(Walter Starck,
Quandrant Online) If one dares to look beyond the nonsense taboo, it
quickly becomes apparent that the whole herd is heavily infected with quite
obvious contradictions, misrepresentations and intellectual vacuity.
Desire dressed up as Concern
One of the leaders in this herd is a professed Concern so often and so piously
expressed by environmentalists about purported threats to the environment.
However, the immediate reaction of environmentalists to any suggestion a
purported threat may not actually be as serious as feared, is revealing. Instead of the hopeful interest
one would expect from anyone who genuinely cares, their response is invariably
argument and even angry rejection. It is obvious their true commitment is
to the threat itself, not to the environment.
The Principle
that negates itself
The Precautionary
Principle is another revered member of the eco-herd. As originally
formulated, the concept was that in circumstances where there is an apparent
risk of severe or irreversible environmental damage, preventative measures
should not be withheld because of a lack of scientific certainty.
Environmentalism has twisted this reasonable approach to uncertainty into an
imperative demanding protection against any hypothetical risk with the burden of
proof for no harm demanded from anyone who objects. However, as every student
of Logic 101 learns, proof of a negative is not possible. In practice this
means that even the most dubious hypothetical concern must be acted upon and no
acceptable objection is possible.
The muddled logic of the environmentalist
formulation of the precautionary principal actually forbids doing anything.
This includes precautionary measures themselves, as everything entails a
possibility of risk. That this vacuous and pernicious bit of
intellectual swill has even been written in the enabling legislation of
government bodies charged with environmental management, speaks loudly of the
corrosive influence of environmentalism on rational thinking.
Love of an idea but not the reality
A professed Love
of Nature is an especially dewy eyed member of this herd; but, like the
others, a closer look finds it really isn’t what it is pretending to be. The
demographics of green voters reveal their preferred habitat is overwhelmingly
not the remote regions where nature still prevails or rural areas where it
remains prominent amidst a modest population of humans.
It isn’t even the outer
suburban areas where at least fragments of nature still provide a green
flavour. Despite their love of nature, the habitat where the majority of Greens
chose to live is the tiny fraction of the planet where nature has been
virtually annihilated, the inner urban heart of large cities.
Removing themselves so completely from their true
love must be the eco-equivalent of the hair shirts of early Christian ascetics.
No wonder they seem so irritable.
Ecology as a house of cards
The Fragile
Delicate Balance of Nature is still another appropriately bovine idea
revered by environmentalists. This concept of ecology is one of a house of
cards, susceptible to collapse at the slightest “unnatural” disturbance.
Unnatural in this context is code for human at any societal level above Stone
Age hunter gathering. The reality of a constant struggle for survival in a
dynamic, ever changing, often harsh natural world has been replaced by a
romantic notion of nature in a blissful state of harmony and balance, something
pure and perfect where any detectable human influence is by definition a
desecration.
Somehow in all this, ecology itself has also been
transmuted from a scientific discipline involving a study of the interrelations
of organisms and their environment into something they call The Ecology . This appears to be some
kind of undefined but implied spiritual force more or less synonymous with the
one they also refer to as Gaia.
This view of ecology seems to have a special appeal
for those who produce nothing themselves but who enjoy having their sense of
moral superiority over those who provide their needs untainted by any tinge of gratitude
or guilt.
Heifers named Sustainable and Threatened
These non-identical twins are often found together
where they serve as Judas goats in assisting the eco-saviours to get the human
mob moving in a direction they want. Sustainable
promises rich grazing there but fails to mention that it will only be in
her paddock not yours. Threatened
plays the bad cop role with frequent reminders and scares about severe
consequences if we don’t do as our eco-masters wish.
Sustainable likes the management of fisheries
on the Great Barrier Reef because they are limited to a harvest rate of only 9
Kg per square Km per year when even the conservation
NGOs claim that well managed reef fisheries can produce about 15,000 Kg per square Km per year. Restricting the catch to less than 1% of what it
could produce is certainly sustainable for the fish and marvellously
precautionary as well. Unfortunately for the environment fishing has the least
impact on nature of any means of food production so unneeded restrictions there
become even greater impacts elsewhere on land.
As for the fishermen and the lives of the people
who would enjoy the substantial health benefits of greater seafood consumption,
they are only humans and thus by definition are unnatural, so they aren’t
really a consideration.
Agriculture, however, is where Sustainable shows it’s true colours.
Of course, sustainable agriculture couldn’t use any chemical fertilisers,
herbicides, pesticides or fossil fuel. Productivity would be only a fraction
that of modern farms. All remaining arable land would need to be used for
agriculture and most of the urban population would have to become farm labour.
Even then, many people would probably starve; but, for the urban greens who
want Sustainable so much that
should be only be an opportunity not a burden. They could then make their own
most valuable contribution to sustainability, as compost.
Threatened also attracted a lot of good
publicity recently with a widely reported news item about how over 10,000
species had become extinct over the past decade due to climate change. The
environmentalists know this because it was determined by computer modelling.
Somehow they forgot to mention that the actual figure for documented
extinctions over the same period of time was actually just one.
Presumably, in view of the precautionary principle, the known number is
not that important. It’s the hypothetically possible number that we must heed
at any cost.
The mother of all environmental threats has, of
course, been Anthropogenic Global Warming (a.k.a. Climate Change). AGW has become the most revered of
all the sacred cows. To doubt it is equivalent to denying the holocaust.
Accepting it and giving up the sin of fossil fuel consumption promises to save
the world, punish unbelievers and bring about a fair, harmonious, balanced,
sustainable restoration of Eden.
The perfect track record of failure for all such
dreams of utopia is not even a consideration. As always, this time is
different. The facts that every prediction of the climate “experts” has also
failed and climate, if anything, is cooling must not be permitted to sway one’s
faith. This is a necessary test of faith to be passed before becoming worthy of
Gaia’s beneficence.
Impact, the bullock in the eco-shop
In the environmentalist lexicon the consequences of
natural events, no matter how devastating, are referred to with neutral
sounding terms such “influence” or “effect”. However, any
detectable change attributable to humans, no matter how slight, is referred to
as an Impact. Storms, floods,
droughts, wildfires and epidemics including mass mortalities of wildlife are
merely natural occurrences. They are not impacts.
If you drive down a beach in your SUV a few of the
tiny creatures who live among the sand grains might presumably be affected.
This is an impact and should be prohibited. On the other hand, if a hurricane
washes away the entire beach, that is only a natural ecological realignment.
However, if the same storm might be attributed to AGW it would become a
terrible tragedy and an unspeakable crime against nature.
Stakeholder, the bum steer
Stakeholder is another term which has been
domesticated to serve as a milk cow for environmentalism. Before the rise of
environmentalism a stakeholder was someone with something invested or with
something to lose. Environmentalists expanded this to include themselves on the
basis of their “concern” providing them a proprietary interest. With nothing
invested and no experience or special knowledge they are now deemed to be “stakeholders” with equal standing to
those whose property and way of life are at stake.
A diseased herd
Behind the carefully contrived appearance of piety
and righteousness the whole herd of environmentalism’s sacred cows is heavily
infected with suppurating dishonesty, delusion and perversity. It’s the
kind of maladaptive behaviour that animal behaviourists have found may arise
when strong instinctual drives are blocked. In this regard it may be a
consequence of the biologically impoverished urban environment compounded by
the boredom of a non-productive parasitic lifestyle which affords little
purpose or meaning. It’s not unlike the obsessive compulsive neuroticism
often observed in animals living in sterile cages.
In most developed nations a large majority of the
population now dwell in cities and only a minority toil to produce the goods
and services which support us all. For many urbanites in particular, the
natural environment has acquired a distant, romantic, somewhat sacred, status.
Though themselves voracious consumers, they are removed from the production
which supplies their demands. Those who provide their needs tend to be seen as
greedy exploiters and defilers of nature. Even more ironically, their own
lifestyle has virtually annihilated the natural world in a small portion of the
environment, yet that is where they choose to live.
Ecology is above all holistic
Every organism must have effects in order to exist.
Like all species the effect of our own can be either harmful or beneficial
depending upon whether the net result is to decrease or to enhance the
diversity, abundance and condition of life. The observable reality of natural
ecosystems is that they are far less delicate, fragile and balanced than is
popularly imagined.
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