Václav Klaus, at the CATO Institute, March 9, 2007;
Environmentalism only pretends to deal with environmental protection. Behind their people- and nature-friendly terminology, the adherents to this ideology make ambitious attempts to radically reorganize and change the world, human society, all of us and our behavior, as well as our values.There is no doubt that it is our duty to protect rationally the nature for the future generations. The followers of the environmentalist ideology, however, keep presenting to us various catastrophic scenarios with the intention to persuade us to implement their ideas about us and about the whole human society. This is not only unfair but extremely dangerous. What is, in my view, even more dangerous, is the quasi-scientific form that their many times refuted forecasts have taken upon themselves.
What belongs to this ideology?
- disbelief in the power of the invisible hands of free market and belief in the omnipotence state dirigism;
- disregard for the role of important and powerful economic mechanisms and institutions – primarily that of property rights and prices – for an effective protection of nature;
- misunderstanding of the meaning of resources, of the difference between the potential natural resource and the real one, that may be used in the economy;
- Malthusian pessimism over the technical progress;
- belief in the dominance of externalities in human activities;
- promotion of the so-called “precautionary principle“, which maximizes the risk aversion without paying attention to the costs;
- underestimation of the long-term income and welfare growth, which results in a fundamental shift of demand towards environmental protection (this is demonstrated by the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve);
- erroneous discounting of the future, demonstrated so clearly by the highly publicized Stern-Report a few months ago.
All of these views are associated with social sciences, not with natural sciences. This is why environmentalism – unlike scientific ecology – does not belong to the natural sciences but is to be classified as an ideology.
Nicely stated....why is no one listening?
They'll listen when Al Gore starts getting smacked around during his Presidential run.
disbelief in the power of the invisible hands of free market and belief in the omnipotence state dirigism
I'll bite in that one. With oil at $70 a barrel the free market will, as it does better than government intervention, adjust the supply/demand sitution in favor of conservation. It will reward more o&g production/exploration and alternative energy sources as profit/cost effective. Smaller cars become more attractive without a gov't mandate to use them. The economically challenged morons on the left never get this.
Adam Smith was a genius. No deaths on his score card. Marx was a moron. Mass millions died in a 70 year period finding that out.
Uncle Mo Strong's mentor,I'll bet....Malthusian hmmm
Heard the ideology before, never knew where it came from....good one!
Thanks Kate
:)
Roughly ten percent of all humans who have ever lived are alive today.
The Media, Universities, Hollywood, the Public School System and the United Nations have pushed the West to the left(the far 'latte left'). Is their goal an East Block type left ??
Compared to the five above, the Czech President sounds right-wing.
The Czech people are so happy to be rid of Socialism and yet some fanatic Canadians want us all to take up that system !! Through Kyoto.
Why ?? Simple. Because those five groups doing the pushing can not operate in the real world. Just want to save their middle aged butt. And jobs. And pensions :)
Protect the enviroment from the enviromentalists lets start by leaving those eco-wackos in the rainforests for the rare and very dangerous CARVIROUS QUETZAL a rare and vaey scary bird thta looks like a quetzal but IT EATS RAW RED MEAT SQUAWK SQUAWK BURP
Next time you are flying from one big city to another big city ---- look out the widow the whole time (clouds permiting).
...... empty space ....... countryside....... fields...... empty space ........ tundra ...... city(blink) ..... ocean ...... ocean ...... snow ......mountains ...... bush ...... blink(city) ......... desert ..... empty space ......... lakes ........ pasture .......
Man huddles together in cities like chickens sometimes panic into a corner and suffocate each other.
And, many predict that the world's population will begin to decline in another 40 to 50 years.
And to think that Gore and Suzuki want us to give it all up to the crickets....... chirp
environmentalism = communism
Some of these enviromentalists wackos belive this EARTH MOTHER GAIA new age poppycock you maybe often see them with THE EARTH IS YOUR MOTHER bumper stickers on their cars they are truely the wackos and crazies
The precautionary principle multiplied by the law of unintended consequences = ??????. Therefore, the proper application of the precautionary principle is to never apply it because the consequences are unknown and likely more dangerous than the initial condition.
Environmentalists aren't bad. Environmental zealots are bad. With all the talk about the genius of the invisible hand we conservatives tend to forget the tragedy of the commons.
We drive smaller cars (at least most of us) in Canada because we have higher fuel costs... why is our fuel more expensive? Taxes... that's right, central planning.
The invisible hand never had zealots willing to murder for it, communism did, and it's pretty ignorant to assume that an ideology killed people (Kind of like Islam... it's not the religion but the adherents). Stalin killed people, so did Mao and Pol Pot, under the guise of communism, but it was the revolution and implementation of a very different political system that did it, not collective ownership.
I suggest checking out Patrick Moore, he is a Vancouver based "Environmentalist" who is actually a right winger. He argues against B.A.N.A.N.A.s (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone... like N.I.M.B.Y.s on crack) and watermelons (Envirocommunists - green outside pink inside).
//Sustainable Energy Engineer
///Member CPC
////Environmentalist
IMO, Patrick Moore is a very reasonable person.
Check out his site at www.greenspirit.com
He is NOT a right winger. More like 'at the centre', IMO.
He occupies the same political position he did as the founder of Greenpeace decades ago. It is the frame that has shifted. Dramatically.
Patrick Moore now 'appears' to be on the right because the likes of Suzuki, Gore, Strong and the UN, with the help of our beloved media, have pushed us into eco-fanatic territory.
Pushed so hard and so far we are even beyond the old East Block Countries' politics.(As Kate's post shows)
I agree with Jon; "Environmentalists aren't bad. Environmental zealots are bad."
I would bet Patrick Moore agrees also :)
Very succinct and insightful. I've just finished reading a book about Auschwitz and the "Final Solution" by Laurence Rees. Among other things it examines the Malthusian economic pessimism which influenced many high ranking National Socialists particularly Hitler and Himmler in viewing non-"Aryans" as excess mouths to be fed and thus, in the perverse thinking of National Socialism, better exterminated or quickly worked to death than left to, (in their view) inevitably, starve.
The environmental religion seems to take a frighteningly similar view of human beings and human economics as a zero-sum game in which every human being is seen as a negative, detrimental to the goal of maintaining "the environment" -- a holy icon worshipped as an entity unto itself.
I'm sure that if there were a way of terraforming Mars to render it habitable, environmentalists would object even though as it stands, Mars is an icy piece of rock millions of miles away with no entity other than human beings even aware of its existence.
"Roughly ten percent of all humans who have ever lived are alive today."
Roughly 6 billion people will die in the next 120 years.
It seems to me that if you look at any time in history, except for immediately after the plague, you would find that roughly 10% of all humans who ever lived befor that momnet were alive at that moment.
Paul Erlich made radical statements about the earth's capacity to carry humans, by his reasoning, we should have hit the wall at about 2 billion, yet we have 6 plus billion. But even as he made his prediction, the increase in birth rate was falling and has fallen since. That should not be equated to decrease in overall population. Decreaseing from 5 children to 3 still gives a net gain of 1.
The environmental movement today bears no resemblace to the movements in the 1960's and 70's. The modern environmetalist is more concerned with controlling your life than helping to maintain the environment.
Nothing we do will satisfy their demands. The demand alternative energy, until it appears. Wind power was great until the massive towers and spinning blades altered the landscape. We built dams to make hydroelectricity to in response to their demand to reduce coal fired generation. But dams are mean to fish, so they have to go.
Wait for some bright spark in the movement to wake up to that fact that solar power on a massive scale (which it will have to be) will move heat from deserts to cities, increasing temperatures there while disrupting the desert environment.
The only solution for the greens is that we dismantle our current civilization and return to the 1800's. They call for a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions. That would effectively put us back over 100 years. Yet they think nothing of jumping in a jetliner to fly half way round the world to protest something. As Micheal Crichton said, they (the environmental organizations) should mandate that their followers get off the grid, don't use air travel, etc. If they won't do it, why should we. They obviously don't truely believe what they are saying.
How about enviromentalists hypotcrits like the ones who climb up in trees using 2x4s and plywood platforms or use paper and cardboard in their protest signs and at all those eco-wackos HQ there are plenty of gas guzzling 4 mpg limos in their parking lots
The most easy way to stop GLOBAL WARMING is to duct tape AL GORES mouth shut it cuts down on all that HOT AIR
As I have said in the past it is just that old socialist wolf in enviromentalist sheeps clothing.
We used to have one of those eco-wacko groups with its HQ right here in our small farming community but when his group sued to cut off the water to the KLAMATH BASIN FARMERS he ended up in big time trouble and he was exposed as a hypotcrit becuase he lived in a LOG HOUSE and had another one with a WOOD BURNING WATER HEATER but this jerk is now up in oregon still cuasing trouble i mean its a wonder no one ever lynched him