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by Eric Englund
On
February 14, 2002, President Bush provided details for his plan to combat global
warming. The cornerstone of his plan is to promote voluntary reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions. Naturally, environmentalists were outraged that President Bush
refused to adhere to the Kyoto Treaty. It is President Bush's contention that
the Kyoto protocol would cost nearly 5,000,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. Of course,
environmentalists claimed that there is a bigger picture here. All people, especially
those living in industrialized countries such as the U.S., must sacrifice in
order to win the universal struggle against global warming. As we have seen over
the past three decades, environmentalists have succeeded in eroding property
rights in the United States in order to protect Mother Earth as they see fit
(i.e. through the Clean Water Act, through the Endangered Species Act, through
ridiculous wetlands legislation, through air quality laws, etc). Whether or not
President Bush understands this, the real struggle is between liberty and totalitarianism.
For if environmentalists succeed in gradually taking away our private property
rights, then a free market and liberty cannot exist. Thus, it is my contention
that the struggle against environmentalism is actually a struggle for liberty
(using the classical liberal definition).
Undoubtedly, environmentalists will
take exception to being called illiberal socialists (but I repeat myself).
Perhaps there are those of you who are alarmed about global
warming and sympathize with the environmental/green movement.
My response is for you to be careful with whom you associate;
which leads me to provide the following quote from Dr. George
Reisman's magnum opus 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. It is the same fundamental philosophy in a different guise, ready as
ever to wage war on the freedom and well-being of the individual.
So who
are these former Reds who have converted to Green Socialism? One excellent example
is Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev is now the president of Green Cross International
(a non-governmental environmental organization). Among the many issues with which
Green Cross International has become involved, global warming is right at the
top of its list. Gosh, when Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher
became so chummy in the mid-1980s, I never once heard the Soviet dictator express
concern about the environment. Clearly, Mr. Gorbachev has identified environmentalism
as a Trojan horse capable of resurrecting socialism on a global scale.
How can
I say that about Mikhail Gorbachev? Didn't he bring glasnost (freedom of
speech) and perestroika (economic and political reforms)
to the Soviet Union? Indeed he did. Yet, these were means
to his end of trying to save Soviet Communism and, therefore,
to save his absolute and unspeakable power (that brought
human misery to millions).
Perhaps I am being too harsh on
Mr. Gorbachev? To this I simply respond, read Requiem for
Marx (edited by Yuri N. Maltsev). Dr. Maltsev was a reformist member
of the Institute of Economics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences until he
defected in 1989 (he now is an Associate Professor of economics at Carthage
College and is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute). In writing
the introduction to this excellent book, Dr. Maltsev states: "Gorbachev never learned economics
in school. In all my dealings with him I had never seen even a slight flash of
economic insight, or even the desire to learn more about economics. He preferred
to think like a communist: everything can be done by issuing orders and demanding
obedience, no matter how perverse, contrary to human nature, and brutal they
may be." This certainly isn't the image painted by the United States' adoring
press corps. Gorbachev seems to be so nice.
To this I respond with another excerpt
(regarding the "nice" Mr. Gorbachev) from Yuri Maltsev's introduction
in Requiem for Marx: What he did in the Baltic States - authorizing
the Soviet military to crack the skulls of innocent people in the Baltics - qualified
him to be included among history's litany of murderous rulers, but he was never
included. Even while he was heralded in the West as a great reformer, he was
also running labor camps, committing human rights violations, and sending people
to prison for speech crimes. As the Soviet Union came to an end, the public had
been reduced to a collective of hunter gatherers, barely living at a subsistence
level.
Maybe the former Soviet dictator has changed. Perhaps Mikhail Gorbachev
really does care about the environment and has no interest in resurrecting socialism.
To this, I simply refer one last time to Requiem for Marx. Yuri Maltsev
states: "Before the coup that removed him from power, Gorbachev told a reporter, 'I've
been told more than once that it is time to stop swearing allegiance to socialism.' 'Why
should I? Socialism is my deep conviction, and I will promote it as long as I
can talk and work'." Without a doubt, Mikhail Gorbachev views environmentalism
(with its anti-capitalist mentality) as the movement most likely to succeed
in defeating capitalism
Are there other examples of socialists that have come
to embrace environmentalism? Indeed, there is an environmentalist in power
today. Libya's dictator, Muammar Al Qadhafi is an unabashed Green Socialist
(I prefer to call him a Green Communist). In fact, Qadhafi has written a
book that many Greens believe is the manifesto for Green Socialism. This
book is titled The
Green Book (it is a three volume set). I have read all three volumes
and each one was quite disturbing. In this book, he talks about capitalist
exploitation, money, profits, plants, animals, people, and families: all
in a manner that ring familiar with the dogma chanted by such groups as Greenpeace,
PETA, Earth First!, among others. The following points highlight several
of Colonel Qadhafi's views as conveyed by The Green Book:
- Under capitalism, wage workers are slaves.
- Land is no one's property. But everyone has the right to
use it.
- The only thing a man really owns are his own needs. It
is up to a socialist society to provide for such needs (i.e.
food, clothing, shelter, and transportation).
- Upon the overturning of capitalist societies (via revolution),
money and profit will disappear.
- Collective needs, rights, demands, and objectives of a
nation are bound by a single nationalism. Nationalism in
the world of man, and group instinct in the animal kingdom,
are like gravity in the domain of mineral and celestial bodies.
Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin.
- The family is exactly like an individual plant in nature
which is composed of branches, leaves, and blossoms. If human
society reached the stage where man existed without a family,
it would become a society of tramps, without roots, like
artificial plants.
- All living creatures are created free and any interference
with that freedom is coercion.
First and foremost, Qadhafi is an anti-capitalist as reflected
in the first four points. Without question, he has adopted Marx's
views about capitalism's alleged exploitation of workers and
Marx's loathing of money. Secondly, as shown by the last three
points, he has melded National Socialism into his brand of communism
(which I call Green Communism). Much like Hitler viewed Germany
as an organic whole (i.e. made up of people, plants, animals,
natural resources, etc.), Qadhafi views Libya as a collective
organism with a "life" of its own. Naturally, global warming poses
a threat to Libya's "life".
Just to give you an additional "taste" of
how bizarre Qadhafi's book is, here is a biocentric excerpt from
volume three of The Green Book: To dispense with the
natural role of woman in maternity - i.e. nurseries replacing mothers - is
a start in dispensing with the human society and transforming it
into a biological society with an artificial way of life. To separate
children from their mothers and to cram them into nurseries is
a process by which they are transformed into something very close
to chicks, for nurseries are similar to poultry farms in which
chicks are crammed after they are hatched. Nothing else would be
appropriate for man's nature, and would suit his dignity, except
natural motherhood, (i.e. the child is raised by his mother...) +
in a family where the true principles of motherhood, fatherhood,
and brotherhood prevail, + rather than in a center similar to a
poultry breeding farm. Poultry, like the rest of the members of
the animal kingdom, needs motherhood as a natural phase. Therefore,
breeding them on farms similar to nurseries is against their natural
growth. Even their meat is closer to synthetic meat than natural
meat. Meat from mechanized poultry farms is not tasty and may not
be nourishing because the chicks are not naturally bred, i.e. they
are not raised in the protective shade of natural motherhood. The
meat of wild birds is more tasty and nourishing because they grow
naturally and are naturally fed. As for children who have neither
family nor shelter, society is their guardian, only for them should
society establish nurseries and the like. It is better for those
to be taken care of by society rather than by individuals who are
not their parents.
Obviously, Qadhafi is taking a stab at
nurseries and daycares which are now prevalent in capitalist
societies. The comparison of children to chickens must warm
the hearts of animal rights activists (this is biocentrism
at its best). For Libya to remain a strong collective organism,
nothing less than free-range children will do. This is truly
bizarre stuff.
So what has Green Socialism brought Libya?
It is a third-world country with an impoverished people.
Its main export is well-trained terrorists. What a utopia.
Let's
get back to the alleged threat global warming is posing to
humanity. Paragons of virtue like Qadhafi and Gorbachev are
sounding the alarm. Alas, this alarm is being sounded in
order to form a united front against "capitalist exploitation of
Mother Earth" while the truth about global warming is being
ignored (scientific evidence does not support the assertion of
global warming). Environmentalists are terrorizing people with
ghastly misinformation portraying our impending doom. Ultimately,
it is the goal of environmentalists to terrify people (particularly
those living in industrialized nations) into believing that their
conduct has universal implications relevant to humanity as a whole.
If the psychological terror campaign succeeds, then people (especially
in the West) will be browbeaten into trading liberty and private
property rights for the "safety" of our planet. At this
point, Green Socialism will have won using global warming as its
Trojan horse.
So what is the truth about global warming? Dr. Richard
S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, had much to
say about this in his June 11, 2001 article in OpinionJournal.com
(titled: "The
Press Gets it Wrong: Our Report does not Support the Kyoto Treaty").
Dr. Lindzen served on the National Academy of Sciences panel
on climate change and co-authored its report. Here are important
excerpts from his article: Our primary conclusion was that despite some
knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled. We
are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5
degrees Celsius higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric
levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries;
and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase
is likely to warm the earth (one of many, most important being water
vapor and clouds).But - and I cannot stress this enough - we
are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change
to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the
future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement
with the three basic statements tells us nothing relevant to
policy discussions.One reason for this uncertainty is that,
as the report states, the climate is always changing; change is
the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was
emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle
Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago,
we were concerned about global cooling.Before closing,
I would like to clear up an issue that may be confusing. How can
communism and National Socialism (i.e. Nazism) be compatible? Indeed,
Colonel Qadhafi melded together Marxist Communism and National
Socialism in The Green Book. However, let's go to a much
better book, The
Black Book of Communism, for an answer: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 the 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.
Just
as Lenin and his successors excluded capitalists and others from
humanity, Hitler and his henchmen excluded Jews, the infirmed,
and others from humanity as well. Tens of millions of people were
murdered at the hands of these totalitarian regimes. As written
in The Green Book, Qadhafi clearly is attempting to exclude
capitalists from humanity. Now do you see the connection?
Beyond
a shadow of a doubt, environmentalists want people (especially
those living in capitalist countries) to believe their conduct
is causing global warming and, thus, destroying our planet.
Therefore, environmentalism has capitalism in its crosshairs.
It is those of us who benefit from the fruits of Western Civilization
that are being turned into enemies in the daily sociological
and political discourse of environmentalists. Americans, including
President Bush, must come to understand that environmentalism
is a serious threat. If we succumb to the global warming propaganda
being thrust upon us daily (with our left-wing press wittingly
or not being used as the primary tool of terror/propaganda),
then Green Socialism stands a chance of dismantling Western Civilization
and throwing us back into the dark ages. Our rights to life,
liberty, and property are at stake here.
February 2002 |
