Whateverist, as a Christian I recognize the call the serve as good stewards of our blessings, including this garden planet full of life and abundant resources. At the same time, I am unwilling to accept that our species has moral obligations to grand abstractions like ‘the environment’ or ‘all living things’. What exactly does ‘Save the Planet’ mean other than a loose collection anti-technology pet causes with big government solutions?
The solutions of Environmentalists universally rely on various bans, forced cut-backs, and resource restrictions enforced by intrusive governmental regulations and diverting taxpayer funds to large politically connected businesses and organizations. In short, they really on top-down suppression of human ingenuity, liberty, and wealth creation.
Some people have been predicting environmental catastrophe and disaster for as long as I have been alive. First there was the ‘Population Bomb’. In order to avert mass starvation and ecological disaster liberal/progressives proposed and of state distribution of birth control, incentives for sterilization, and regulating family sizes. What happened instead was that human ingenuity has made land more productive, the food supply more plentiful and affordable. Sugar from GMOs is chemically identical to organically produced sugar.
During the 1970’s energy crisis, experts predicted that fossil fuels would be depleted long before now. In the meantime, environmentalists have promoted more bans, cut-backs, and resource restrictions like penalizing gas taxes, strict emission controls, and kick-backs to big politically connected companies to develop alternative resources that are unreliable, expensive, and technologically regressive (like windmills). The effect of bans on incandescent light bulbs has helped far less than the introduction of cheap, efficient LED lighting.
Today, the same Cassandras point to ‘Global Warming’ (since renamed ‘Climate Change’) that gets blamed for every problem and always requires an intrusive state solution. While it may be happening, no one can deny that government funds get diverted disproportionately to alarmist researchers and that the proposed solutions are more bans, forced cut-backs, resource restrictions, and diverting governmental resources to politically connected companies. Again. Where is the call to develop truly safe nuclear power? Or economical desalinization? Where is the commitment to extend humanity’s reach beyond one single planet? Why do liberal/progressives harness power from the barrel of a gun and not the power of liberating technology?
I’m not saying some threats, like thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, didn’t exist, but any fair minded person can see that the unilateral disarmament proposed by liberal/progressives did nothing to eliminate that possibility. Tyrannical top-down governmental controls did most of the work of gutting that regime from within.
I’m also not saying that there isn’t a place for governmental promotion of the general welfare that could very well include some bans, regulations, and restrictions. What I am saying though is that returning to pre-industrial revolution technology and encouraging the collusion of big-governments with big-businesses hurt more than they help.
The solutions of Environmentalists universally rely on various bans, forced cut-backs, and resource restrictions enforced by intrusive governmental regulations and diverting taxpayer funds to large politically connected businesses and organizations. In short, they really on top-down suppression of human ingenuity, liberty, and wealth creation.
Some people have been predicting environmental catastrophe and disaster for as long as I have been alive. First there was the ‘Population Bomb’. In order to avert mass starvation and ecological disaster liberal/progressives proposed and of state distribution of birth control, incentives for sterilization, and regulating family sizes. What happened instead was that human ingenuity has made land more productive, the food supply more plentiful and affordable. Sugar from GMOs is chemically identical to organically produced sugar.
During the 1970’s energy crisis, experts predicted that fossil fuels would be depleted long before now. In the meantime, environmentalists have promoted more bans, cut-backs, and resource restrictions like penalizing gas taxes, strict emission controls, and kick-backs to big politically connected companies to develop alternative resources that are unreliable, expensive, and technologically regressive (like windmills). The effect of bans on incandescent light bulbs has helped far less than the introduction of cheap, efficient LED lighting.
Today, the same Cassandras point to ‘Global Warming’ (since renamed ‘Climate Change’) that gets blamed for every problem and always requires an intrusive state solution. While it may be happening, no one can deny that government funds get diverted disproportionately to alarmist researchers and that the proposed solutions are more bans, forced cut-backs, resource restrictions, and diverting governmental resources to politically connected companies. Again. Where is the call to develop truly safe nuclear power? Or economical desalinization? Where is the commitment to extend humanity’s reach beyond one single planet? Why do liberal/progressives harness power from the barrel of a gun and not the power of liberating technology?
I’m not saying some threats, like thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, didn’t exist, but any fair minded person can see that the unilateral disarmament proposed by liberal/progressives did nothing to eliminate that possibility. Tyrannical top-down governmental controls did most of the work of gutting that regime from within.
I’m also not saying that there isn’t a place for governmental promotion of the general welfare that could very well include some bans, regulations, and restrictions. What I am saying though is that returning to pre-industrial revolution technology and encouraging the collusion of big-governments with big-businesses hurt more than they help.
