Death by Environmentalism (Robert James Bidinotto)
“…And let’s be clear about our real adversaries. The environmental movement’s deadliest threats to human lives do not come from its violent fringe characters, that relative handful of “eco-terrorists” who set fire to SUV dealerships and research labs. As I aim to show, the environmental movement’s worst assaults on human lives are plotted and implemented every day by genteel, well-dressed lawyers, activists, and bureaucrats, working inside the posh offices of mainstream environmental groups and government agencies. While the theatrics of tree-sitters and terrorists grab headlines and provoke public anger, the policies and programs of the mainstream greens command little public concern or opposition. But theirs are the activities that are destroying the lives of millions.”
“For the most part, these leading environmentalists have remained insulated from scrutiny and inoculated against criticism, chiefly because their philosophic premises are so widely shared by intellectuals, the media, and the public. But another factor also conspires to buffer environmentalists from serious opposition. It’s what the nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat described as the problem of “what is seen, and what is not seen.”
“Environmentalists always tout nice-sounding objectives: a new protected species, cleaner air, more fuel-efficient automobiles. But these efforts invariably have destructive side effects that are often difficult to trace back to their sources.”
“For instance, whenever environmentalists prevent the building of hydroelectric power dams in the Third World, they boast of having prevented the flooding of land and the destruction of wildlife and habitat. What is seen are romanticized TV shows depicting herds of elephants, giraffes, and antelope roaming the vast plains of Africa, narrated with manic enthusiasm by the Animal Planet cable network’s Crocodile Hunter, to whom every snake and slug is “a real beauty!” And what is also seen are the press conferences where green groups crow about having spared these critters from a man-made ecological holocaust.”
“What is not seen are the countless human lives they have taken. By depriving Third World people access to the electricity that Western environmentalists take for granted, those people remain mired in poverty, darkness, wretched sanitation, and the resulting diseases and malnutrition that take millions of lives each year. Thanks to the environmental movement, these hapless people’s Hobbesian existence will remain nasty, brutish, and short.”
“Yet few will ever attribute their enduring miseries to environmentalism. Few will link the next plague, famine, or disaster back to green culprits living in New York or Washington. The chain of causes and effects seems too difficult to trace.”
“Difficult, but not impossible. Let’s take a recent horrible example: the deaths of some 15,000 people in France during this past summer’s European heat wave (more…)
