Or, should we force all people into machines, if we had them, that would redistribute IQ points from those who were deemed to have “too much” intelligence, to those deemed to have “too little?” This would appear to be a logical implication of “equity,” and yet our sense of justice recoils in horror from any such scenario.
[This article is a response to Paul Baer et al., “Greenhouse Development Rights: A Proposal for a Fair Global Climate Treaty,” Ethics, Place & Environment, volume 12, issue 3 (2009).]
There are not one but rather two schools of thought on the environment and its challenges. For want of better nomenclature, I shall characterize them as the watermelons and the free-market environmentalists.
The first is far more well-known than the second. Here, the solution to all problems arising from this source is more government intervention into the economy, more (green) central planning, more denigration of private-property rights, new discoveries of “market failures.”
Why call them “watermelons”? Because this fruit is green on the outside, but red on the inside. Advocates of this system are busybodies; their “philosophy” consists of do-gooding and ordering other people around: controlling property that does not belong to them, forcing others to cater to the latest political correctness emanating from who knows where. For a while, a long while, these people had hitched their intellectual wagon to the preeminent philosophy of the day, which promoted these goals: communism. But, then, in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in 1991, with the dissolution of the USSR, socialism could no longer suit their purposes. A new vehicle was needed: ecology was chosen.
The second school of thought on these matters is free-market environmentalism (FME).[1] For adherents of the first view, this name is a contradiction in terms. In their view the marketplace is seen as the enemy of the planet and its flora and fauna. I was once in a debate with a professor of biology who espoused watermelonism, and when I mentioned FME, he burst out laughing. Nor was this a debater’s trick. He honestly thought it was outrageously funny.
It is the perspective of FME that all environmental problems stem from either lack of private-property rights, or from government regulation of laissez-faire capitalism, or from state control of resources. With economic freedom, all such challenges would either disappear outright, or become far more manageable.
The article by Baer is an example of watermelonism. Let us, then, mention some of its shortcomings.
Most egregious, this article speaks of “anthropogenic climate change” (emphasis added). Why is this objectionable? In the 1970s, the (then prewatermelon) green market critics were charging the capitalist system with creating global cooling. When the evidence did not appear to support this charge, they reversed field, and indicted free enterprise with global warming. But when one too many of their environmental conferences had to be cancelled due to freezing icy conditions, they changed yet once again. Now, it is climate change that is the enemy of all that is good and proper, not either cooling or warming.
Gun control, housing control…Virginia is going to hell in a hand basket.
Urban life may be more efficient, unfortunately so is control. Surveillance is more effective.No car cities are part of the plan-you can only go where public transport and Big Brother makes sure he knows where and when you go there. He will make sure he knows the where and when of everything.
Nope. Can’t go there or do that. You already used this months allocation.
Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.
Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.
Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation.
Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.
The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on suburban lots in neighborhoods previously consisting of quiet streets and open green spaces. Proponents of “upzoning” say the changes are necessary because suburbs are bastions of segregation and elitism, as well as bad for the environment.
The move, which aims to provide “affordable housing,” might be fiercely opposed by local officials throughout the state, who have deliberately created and preserved neighborhoods with particular character — some dense and walkable, others semi-rural and private — to accommodate people’s various preferences.
But Democrats tout a state-level law’s ability to replace “not in my backyard” with “yes, in your backyard.”
House Delegate Ibraheem Samirah, a Democrat, introduced six housing measures Dec. 19, coinciding with Democrats’ takeover of the state legislature in November.
“Single-family housing zones would become two-zoned,” Samirah told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Areas that would be impacted most would be the suburbs that have not done their part in helping out.”
“The real issues are the areas in between very dense areas which are single-family zoned. Those are the areas that the state is having significant trouble dealing with. They’re living in a bubble,” he said.
He said suburbs were “mostly white and wealthy” and that their local officials — who have historically been in charge of zoning — were ignoring the desires of poor people, who did not have time to lobby them to increase suburban density.
In response to a question about whether people who bought homes in spacious suburbs have valid reasons, not based on discrimination, for preferring to live that way — including a love for nature and desire to preserve woods and streams — he said: “Caring about nature is very important, but the more dense a neighborhood is, the more energy efficient it is.”
He said if local officials seek to change requirements like setbacks to make it impossible to build dense housing in areas zoned to preserve a nature feel, “if they make setbacks to block duplexes, there’d have to be a lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary.”…
There is a disease spreading throughout the Christian Church. An unholy and altogether evil doctrine is now being taught by almost every denomination. I speak of environmentalism, or “creation care” as its proponents have dubbed it. Christian leaders are now openly endorsing an ideology that for the last 2000 years was promoted by everyone but Christians. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that this new doctrine is not only incompatible with, but at odds with Scripture, and that believers ought to reject it in toto.
First, we must ask what exactly are the claims of the “creation care” advocates? This is exactly where the problem begins. Since environmentalism has always been one of the core tenets of leftist ideology, the reasoning behind it always consisted of non-Biblical arguments. Now the Christians who have begun to support it have struggled to come up with a coherent view that fits within the Biblical framework. Is their claim that the environment (basically anything natural that is not human) is of equal worth to God as people? Certainly not, they assure us. But then what exactly do they believe? Because if man and earth are not of equal value, why is it wrong to use the earth’s resources to better mankind? At what point shall we consider this use to be “abuse?” The “creation care” advocates do not know. Regardless, considering this new false doctrine’s popularity, it must be rebutted with Scripture and history.
Scripture
When searching for a Biblical view of the “environment” we must start at the very beginning, Genesis 1. The first chapter of Genesis relates the event of creation, in which God creates the earth, animals, and man. The concept of “imago dei” is introduced in Genesis 1:26, which states that God created man in His image. This separated mankind from the rest of creation, as no other living thing was created in such a way. In fact, the passage goes on to say that God did this “so that they may rule over” all other creatures of the earth. Man is told in verse 28 to “subdue” the earth and, again, to “rule over” the other creatures. Not only this, in verse 29, God actually gives both man and animals the plants and fruits to eat for their food. Thus, God specifically gives permission to man to kill and eat parts of the “environment.” Hence, we know that it is completely moral for humans to “destroy” parts of the environment. The creation care advocates, then, are stuck deciding at what point this destruction becomes “abuse” because they cannot argue that destruction is inherently wrong. Their problem has now become clearer because drawing such a line is impossible, unless they decided to draw it at the point where destruction actually harms humans. However, if they make such an argument, they have just admitted that the environment has no inherent worth and is only important insofar as it helps humans. Thus, the doctrine of “creation care” falls apart and is merged into the Christian concept of taking care of our neighbors.
The second chapter of Genesis continues the creation story and verse 9 states that “the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground- trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.” This passage again makes clear that all other life was created to serve man, as the value assigned to trees in this verse is that they are a benefit to mankind. This chapter also reestablishes man’s dominance over animals when God gives Adam the job of naming them all. However, chapter 2 is also used by the environmentalists because of its “take care of” Eden phrase. The reason environmentalists harp on this so much is because there is not a single other phrase in the rest of Scripture that could be taken as any sort of command to protect the environment. Let us look at the full passage in verse 15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Looking at the full verse, we can see that it also states man must “work” the land. The “take care of” phrase, though, in the original Hebrew is “וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃,” which translates better to “preserve.” The question then becomes “preserve” for whom? As we have seen, God created man above all other creation and specifically gave all the plants and fruits to man for food. Thus, when God commands man to “work and preserve” the garden, He is doing so for the benefit of mankind. For it is absolutely necessary for people to work the land and preserve it as a place habitable for mankind. This is precisely what the environmentalists oppose, as they demand we leave every jungle and swamp alone, completely wild and inhabitable for any person. Doing so is immoral because nature unkempt by man is dangerous and deadly. Civilizations are built only once man has tamed nature and humans can live on the land safely, without the immediate threat of being mauled to death by a lion or poisoned by some venomous snake. It is a command of God to “keep” the land in a way that man can work it and live a productive, safe life.
The third chapter of Genesis clarifies that once the Fall happens, nature “will produce thorns and thistles” and man must painfully keep the “cursed” ground in order to eat from it. Once Adam and Eve sin, the Lord then commits the first act of killing an animal, which He did in order to use the skins for the clothing of man. This is again another example of the supremacy of man over animals and further evidence of the concept that the primary value of animals (and all of nature for that matter) is the benefit they provide to humans. If an animal can morally be killed for a human’s clothing, then certainly they can be killed for other reasons that help man. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas stated “the life of animals and plants is preserved not for themselves but for man” and that “he that kills another’s ox, sins, not through killing the ox, but through injuring another man in his property.” Here, Aquinas is demonstrating the Biblical concept that the sin that occurs when one harms an animal or other part of the environment, is the harm that occurs to the owner of that property, not the harm to the part of nature itself. There is further evidence of this concept throughout Scripture. For example, in Exodus 9:6, we see that God kills all the livestock owned by the Egyptians in order to punish the people of Egypt. He did not do this because of a wrong committed by the animals, but because it would destroy the benefits Egyptians reaped from owning them. In 2 Peter 2:12, Peter compares evil people to animals, who he says are “born only to be caught and destroyed.” Finally, in 1 Corinthians 9:9-10, Paul says “Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely He says this for us, doesn’t He?” Paul is making the (correct) assumption that God is always concerned about humans over animals and that if something is commanded, it is commanded because it is for the good of mankind.
A question that must be asked of proponents of “creation care” is if God applies such great intrinsic value to the “environment”, why is He the direct causer of the two greatest environmental catastrophes? First, we have the Flood in which God eviscerates the environment in order to punish humans for their evil ways. Second, we have End Times, spoken of in 2 Peter and Revelation. These books inform us that God is going to destroy everything on earth and it will be “bare.”
Believers know that life on earth will be destroyed and renewed at the Second Coming, so would God really command us to make sure the earth is preserved for its own sake? Of course not. He only commands us to preserve it in order to help mankind, and this means taming nature and working the land so that humans may prosper…
Conclusion
In conclusion, Christian leaders must reject the revival of earth-worship and return to the long-held belief that man was created in God’s image and is naturally superior to all other life. Consequently, human prosperity is vitally important and it is only attainable if man is allowed to use the resources God gave to him.
We know that our oligarchic empire will do literally anything, up to and including murdering a million Iraqis, to secure control over energy resources. We know this with absolute certainty.
Millions of people are uniting in demonstrations worldwide against our civilization’s ecocidal march toward extinction, which makes me so happy to see. It’s really encouraging to see so many young people burning with love for their planet and a hunger to reverse the damage that has been done to our ecosystem by the refusal of previous generations to turn away from our path of devastation. This must continue if we are to survive as a species.
The challenge now is the same perennial challenge which comes up every single time there is a massive and enthusiastic push from the public in a direction that is healthy: such movements always, without exception, become targeted for manipulation by establishment interests. I write all the time about how this has happened with the intrinsically healthy impulse of feminism; I just finished watching an MSNBC pundit proclaim that anyone who still supports Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren is a sexist. This corralling of healthy energy into the advancement of corrupt establishment interests happens with feminism, it happens with the healthy fight against racism and antisemitism, and of course it happens with environmentalism.
Of course it does. People get very emotional when you say this, even if you fully support environmentalism and don’t have any objections to the overall scientific consensus about what’s happening to our environment, but environmentalism is not destined to be the one and only popular movement which establishment interests don’t move mountains to co-opt.
We know that our oligarchic empire will do literally anything, up to and including murdering a million Iraqis, to secure control over energy resources. We know this with absolute certainty. Therefore we can also know with certainty that they are working to ensure that when new energy systems are put in place, they are put in place in a way which allows the oligarchs to retain their power, and ideally to expand it, without losing their thrones to rival plutocrats, to governments, or (worst case scenario) to the rank-and-file public gaining control over their own energy. This agenda is on the table. It is happening.
When it comes to our future, the ruling elites have compelling narratives worked up by teams of talented creatives to sell us the products they want us to buy. They know exactly where they want to herd us.
We just have a notion of “No, not that!” We need a vision or we will fail. pic.twitter.com/tyngFzCdPI
The ruling elites have many advantages over us, but one of the greatest is the fact that they know exactly what they want and exactly where they’re trying to push things, whereas we the general public, on average, do not. If we only had one positive anti-establishment direction to push in there’d be no stopping us, and as soon as we find one the oligarchs will be done. But in general and on average what we have is a few clear ideas about what we don’t want and a great many vague, frequently contradictory ideas about what we do want. This lack of clarity in direction always leaves us highly susceptible to the influence of any well-funded narrative manager who steps forward to say “Oh yeah I know exactly where we’re going! It’s this way, follow me!”
Luckily for us, there’s a very clear demand we can add into the mix in this new push for environmentalist reforms which runs directly counter to the interests of the empire that is trying to manipulate our healthy impulses: de-fund the Pentagon.
There is no single, unified entity that is a larger polluter than America’s dishonestly labeled “Department of Defense”. Its yearly carbon output alone dwarfs that of entire first-world nations like Sweden and Portugal; if the US military were its own country it would rank 47th among emitters of greenhouse gasses, meaning it’s a worse polluter than over 140 entire nations. That’s completely separate from the pollution already produced by the US itself. None of the sociopathic corporations whose environmental impact is being rightly criticized today come anywhere remotely close to that of the Pentagon. They are going under the radar.
On Earth Day, MintPress brings you a piece originally published last May, on the U.S. Department of Defense’s toxic legacy throughout the world. The DoD produces more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined.https://t.co/iw0tqHyWXj
And that’s just greenhouse gas emissions, which the Pentagon’s poisonous effects on our environment are in no way limited to. As journalist Whitney Webb highlighted in an excellent article for Mintpress News about the wildly neglected subject of the US military’s ecological toxicity: “Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined, the US Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others.”
Webb documents how the US “has conducted more nuclear weapons tests than all other nations combined”, how US military interventionism in Iraq “has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country’s agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food,” and how “US military bases, both domestic and foreign, consistently rank among some of the most polluted places in the world.”
“While the US military’s past environmental record suggests that its current policies are not sustainable, this has by no means dissuaded the US military from openly planning future contamination of the environment through misguided waste disposal efforts,” Webb writes. “Last November, the US Navy announced its plan to release 20,000 tons of environmental ‘stressors,’ including heavy metals and explosives, into the coastal waters of the US Pacific Northwest over the course of this year.”
This is all a massive environmental burden to take on for a branch of the government which provides no other service to anyone beyond bullying the rest of the world into obedience, wouldn’t you agree? So get rid of it.
Surely with all this talk about the huge, sweeping changes that are required to avert climate catastrophe we’re not going to overlook the world’s single worst polluter just because a few think tankers and their plutocratic sponsors believe it’s important for the US-centralized power alliance to retain total global hegemony? If we’re making huge, sweeping changes, the completely needless globe-spanning US war machine would be the obvious place to start.
That’s something we can inject into the mainstream dialogue as this environmental movement grows, and the cool thing about it is that the establishment manipulators can’t reject it or they’ll expose themselves. It’s something we can demand that they can’t legitimately say no to. We can surf this clear, concrete, exciting and utterly indisputable idea on the surging momentum of these climate demonstrations, and the same healthy impulse to save our planet that these budding activists are now embodying will lift it right up and carry it to the top of mainstream awareness. No sane person will reject this, so if anyone pushes back against it to say “No, not that,” they’ll immediately spotlight the insane agendas they serve.
The US does not need any more military power than what other normal nations have: enough to defend its own easily defended shores from unprovoked attack. Anything beyond that, and certainly the hundreds of environmentally toxic military bases circling our planet, exists solely for the benefit of murderous dominating imperialists and sociopathic war profiteers. Demanding a reversal of US military expansionism as a part of the environmental movement is sane on its face and will benefit everyone, and it will also help highlight all unwholesome elements of empire loyalism.
The UN’s Christiana Figueres said: The climate agenda is about destroying capitalism.
Climate change is the McGuffin. Alfred Hitchcock’s name for the reason for the story but not really the story. The uranium filled wine bottle in “Notorious”.
The only thing slated for be changed is you. Being told how to live in a government controlled socialist/communist environment.
Skeptics of human-caused climate change are more environmentally conscious than people who believe climate change is undeniably caused by human action.
“Belief in climate change predicted support for government policies to combat climate change, but did not generally translate to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental behavior,” said the paper.
So they want the government to step in and force people to reduce their “carbon footprint,” but they aren’t willing to simply make those changes in their own lives. It’s the selfish attitude, why should I sacrifice if everyone else isn’t going to?
Except that normal people already treat their environment well, even as they are skeptical of how big the crisis really is, and what exactly caused it.
Meanwhile, climate change zealots aren’t doing their fair share to be environmentally conscious.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves this point.
There are few details about her “Green New Deal,” just general goals like achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions.
Not discussed enough is the actual money industries have riding on the elections. Which contractors will be enriched with federal dollars? The military contractors? Those peddling carbon credits?
I already know who is going to win the election. The government. And their cronies.
It looks like a real spontaneous fight. But the match was planned, set up, with rules and parameters.
That’s an election. Except that it is shoved in all of our faces, while they lie and tell us it wasn’t a planned fight.
Not interested in seeing the blood and gore? Not interested in watching two people beat each other to a pulp? Well, you can turn off the boxing match, but good luck avoiding election coverage.
There wouldn’t be anything riding on the match if we weren’t all convinced to place bets on it. Now it matters. We’ve put down our wagers, we’ve added skin to the game, and now we care. Read the rest of this entry »
California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a draconian new water-rationing law that limits per capita daily water usage to less than the amount needed to shower and do a load of laundry.
Assembly Bill 1668 establishes a limit of 55 gallons per person daily as the standard for indoor residential water use, starting in the year 2022. Violators will have to pay a fine of $1,000 per day during normal seasons and $10,000 per day if “the violation occurs in a critically dry year immediately preceded by two or more consecutive below normal, dry, or critically dry years,” the law states.
According to the attentive folks at The Organic Prepper, this allotted water ration exceeds the amount required for taking a shower and doing a single load of laundry and excludes taking baths altogether… Read the rest of this entry »
Environmental watermelon. Green on the outside, red on the inside (definition courtesy James Delingpole). NWO flunky. Even relatively toothless future kings crave power. And money…I wonder if he has a much invested in environmental companies as Al Gore.
Does he huddle among the unwashed masses as much as his mumsy does? That is one dirty environment in which royals don’t let themselves be exposed.
No, I don’t care for the royals. Too Clintonesque… or is it the other way around?
MCViewPoint 