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by Eric Englund
Emboldened
by a United Nations report
regarding global warming, Al Gore campaigns for and wins the
2008 presidential election under the banner of the Green Party.
Mr. Gore’s key, to his landslide victory, was a campaign promise
to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect Mother Earth from
humanity’s depredations – this would be the 28th
Amendment to the Constitution. After all, "science"
has determined that global warming (which has a "high
probability" of being human-caused) is going to decimate
untold numbers of animal and plant species. Americans, accordingly,
came to a strong consensus that political action, as guided
by the "precautionary
principle," was the only way to save the environment,
let alone the entire planet. President-elect Gore’s election
mandate has delivered a message to all 50 state legislatures
that the Green Party’s proposed "Precautionary Principle
Constitutional Amendment" must be ratified posthaste.
It is
early 2009 and Al Gore has just taken the Presidential Oath
of Office. President Gore’s first priority is to prod each
state legislature into ratifying the 28th Amendment.
He brushes aside critics who have declared that the Amendment
will hollow out the Constitution. During a "Keynesian"
moment of candor, President Gore quips: "The Bill of
Rights really won’t matter if we are all dead." With
Americans clamoring for environmental and human salvation,
all 50 state legislatures ratify the 28th Amendment
with the same rapidity, foresight, and studiousness as the
U.S. Congress exercised when passing the Patriot Act.
Al Gore,
and his Green Party, celebrate one of the most astonishing
political victories in U.S. history. Now, Mother Earth herself
will have a "voice" in domestic and world politics.
The precautionary principle has become enshrined in the U.S.
Constitution. The body of the 28th Amendment reads
as follows:
Amendment
XXVIII
Section
1: Congress shall take any necessary action in advance
of scientific proof of evidence, that the environment may
be harmed, on the grounds that any delay of action would
be more costly to society and nature. Precaution is not
simply the prevention of manifest or predicted risks that
have been scientifically proven. Rather, the precautionary
principle goes beyond the notion of prevention in the sense
that it insists that Congress move to anticipate problems
before they arise or before scientific proof of harm is
established.
Section
2: The actions of human beings, corporations, and
other entities shall be subject to examination of identifiable
social and environmental gains or losses arising from any
course of action.
Section
3: The precautionary principle shall be enforced
so that the overall capacity of environmental systems will
act as a buffer for human well-being. However, any error
in risk calculation shall be to the advantage of the environment.
This entails leaving a sufficiently wide natural cushion
in the functional equilibria of natural systems. In effect,
this means that humans must learn to widen the assimilative
capacity of natural systems by deliberately holding back
from unnecessary and environmentally unsustainable resource
use on the grounds that exploitation may prove to be counterproductive,
excessively costly or simply unfair to future generations.
Nature's assimilative capacity cannot always be taken for
granted.
Section
4: As a matter of moral right, vulnerable and critical
natural systems and entities, namely those close to thresholds,
or whose existence is vital for natural regeneration, shall
have equal standing to human beings.
Section
5: No real property shall be developed without the
property owner demonstrating that no unreasonable harm will
come to the land.
Section
6: All Congressional spending decisions must integrate
environmental policy from certain and known concerns that
occur in the present, to future and more uncertain issues.
Section
7: The international environmental treaty, known
as the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, its
Kyoto
Protocol, and all further updates, are hereby integrated
into the Constitution.
Section
8: Any Constitutional interpretations, conflicting
with this Amendment, shall be settled in favor of this Amendment.
Section
9: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
During
the ratification process, opponents of the 28th
Amendment were quite vocal. Such critics advised that the
proposed Amendment essentially voids the Constitution itself.
Detractors argued that the unintended consequences, of giving
the environment legal standing equal to humankind, will be
economically and socially devastating. Additionally, the intentional
vagueness of the precautionary principle will allow for arbitrary
and tyrannical rule. It will be only a matter of time before
chaos ensues.
In a
stunning turn of events, with respect to the Section 3 of
the 28th Amendment, pro-life advocates immediately
seek to overturn Roe vs. Wade and, by default, make abortion
illegal in the United States. Pro-life advocates assert that
giving legal standing to future generations inherently makes
abortion murder.
This
thorny issue (abortion) has been haunting the U.S. Supreme
Court for decades. The court immediately takes up the case
and hears both sides of the argument. With breathtaking speed,
the Justices rule 9-0 in favor of the pro-life advocates.
In a brief summary of the unanimous decision, the Justices
state: "In light of Sections 3, 4 and 8 of the 28th
Amendment – the law of the land – an unborn child has full
legal standing in the United States. Hence, abortion is murder."
Feminists
and women’s rights groups, throughout the nation, express
outrage at what the Green Party has wrought upon American
women.
To add
another unintended consequence into the mix, veterinarians
are now refusing to euthanize terminally ill and infirmed
animals. A cautious interpretation of the 28th
Amendment reveals its biocentric
nature – all entities, which naturally include animals, have
equal standing to humans. Therefore, to euthanize an animal
would be tantamount to murder. Pet owners, across the nation,
are confused and exasperated.
Shall
the police be called in to investigate the death of a goldfish?
Heartened
by the newly found "rights" of animals, animal-rights
activists press to have hunting and fishing banned in the
United States. As a response, every state suspends the issuance
of hunting and fishing licenses. Lawsuits begin to flood the
state courts.
Being
that the precautionary principle is inherently vague and broad,
the anti-gun lobby leaps into action. Citing Section 1 of
the 28th Amendment, anti-gunners mention how it
is incumbent upon Congress to both "anticipate"
and "prevent" problems.
With
murder rates, in Washington D.C. and New Orleans, at alarming
highs, anti-gunners declare that an outright ban of guns is
the only solution to the "murder problem." As the
anti-gun lobbyists argue, "…guns kill people." To
add weight to their case, President Bush’s war in Iraq is
cited as an example of the precautionary principle. Poor implementation
of the war aside, Congress did agree to allow the Commander
in Chief to militarily remove the Iraqi regime and then seek
out and confiscate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Congress
determined such preemptive and precautionary military actions
were necessary in order to prevent Iraqi WMDs from ever harming
the American people. Based upon Congressional precedent (i.e.
the precautionary war against Iraq), and now buttressed by
the 28th Amendment, anti-gunners demand that the
right to bear arms be immediately revoked for the sake of
preventing further murders in the United States. The Supreme
Court’s docket is starting to get full.
Animal-rights
activists, not surprisingly, have expressed their solidarity
with the anti-gun lobby.
And now,
back to the present. With environmentalists playing the role
of Mother Earth’s savior, welcome to the moral, intellectual,
and legal quagmire that the green movement is attempting to
thrust upon humanity.
If global
warming is real, and I seriously doubt
it, then let free-market solutions emerge instead of adopting
the failed command and control systems advocated by environmentalists.
The eminent Austrian economist, Dr. George Reisman, has written
forcefully on this matter:
Whether
global warming comes or not, it is certain that nature itself
will sooner or later produce major changes in the climate.
To deal with those changes and virtually all other changes
arising from whatever cause, man absolutely requires individual
freedom, science, and technology. In a word, he requires
the industrial civilization constituted by capitalism.
This
brings me back to the possibly truly good objectives that
have been mixed in with environmentalism, such as the desire
for greater cleanliness and health. If one wants to advocate
such objectives without aiding the potential mass murderers
in the environmental movement in achieving their goals,
one must first of all accept unreservedly the values of
human reason, science, technology, and industrial civilization,
and never attack those values. They are the indispensable
foundation for achieving greater cleanliness and better
health and longer life.
If
you do not believe green totalitarianism can take root in
the United States, then I suggest that you take a look at
what is happening in San
Francisco. Under the guise of the precautionary principle,
it has already begun.
February
6, 2007
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