|
by Eric Englund
All of the insanities of the environmental movement
become intelligible when one grasps the nature of the destructive
motivation behind them. They are not uttered in the interest
of man’s life and well-being, but for the purpose of leading
him to self-destruction
~ George Reisman
Recently, one of my favorite clients organized a salmon-fishing
trip attended by his key employees, vendors, and creditors.
It was highly enjoyable, indeed, to spend time fishing and
chatting with professionals such as architects, structural
engineers, bankers, project managers, etc. One conversation,
however, impacted me the most. A lively discussion, regarding
the housing bubble and its aftermath, was underway when a
gentleman interjected that: "Environmentalism has cost
my family a lot of money." The first thought that entered
my mind was: "Where did that comment come from?"
Nonetheless, after hearing his tale of woe, it struck me that
environmentalism is racism.
What did this gentleman say that led me to this conclusion?
His story is straightforward and disturbing. While the housing
bubble was expanding, the demand for lumber was high and this
made standing timber quite valuable. He had dozens of acres
of his family’s property logged with the proceeds being used
for paying down debt and the balance being put aside as savings.
Alas, about 20 acres of his property were deemed, by local
government, to be "wetlands" and he was absolutely
forbidden, by law, to harvest any of the timber within this
"protected" area. This cost him, and his family,
tens of thousands of dollars of income that would have materialized
had his private-property rights not been violated by government.
He pointed out the supreme absurdity of the applicable environmental
law: "Beavers are constantly cutting down trees within
this protected area; but if I did so, I would be subject to
prosecution and a sizable fine. So who owns the land, me or
the beavers?" He answered his own question, as he shook
his head and said: "It sure seems like government favors
a bunch of rodents over my family." Our conversation
shifted to Wall Street’s bailout as it was clear that he was
a bit agitated and wanted to change topics.
As this fellow and the others in our party discussed the
Wall Street bailout, I remained focused on the surreal nature
of this gentleman’s story. To be sure, it became crystal clear
that government – as influenced by the Green movement – is
biased against the human race while favoring plants, animals,
and inanimate objects. My mind raced as I recollected other
stories, from friends and acquaintances, complaining how they
were not allowed to cut down trees in their own yards unless
given permission by local government bureaucrats. Absurdly
enough, Mother Nature may knock over trees with a strong windstorm
(and this would be considered an act of nature), yet in countless
locales the very same trees may not be cut down at the hand
of man – as this would be a "crime" against nature.
Private property owners, assuredly, are being targeted by
Green bigots
(and their power-hungry bureaucratic minions) who are intolerant
of those who desire to put property to its highest and best
use – as determined by individual preferences and plans. If
one’s plans involve mining, harvesting trees, real estate
development, building a new home, or countless other beneficial
undertakings, then such a property owner will be in the crosshairs
of Greenies and local public officials. Unfortunately, over
a period of many decades, environmentalists have succeeded
in institutionalizing
racism within government at the local, state, and federal
levels. A contrived battle between nature (good) and man (evil)
has been engaged in which private-property rights and human
liberty hang in the balance.
Green racism is a pernicious concept in which the human race
must be subordinated to nature with the exception of the anointed
Greenies who will take charge along the lines of the former
Soviet Union’s central planners. With this in mind, George
Reisman pointed out in his magnificent book Capitalism:
"…it should not be surprising to see hordes of former
Reds, or of those who otherwise would have become Reds, turning
from Marxism and becoming the Greens of the ecology movement."
Should institutionalized Green racism really be considered
a threat? Has any government implemented such a radical program,
on a national basis, in which humanity is subordinated to
nature? The answers to these questions are found in Alston
Chase’s brilliant book In
a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Rising Tyranny
of Ecology. Here is a chilling excerpt:
The desire to subordinate people to organic nature led
directly to racism. "The ‘scientific’ element of racialism
can be traced back to Haeckel," writes the philosopher Karl
Popper. Haeckel, as Robert Jay Lifton observes, in part
quoting the historian George L. Mosse, "a towering figure
in German biology and an early Darwinian, was also a racist,
a believer in a mystical Volk, and a strong advocate of
eugenics who ‘can be claimed to be a direct ancestor’ of
the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ project." Indeed, as Daniel Gasman
calls "Germany’s major prophet of political biology," someone
who contributed significantly to the development of Nazi
ideology: "The writings of Haeckel and the ideas of his
followers…were proto-Nazi in character, and (as) one of
the most powerful forces in nineteenth and twentieth-century
German intellectual history, may be fully understood as
a prelude to the doctrine of National Socialism."
"We do not need to strain at gnats to show there was a
strain of ecological ideas among Nazis: the evidence is
ample," writes Bramwell. As the historian Robert A. Pois
observes, National Socialism was "a religion of nature,"
which called for the establishment of a utopian community,
the Volksgemeinschaft, rooted in a perceived natural order."
Throughout Hitler’s political career, writes Pois, "he would
continually emphasize the importance of recognizing nature’s
power over man. He scoffed at the notion of humans ever
having the ability to ‘control’ or ‘rule over’ nature…Hitler
sounded remarkably like contemporary environmentalists who,
with ample reason, proclaim that a sharp-tempered Mother
Nature… will eventually avenge herself upon those who, at
least since the onset of industrialization, have tried her
patience." He believed in "the sanctity of nature."
Indeed, Nazism was based largely on biological theory.
As Hitler’s confidant Rudolph Hess insisted, the movement
was nothing more than "applied biology" for restoring the
"vitality of the German race." It sought "biological renewal"
through building, said Heinrich Himmler’s legal aide, Werner
Best, an "organically indivisible national community." And
those who opposed these goals merely revealed themselves
to be "the symptom of an illness which threatens the healthy
unity of the…national organism."
Decrying man’s alienation from nature, many Nazi thinkers
– among whom can be counted the philosopher Martin Heidegger
– opposed what they saw as unnatural and decadent modern
living. Heidegger complained that "technological domination
spreads itself over the earth ever more quickly, ruthlessly,
and completely…The humanness of man and the thingness of
things dissolve into the calculated market value of a market
which…spans the earth." Likewise, the Nazis blamed capitalists
for driving farmers off the land and into towns in an effort
to obtain cheap labor, thus undermining rural culture and
promoting factory farms that used poisonous synthetic chemicals.
Reestablishing the connection with nature, they believed,
required crushing unnatural, non-German values. Private
property had to be abolished, since it promoted commercialism,
consumerism, and urbanization. Forests and wildlife, symbolizing
Germany’s pre-Roman past, had to be preserved.
Therefore, soon after seizing power in 1933, the Third
Reich launched a ruralization program to create a new more,
primitive Germany. Subdivisions and private property were
declared illegal. Vivisection was banned, and Hitler’s Germany
became the first European country to establish nature preserves.
In 1940 hedgerow and copse protection ordinances were passed
"to protect the habitat of wildlife."
One cannot think of Nazism without correspondingly thinking
of extreme racism. Millions of innocents including Jews, Gypsies,
and other non-Aryans were murdered with the objective of purifying
Nazi Germany so that it may be reunified with nature. Humanity,
indeed, had to be subordinated to nature with the "wolves"
in the Nazi party calling the shots.
Modern-day Green racists hallucinate on a grander scale than
ever dreamt by the Nazis. For these racists fantasize about
or advocate the death of billions of human beings. This is,
undeniably, racism at a megalomaniacal level. So let the Green
racists speak for themselves – be very, very frightened:
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau, environmentalist and documentary
maker: "It’s terrible to have to say this. World population
must be stabilized, and to do that we must eliminate 350,000
people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that
we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which
we are involved is lamentable."
- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal:
"I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played
an important part in balancing ecosystems."
- Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University population biologist:
"We’re at 6 billion people on the Earth, and that’s roughly
three times what the planet should have. About 2 billion
is optimal."
- David Foreman, founder of Earth First!: "Phasing
out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social
and environmental."
- David M. Graber, research biologist for the National
Park Service: "It is cosmically unlikely that the developed
world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption,
and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape.
Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin
nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to
come along."
- Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club
of Rome: "My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In
Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria.
So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has
greatly added to the population problem."
- Merton Lambert, former spokesman for the Rockefeller
Foundation: "The world has a cancer, and that cancer is
man."
- Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the
World Wildlife Fund: "If I were reincarnated I would wish
to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human
population levels."
- Maurice Strong, U.N. environmental leader: "Isn't
the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations
collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
- Ted Turner, CNN founder, UN supporter, and environmentalist:
"A total population of 250–300 million people, a 95% decline
from present levels, would be ideal."
- Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace: "I got the
impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should
go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds."
What if Prince Phillip stated: "If I were reincarnated
I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to
lower American Indian population levels." Beyond a shadow
of a doubt, he would be labeled a bigot, a racist, and an
advocate of genocide. He would be crucified in the press.
So why is it acceptable for the prince to fantasize about
wiping out most of the human race? Of course, the answer is
that it is not acceptable whatsoever. He has, in fact, revealed
himself to be a bigot and a racist of the highest order.
At this point, you may wonder how can one associate the environmental
movement with both Nazis and Communists? How can this be?
Are they not polar opposites? One way to reconcile this matter
is to understand that totalitarianism is always totalitarianism
whether it be of the Green variety (Nazism) or the Red variety
(Communism). The following excerpt, from The
Black Book of Communism, provides an excellent explanation:
One thing is certain: Crimes against humanity are the product
of an ideology that reduces people not to a universal but
to a particular condition, be it biological, racial, or
sociohistorical. By means of propaganda, the Communists
succeeded in making people believe that their conduct had
universal implications, relevant to humanity as a whole.
Critics have often tried to make a distinction between Nazism
and Communism by arguing that the Nazi project had a particular
aim, which was nationalist and racist in extreme, whereas
Lenin’s project was universal. This is entirely wrong. In
both theory and practice, Lenin and his successors excluded
from humanity all capitalists, the bourgeoisie, counterrevolutionaries,
and others, turning them into absolute enemies in their
sociological and political discourse. Kautsky noted as early
as 1918 that these terms were entirely elastic, allowing
those in power to exclude whomever they wanted from humanity
whenever they so wished. These were the terms that led directly
to crimes against humanity.
Environmentalists have learned well from the likes of Joseph
Goebbels and Vladimir
Lenin. Horrifyingly, the Greenies are succeeding in making
people believe that their conduct has unfavorable universal
implications, relevant to humanity as a whole. Global warming
– now described using the weasel-words of "climate change"
– is the big lie which has transformed political and sociological
discourse along the lines of turning the human race into the
outright enemy of Mother Nature herself. Regardless of how
junky
the "science" is supporting global warming, environmentalists
will not let go of the lie. For it was Goebbels who stated:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it." And it was
Lenin who said: "A lie told often enough becomes truth."
Hence, it is no surprise that Stanford professor, and eco-alarmist,
Stephen Schneider encouraged fellow environmentalists to frighten
humanity into submission. He stated the following in the October
1989 issue of Discover magazine:
To
do this, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture
the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting
loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention
of any doubts we may have. This "double ethical bind" we
frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula.
Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between
being effective and being honest.
Just as Nazis and Communists loathed capitalism, so do today’s
environmentalists. Greenies hate private property, they hate
human liberty, they hate prosperity, they hate modern-day
industry, and they hate the free market. They will always
choose beavers, trees, and rock formations over people. Environmentalists
are using climate change (the big lie), wetlands legislation,
the Endangered Species Act, and myriad other legal constraints
to slowly choke off capitalism and supplant it with socialism.
Of course, their desire is to exercise control over a much
smaller population than exists today – Jacques-Yves
Cousteau even stated that the ideal human population would
be "…limited to 100,000 people, but educated and respectful
of nature." So who decides to kill whom? When you sum
all of this up, Greenies simply detest the human race. Accordingly,
environmentalism is the deepest and broadest form of racism
known to mankind.
October
21, 2008
|
