One of the wonders of the world has been the politicization of environmental issues.
And who do you think politicized it, and why? It started in this country with the lies of Rachel Carson. She wrote "Silent Spring," a book saying birds were dying from chemicals. She didn't bother to mention that the Audubon Christmas count showed that birds had increased dramatically just before her book was published, from 1942 to 1962. The only birds that were down were Raptors, and this was due to hunting. When the hunting was stopped, the Raptors came back. The 60s crowd jumped on this book and made a Bible out of it. They used it as the basis to ban DDT, when the Government's own research showed no ill effects from it.
The "Green" movement can be traced back to the "blood and soil" movement in Germany at the turn of the 19th Century. The Nazi's loved the idea. Their Philosophy held up "The Brute" as the highest form of man. They hated reason. It has it's basis in Rousseau, and the "Noble Savage" concept. The "Back to Nature" movement of the 60s was an "Anti-Industrial Revolution" and "anti-reason" concept. "Don't think, feel" was the motto. Remember?
The idea that man was dispoiling nature and ruining the world fit right in with the left in the 60s, and they seized every possible report that could justify it and trumpeted it as a way to stop progress.
The Left realized that this was a way to "trump" the "Free Market" concept. They could justify business regulation in the name of the "Environment." The World Socialist movement jumped on it when they realized that. They have been behind every "World Conference" on it since. Since the Right is pro Business and progress, they ended up the natural enemy of this idea. Now the whole subject is "Political Science" and has to be fought on that basis.
And everybody who could make a buck out of it ran for the bandwagon. NASA was looking for missions. What better than checking the globe from space? Every Scientist looking for a grant immediately started pumping out environmental papers. The Foundations jumped on board. The Media is always looking for a disaster story. That is why whenever an ice shelf breaks off, it is big news.
The Educational Bureaucracy had a orgasm. A whole new subject to make lesson plans on. And a lot more fun to teach than that boring old reading and writing. TV realized that if they did kiddie shows about nasty old pollutors vs heroic environmental warriors, there was a buck to be made, and they would look good.
So now we have the situation where your side is in favor of "Truth, Justice, and the American way," on this subject. And my side just has to take it's lumps and do what is right, even if it is a minority position. Well, that has always been the path that leads to the triumph of reason over the forces of ignorance and superstition. |
