The Self Fulfilling Prophecy Called Environmentalism

The Self Fulfilling Prophecy Called Environmentalism

We have had our share of natural disasters in the past few months. Fires, Tornadoes, and Floods come to mind. The Hurricane season is about to begin and we recently saw Japan get hit with the triple whammy of Earthquake, Tsunami, and Meltdown. Is the world imploding around us? Is this abnormal? Not too long ago there would be a coordinated effort of faith based organizations crying that we did something to upset God, we had sinned and we earned this punishment. Today we hear a bit of that but we have a much better understanding of what actually makes these things occur. For example, the Moon revolves around the Earth and both around the Sun so God isn't blotting out our moon because we committed some sacrilege. There is much we still don't understand, and we have fear-mongers just like the recent past who want to blame the good hard working people around them. They are known as Radical Environmentalists.

Growing up near Elm Park and school trips to Walden Pond I am well aware that our country has a strong history in conservation. Thomas Jefferson pioneered cleaning up Pennsylvania of pollution and Teddy Roosevelt is probably most famous for all the national parks he helped establish. These efforts were strongly supported by huge majorities of Americans but what it has morphed into is nothing less than mass produced propaganda. Greenpeace was one of the first of the activist groups to push the envelope then Global Warming went further and actively manipulated Wikipedia to promote their theory. Others have morphed into Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Earth Liberation Army (ELA) who use intimidation and terror to gain attention to their causes. Where the early groups were widely accepted these new organizations have more nefarious reputations. They no longer fight to save forests but seek to elect politicians who will fund and pass laws on their behalf. Not unlike a violent warlord seeks to destabilize a region to ensure that they continue to hold onto power these environmental groups need to spread disinformation to justify their own existence.

Many of our greatest accomplishments in conservation have quickly turned around to do more harm than good. Growing up with a father who drove long hall truck; often he would come home with stories about his adventures running the Pennsylvania deer gauntlet. Regulations and activism led to the starvation of millions of deer while a trucker that made it through the state without hitting one had reason to celebrate. Likewise today we have insurmountable regulations protecting Beavers in the town I grew up in. No longer can you trap beavers but the highway dept. has resorted to using dynamite on their dams, trying very hard to take the rodents out in the process. The costs of all the water damage from beavers is too big to fathom with roads undermined, houses flooded, forests drowned, etc, etc, not to mention the mosquitoes... Damn no DDT either!

One of the worst environmental debacles in US history has been in the news lately, the Mississippi River. Grand ideas to tame this river and power industry is one of the best stories of American ingenuity but at what cost?

From a post I wrote on it some time ago:
"So basically, a bunch of Frenchies built houses/outpost on the only land where no "common sense" Indian would 300 years ago... Below sea level and in a river delta. (highschool math~ delta = change) Okay, then we built a bunch of levies and dams that stop silt replacement and farmland enrichment. We use chemical fertilizers to do what would normally take place naturally in a floodplain. An industry of activists is formed because as silt erodes it isn't replaced and the delta is wait for it.... Delta is... changing??? Anti (chemical, erosion, fossil fuel, extinction, warming, cooling, just about anything) groups struck gold and perpetuate themselves. Now all is lost in one flood as mother nature wins again. FEMA will force taxpayers to rebuild everything in an attempt to keep things unnatural and the activist gold mine cycle will repeat."


Many years ago we had progressives pushing for bans on horses in cities for the less polluting automobile. Today they are regulating and taxing the automobile out of existence for what, to ride horses again? If you think your cities are polluted today, wait till the horse and buggy become more cost effective, producing 44 lbs. of manure/horse per day. As we hear somebody spout out rationale for major changes like Cap and Trade, we must consider the alternative and how much we could make things worse for Mother Earth. Keep in mind that years ago world powers were testing nukes on nearly a daily basis when you hear how bad the Japanese melt down is. Consider that banning DDT has the consequence of making malaria a bigger killer than AIDS and allowed bedbugs to become harder to kill than cockroaches. Not to mention that all those birds that DDT was supposedly killing still have the same problems without it. When somebody tells you how how temperatures have changed by .5 to 1 degree in the last 100 years, remember that one eruption the size of Tambora changed temperatures globally by more than 5 degrees.

Us humans love to think we are so important that we can change the world. Most seem to like to focus on the negative changes while others the positive. Me I don't think we add up to all that much. I figure the earth can compensate for just about anything we throw at it. Am I going to throw away my new ASUS laptop for a manual typewriter? Nope, not while there are 2 billion Chinese and Indians cooking over charcoal today. I would put US industry against any in the world for efficiency and its ability to stay ahead of the curve in listening to their customers demands. Long gone are the days of rivers changing colors depending on what die they are using that day, and I don't see them making a comeback. When a windmill requires 18 years to pay me back for my investment but the generator is only guaranteed for 8, I can tell it is a bad investment. I will stick to using the wood-chip burning generator the Germans just made near my house for my electricity.