The Truth Is Good

Mike’s Eyes look at some statements by an environmentalist that must be read to be believed.

As I commented on that post: These statements are stunning, but I'm glad they make such honest statements instead of lying. Critics of environmentalism get a lot of mileage out of these lapses of honesty. I don't know how many times I've read the quote about the right virus wiping out a billion people, or the one about crocodiles eating humans as their “dainties.” Within the last 10 years another environmentalist said something to the effect that keeping people alarmed was more important than scientific accuracy. This honesty should be encouraged, because the environmentalist movement has thrived on lies from the beginning. People think environmentalism is about keeping the air and water clean, when it is really an assault on capitalism, progress, technology, etc.

Individualists want freedom; collectivists want power. Environmentalism is just the latest manifestation of “the will to power.”

As Ayn Rand explained in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, now republished as Return of the Primitive, the Old Left boasted that it was more productive than capitalism. It is hard to fathom now, but in the 1930’s many people thought the west was doomed because the Soviets had five-year plans and America had no plan. By the 1960’s it was obvious that planned economies are NOT more productive than free markets – in fact, planning leads to chaos. This left those who lust for state power over free individuals in something of a quandary: how do they justify state power when it is less productive? The New Left found the answer to that problem: make productivity itself bad. Thus was environmentalism born.

Environmentalism has disguised its purpose from the beginning. But I think that as the movement ages and becomes part of Western Civilization, it will become more open and honest about its intentions, and this is good. The motto of one radical group is “Back to the Pleistocene!” The more people understand that environmentalists really mean it, the better. There will always be people who respond, “Oh, they don’t really mean that! They just want to clean up the smog and purify our drinking water.” As the truth spreads, fewer people buy this myth. Why, 10 years from now the only people who believe that environmentalism is about cleanliness might be the elderly readers of the New York Times.