by wiping out the mosquitoes that spread malaria, yellow fever, and other deadly diseases.

The book of lies that led to the banning of DDT was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. One of the almost endless lies the book told was that DDT caused thinning of bald eagle egg shells, which would surely lead to the extinction of Bald Eagles if DDT was not banned. There were supposedly only 417 breeding pairs of bald eagles left in the United States at the time.

Environmentalists credit the banning of DDT with saving the lives and future of less than a thousand bald eagles which apparently they think is a fair exchange for the 1.5 million yearly malaria deaths (now down to 200 million infections and 600,000 deaths), that now amounts to over three billion human deaths resulting from the banning of DDT. The preference of Rachel Carson and the environmentalists for bald eagles takes precedence over the preference of millions of parents for the lives of their children.

Environmentalism and all social planning are always based on lies, but even if every horror their lies portray were true, it would still be nothing more than a movement to control the lives of individuals, and will bring nothing but misery, disease and death to those it controls.

—(04/11/11)