Cancer, Schmancer

New at Reason: Are human beings a cancer on the earth? Cathy Young looks at the biopsy.

Comments

[Jason Ligon]

s.m.,

THE catalyst for the breakup?

In any event,

The libertarian argument with regard to the environment is fairly straightforward, I think.

I can engage in activity that does not harm you. If we are constrained by nature to share a commons such as air, that is unfortunate, but it simply means that if you can demonstrate actual harm that I am causing you, you have a cause for action. If you can't demonstrate harm, as in my releasing 'poisons' to the tune of 1 part per billion, my use of the commons is just as valid as yours. The precautionary principle turns all that on its head, and grants the biggest whiner regulatory authority over the entire planet. I am aware that harm can be a loaded term here, but I don't think it is really all that difficult to measure.

[Steve]

Joe,

So opposition to theft and murder is "religious?" WhaFuck?

I oppose theft and murder, and I'm not religous at all. So there.

[R.C. Dean]

koppelman - you might want to back up that rather stunning assertion that the Greens brought down the Soviet Union. That's a new one on me.

All this time I thought it was the inherent instability of the Soviet empire combined with the utter idiocy of their top-down economic and societal command-and-control authoritarianism.

[joe]

See, Steve, the religious foundations of certain ideas or value systems does not disqualify those ideas or values from being appropriate raw material for public policy. Thanks for the help.

[fyodor]

Jason Ligon,

Well, "at all costs" is a figure of speech, not *necessarily* meant to be taken literally. Since you seem to have a fundamentalist's faith in the environmental movement's fundamentalism, there's not much point in me continuing to try to explain a POV I was only being a devil's advocate for in the first place. I'll only add that it's always easier to ignore one's adversaries once we demonize or otherwise caricature them. And also: "A fool, in avoiding one extreme, embraces the opposite extreme." -- Horace

[Julian Sanchez]

OK, is this just me, or is Bidinotto beating a dead, buried, and thoroughly worm-ridden horse here? The Deep Ecology freakazoids hit their peak about a decade ago, and even then they were a tiny fraction of the environmental movement. I always get the feeling that Objectivists keep these guys around because they make such an exciting foil... Captain Hook to the Randian Peter Pan or what have you. If Deep Ecologists didn't exist, they'd have to invent them.

[Ira Weatheral]

If so, why aren't we drilling for oil in a worthless swamp filled with mosquitoes?

Will it only become OK if we find the mosquitoes are West Nile carriers?

[Jason Ligon]

Julian,

I have the disconcerting feeling that Deep Ecology is mainstream everywhere except in the U.S. After all, how many times have we heard that Bush's problems with the 'international community' began with Kyoto? If true, isn't that a little crazed?

I also wonder how a guy like Bjorn Lomborg relates to the european main stream of greenies.

[tsqured]

Why do people think that human beings are apart from nature? Manhattan is as natural as arctic wilderness.

[Anonymous]

Think you're on to something there. Lomborg was brought before some sort of *state* board for "scientific correctness" for daring to question apocalyptic environmentalism. Shades of the Holy Inquisition. While marginal in the US, I get the feeling fundamentalist environmentalism is pretty mainstream elsewhere - at least in Europe.

[Julian Sanchez]

Jason-
See, that's the thing. Even most hyper-environmentalists aren't really Deep Ecology types. They have an exaggerated notion of how screwed *we humans* are going to be if we don't do something soon, but that's not the same as thinking that we need to arrest global warming for the sake of the plankton or what have you. I remember once reading maybe John Muir or Ed Abbey write that a good environmentalist would act /as if/ stewarding nature were valuable for its own sake, because it was hard to know how harm to the ecosystem would affect humans far down the line. But they key was the "as if".

[erf]

Damn! It's too bad there aren't any other ways to reuce dependency on foreign oil. Not a single idea has been thought of ever, except for some more drilling.

[Jason Ligon]

Julian,

I did not at first get the distinction you were making.

My feeling is that the hyper enviro type IS a deep greenie who has figured out that they sound crazy when arguing on behalf of the plankton, so they adopt a line that sounds utilitarian.

At the end of the day, the agenda is to knowingly increase human misery so that ... what? Even Kyoto, taken at face value of its proposers (who all claim that it is a minimal sort of action), has the result of diverting trillions of dollars globally to a cause that they admit will have barely a measurable impact on temperatures. If it is all about we humans, shouldn't consequences matter?

I just don't buy it.

[c]

I remember reading the suggestion once that human beings were the earth biosphere's immune system -- given that the most serious threat to life on any planet is an asteroid or comet strike, and human technology is the planet's best chance to prevent that sort of thing.

[Jason Ligon]

Erf,

The trick is to find one of those proposals that greenies find palettable that also has the output capability to have an economy anything like the one we have.

I haven't heard any solutions yet. Solar cell efficiency is not up to the task. The hydrogen economy seems promising ...

[fyodor]

tsqured,

That point has often been raised, but it ignores the very definition of the word. Like many words, "natural" has various meanings. But often it's used to mean something unaltered by human design or civilization. When it is this definition of the word being used, obviously Manhatten is not as natural as the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

[Jason Ligon]

fyodor,

I don't think I demonize, I just think that most of the published green movement is much more radical than they let on.

I of course agree that a reality check is important, which is why I blab in public like this.

[fyodor]

Jason Ligon,

Environmentalists believe in the possibility of "environmental collapse." Given such a premise, protecting the environment at all costs makes sense, including as a means of protecting humans.

I've come to find such notions rather unlikely. But their opposition often employs the same overblown terminology, talking about "economic collapse" or "disaster." It's all a pro & con, give & take continuum, folks!

[joe]

Young implies that respect for the environment on its own terms is religious, and therefore inappropriate to consider when formulating public policy. This is nonsense; should we not consider murder or theft wrong, because the motivation for opposing them is often religious? One could make the same argument about any value - including the idea that human freedom and/or well being should be promoted.

[Mark A.]

Jason,

I could see photovoltaics working as a domestic distributed power source -- such decentralization should warm the cockles of the libertarian heart! 🙂

A couple of facts:

Speaking of technologies palatable to greenies -- have you seen that James Lovelock has come out in FAVOR of nuclear energy? Check it out:

http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/loveprefaceen.htm

Also, nuclear power is being researched as a way to thermolytically create hydrogen from water as part of the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative.

[s.m. koppelman]

It's telling that another Reason writer couldn't help but jump in and call a straw man a straw man here.

Has anyone written a good book yet on the phenomenon of 1960s Cuban and 1970s-1980s Soviet emigres to the US who go on to embrace the most egregious corporate PR horseshit--the greedier and more misanthropic the better--because they somehow got the crazy idea that it's the route to being the most genuinely "American"? Maybe it's all those Ayn Rand potboilers the CIA smuggled into the USSR disguised as Bibles and Jewish prayerbooks back in the day.

P.S.: It's sometimes forgotten that the catalyst for the breakup of the USSR was the environmental movement that sprang up after Chernobyl--a reaction against decades of ruined land, ruined forests, ruined water, drained lakes, bad air and finally, the last straw, a nuclear plant accident. Does all of this become okay when it's in the private sector?

[Jason Ligon]

fyodor,

I agree about the continuum and I agree that many libertarian types employ similar tactics.

I think you make Young's point when you say, "Given such a premise, protecting the environment at all costs makes sense ..." At all costs is a statement of fundamentalism.

As I alluded to above, I don't believe them when they argue that this is all for the sake of humanity. If the goal is to protect humanity, if human life is of primary moral significance, then you would think that calls to stop growth and thereby keep people in poverty and dying in droves would be acknowledged as a real cost. No, that whole argument has the ring of convenience to me. The goal is to for man to understand his place in the ecosystem, i.e. accept his fate and starve like all other species.

[joe]

'I just think that most of the published green movement is much more radical than they let on.'

Based on what? Their wily and sophisticated political maneuvering?

[Douglas Fletcher]

Tonight I'm going to party like it's 1999.