MESSAGE FROM JOHN GALT
Steve,
Here is a response from the esteemed John Galt in absentia (but perhaps soon to return now that his nemesis, Jill the Webmistress is gone...):
Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.
John Galt fears the greater danger to mankind is the wholesale ignorance of the issues at hand. Let's be careful not to incorporate an individual's "genuine concern for a cleaner environment" into the economic impositions that the POLITICS of environmentalism brings. A truly unencumbered 'free market' could resolve many of an individual's environmental concerns just as it had done with toilets. Then cast your votes, people, by the purchase of a toilet!
The fundamental goal of environmentalists is not clean air and clean water; rather it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Their goal is not the advancement of human by, human happiness, and human life; rather it is a subhuman world where "nature"is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
Surely the problem here is in how one sees 'nature'. Indeed, if nature is viewed with man entangled in it (the only and proper view) then it is MAN who resides at the top of the totem pole.
In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, they have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress which broughPt man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.
...and yet it is MAN who first uncovered nature's concept of 'rights'. Here, then, is another definition problem. "Rights" cannot be doled out by conscript of law or packaged and tacked on to the essence of any being. "Rights" by their very fundamental nature, must derive from the being itself. There can be NO RIGHTS unless there is a MIND to proclaim it! And only MAN has such a mind. Otherwise, it is charity.
Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action which changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only when man wants something.
Again, the problem is in how one sees 'nature'...either as a static, unchanging exterior or as a dynamic and changing 'interplay of things' inclusive of man. What becomes 'moral' then, is to allow 'nature' to proceed, unencumbered.
The ideal world of environmentalists is not twentieth century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation environmentalists would cheer at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.
But man does 'mystically merge with his environment'. He alters it, like magic...like no other creature on earth, to fit his needs. It is his greatest attribute. And when man ascends to the heavens and alters the Martian landscape...what will the environmentalists say in their silence? That there is no nature on Mars? Perhaps no 'biological nature'. But, then again...
To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy which makes life on earth possible.
Oops. that's "a philosophy which makes MAN'S life on earth possible." Otherwise, the rest all well communicated. But John Galt is troubled by this even exchange of hatred. Perhaps it is nature's 'balancing act' in the political circus of the absurd.
And, what is it with this 'balance' thing. Balance what? The dinosaurs sure weren't a balancing act. What supreme arrogance to presume to speak for what is 'best for nature'. Actually, 'nature', from any close study, propels its' own evolution by the perceived IMBALANCES. Could you imagine a universe without catastrophic galactic collisions, supernovae starbursts, and those pretty little blue stars being hopelessly devoured by massive, hungry black holes? Thank Galt, the Universe is heavily weighted on one-side!
But, perhaps, 'nature' prefers a more dense carbon and sulfuric acid environment. This, in turn, might allow accelerated crystallization of the ozone layer and propel yet another, more superior being, to mastery of the Earth. In that case, light up a big, fat, smelly stogie everyone, and let's celebrate Earth Day!!!
In conclusion, the only environmental issues are those issues that reduce risk (John might complain about the Eboli virus being cloned in his basement) and those issues that generally make MAN more comfortable. And if that means for you, bluer skies and clearer seas, then make sure to buy a toilet and keep your farts and belching to a minimal!
John (the Booming Voice from the Sky) Galt |
