Peter Foster: Earth Day's kick in the ash
Eric Gisin
April 20, 2010, 16:11:00 | NP Editor
Conceived in counter-culture hysteria, Earth Day has evolved as a focal point for ideological
opposition to industrialized society
By Peter Foster
If one believed in cosmic irony, then the ongoing 40th of that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano
might be taken as a message from Earth to those who will tomorrow celebrate the fortieth "Earth
Day." Although humans may stand in awe of the home planet, the home planet has absolutely zero
concern for them. Meanwhile the disruptions in travel and trade caused by the vast cloud of
volcanic ash give a tiny glimpse of the kind of world that environmental radicals praise: clear,
blue, air traffic-free skies above, frustrated and deprived people below.
Earth Day, while masquerading as all about positive ecological values, was conceived in hysteria
and has evolved as a focal point for ideological opposition to industrial society and the benefits
it brings to ordinary people.
Here's how celebrity doomster Paul Ehrlich described global prospects on the first Earth Day in
1970: "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline
will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Biologist and future presidential
candidate Barry Commoner joined in the act, declaring "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years
unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis
which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human
habitation."
Two years later, the UN's Stockholm conference on the environment was held as a festival of
alarmism. Then the Club of Rome unleashed its Malthusian projections that many resources would be
exhausted before the end of the century.
The 1970s and 1980s were marked by a slew of costly environmental legislation, and yet somehow the
climate of eco hysteria never abated. Indeed, the more industry was forced to spend, the shriller
the cries became. And yet the human ingenuity unleashed by increasingly free markets brought more
and more people out of poverty.
By 1990, global warming had begun to emerge as the Mother of all environmental issues, although, as
Al Gore noted on the 20th Earth Day, it was merely "the most serious manifestation of a larger
problem: the collision course between industrial civilization and the ecological system that
supports life as we know it."
Nothing more clearly indicated that if there was one message the Earth Day crowd has always
vehemently rejected, it is that the human environment is actually improving, primarily because of
the spread of capitalist society, whose environmental sensitivity increases naturally with wealth
(Indeed, the growth of the professional environmental movement is the clearest proof of that fact).
When, around the 30th Earth Day, Bjorn Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist, which used
official statistics - and some rare objectivity - to establish that things were improving on all
fronts, he was comprehensively vilified by the environmental establishment.
Radical environmentalism is clearly not a matter of objective analysis; it is a religious faith
rooted in the same fetid anti-capitalist historical compost heap that had been accumulating since
the Industrial Revolution, and whose first bitter fruit was Communism.
Radical environmentalists have often suggested that they have to exaggerate problems as a spur to
action, but exaggeration means that priorities are skewed and resources are wasted. Much green
policy is both costly and counterproductive. Iceland's volcanic disruption has demonstrated what
fads like "eating local" really mean: less variety and higher costs at home; less jobs for
producers - often poor ones - abroad.
Since the first Earth Day, environmental NGOs have gained enormous political influence. If one
seeks a single current example of that clout, it would be in the legal witch hunt against "climate
change criminal" Syncrude over the inadvertent death of a flock of ducks on an Alberta tailings
pond.
The environmental movement has done enormous damage to the poor. One of the founding documents of
the Earth Day movement was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which raised hysterical concerns about
pesticides and led to the banning of DDT, at the cost of millions of lives. Campaigns against
genetically-modified food and in favour of subsidized biofuels have also caused much hardship. Even
environmental guru Stewart Brand, inventor of the "Whole Earth Catalogue," recently admitted that
"the environmental movement has done more harm with its opposition to genetic engineering than with
any other thing we've been wrong about . We've starved people, hindered science, hurt the natural
environment and denied our own practitioners a crucial tool." The movement's relentless push for
wind and solar subsidies has also been hugely costly and disruptive while producing none of the
promised breakthroughs.
The first Earth Day was steeped in the self-indulgent spirit of "the counterculture," of fighting
"The Man." Ironically, the one that takes place tomorrow has giant corporate sponsors including
Procter and Gamble, Siemens, Wells Fargo, Philips and UPS, every one a hypocritical proponent of
eco-socialist "sustainability" and "fighting" man-made global warming, whether it exists or not.
The good news is that the public is less willing to buy the bill of catastrophic Earth Day goods.
Everybody wants a clean environment, but priorities have to be balanced and costs have to be
reasonable. Meanwhile that unpronounceable volcano spews on.
0@ZON@B
April 20 2010