Environmentalism: The Rational Stance

[Ilya Shambat]

There are any number of people who conflate environmentalism with
Marxism. It is time that this myth, like many others, be put to rest.


That someone is in agreement with one of Marx's stances - and Marx was
an extremely voluminous writer who addressed many subjects in his work
- does not mean that one is in agreement with all of Marx. One can
have value for nature without believing in class wars or in historical
inevitability. For that matter, Hitler was a vegetarian; but that does
not mean that every vegetarian is Hitler.


Instead, the stance of the environmentalist is the simply rational
stance. It is about creating for future generations a livable world.
It is about protecting from blind destruction the amazing beauty,
variety and richness of nature - the beauty, variety and richness that
one has not created and cannot recreate. And yes, it is a stance that
is consistent with economic development and technological innovation,
as it disincentivizes blind and stupid activities such as burning down
rainforests and incentivizes ingenuity, creativity and innovation that
is the true root of prosperity.


The people who militate against environmentalism have simply no
business claiming to speak for economics or development. Not only
regular pollution, but also ocean acidification, glacier melting and
erratic weather that result from global warming, all cause vast loss
in property and life. From the standard of capitalism and democracy
itself - the standard of preserving lives and property - the anti-
environmentalist fails. The health of the planet exercises a vast
effect on people's lives and property; and if one does not think so
then one can go to Linfen and see how well people live in the world's
most polluted city.


We hear many Republican types claim that ingenuity and innovation in
private sector produce prosperity. This means that ingenuity and
innovation are to be incentivized rather than disincentivized.
Ingenuity and innovation produces technologies that maximize benefit
while minimizing pollution, destruction and waste. Whereas
brainlessness burns down rainforests, pollutes the air and the water,
and burns oil and dirty coal when there are any number of better
technologies that stand to provide people everything they have now and
more while vastly reducing the burden on the planet.


Therefore the environmentalist stance is a rational stance, by the
logic of capitalism itself. It incentivizes ingenuity and innovation
and leads to creation and implementation of technologies that enhance
people's economic utility while making the burden lighter on nature.
It reduces the waste of lives and property that are a side effect of
brainless economic activity. And it preserves for future generations
what one has not created and cannot recreate.

[Charles Bell]

On Jun 10, 3:24 am, Ilya Shambat <ibsham...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are any number of people who conflate environmentalism with
> Marxism. It is time that this myth, like many others, be put to rest.
>

Environmentalism is fundamentally collectivist and necessarily command-
economy socialist. Marxist-communism in practice has been
collectivist, command-economy but materialist to the exclusion of
environmentalism, so it is impossible to say from where you got your
assertion that "any number of people" conflate Marxism with
environmentalism. Certainly anti-Marxist German national socialists
under Hitler were socialist and environmentalist, and Hitler himself
was even vegetarian, though whether or not he strictly had a meat-less
diet, it was important to Goebbel's propaganda that the animal-loving,
tea-totaling, non-smoking Hitler be a vegetarian in that some sort of
Wagnerian spiritualist revivalism would come from vegetarianism.

> For that matter, Hitler was a vegetarian; but that does
> not mean that every vegetarian is Hitler.
>

Be that as it may, whacked notions of man's connection with nature
come from your side of the political spectrum and not Rand's or a
typical Anglo/American conservative's -- perhaps in line with the
leftism of Rousseau and Thoreau.

> Instead, the stance of the environmentalist is the simply rational
> stance.

It's about false collectivist assertions (and therefore irrational
propositions) about man's connection with nature and, far more often
than not, collective action through government command-economy to stop
individualist, man-orientated people from enjoying life as they wish
to enjoy life .

> It is about creating for future generations a livable world.
> It is about protecting from blind destruction the amazing beauty,
> variety and richness of nature - the beauty, variety and richness that
> one has not created and cannot recreate.

It is realistically about state-capitalist/crony-capitalist or rawly
fascist economic schemes, like yours [*], to create "green" solutions
at the profit for some at the expense of many.

[*]
http://tinyurl.com/3qbvp7m
http://tinyurl.com/3ugmego

> The people who militate against environmentalism have simply no
> business claiming to speak for economics or development.

They speak for the opportunity to live lives they wish for themselves
without mystical explanations as to why they should give over their
lives to fascist-socialists like you.

Moreover, the "red-green" political alliance, where green can equal
hard-green environmentalists or the islamic fascists, and red equals
Marxist and/or International socialist (e.g., George Soros [**] ), is
a means to an end: to destroy capitalist countries.

It is usually that "conflation" to which you refer: collectivists --
communists, anarchists, greens, jihadists -- with different agendas
coming together to destroy western democracies.

[**] for example
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/alabama-takes-a-stand-against-soros-backed-agenda-21/