Enviromentalism

[SherryTX]

This will hopefully be my last post of the night (er - or morning) and I am not sure where to place it, so I apologize if I put it in the wrong sub-forum.

One thing that I am a bit troubled by is many of the views I have read on environmentalism that many Objectivists have stated - not here specifically, (I apologize I haven't had the time to drill down to what has been stated here), but on other forums, as well as pieces written over at ARI specifically (my intention is not to trash ARI here, just noting where I have read some of these pieces).

I do agree that most people that go by the term environmentalist do have things wrong - that we should not destroy mankind, say for the sake of saving a species, or that man should be forced to go to extreme measures to protect the environment. However, as I understand Objectivism so far, and the fact that we are to respect one another's property rights, I see no conflict with reasonable limits even by law on things like pollution. For example, my neighbor may own his land, but I do not think that it would be right for him to be doing things on his property that could like on to mine, and say, pollute my land through him dumping toxic waste on his which can leak over to mine, or having wild pit bulls run around and possibly pose a danger to myself and my family.

I do not agree that people should not be allowed to build on their own property because it may be rated wet lands if doing so will cause no harm to another's property, for example. I do not agree that a person shouldn't be allowed to cut down a tree in their yard just because there may be some rare yellow bellied booby bird living in it. I also think that some of the pesticides that have been used in the past to wipe out malaria spreading bugs should not have been outlawed (I believe much of the information regarding DDT for example was flawed in the 70s.)

That being said, I am curious as to what the thoughts of others are here?

Edited to correct errors from my tired mind.

Edited February 24, 2009 by SherryTX

[Chris Grieb]

Sherry; Ayn Rand was not against objective laws on pollution. She agreed that many kinds of pollution can do real damage to a person or their property and that someone who does that should have to pay for the damage.

The laws against DDT were based on bad science and a very evil book ,"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Chris Grieb

[Kat]

I don't consider myself either for or against the environment. I believe in a common sense approach. I think groups like PETA and Greenpeace are nutters, but I also think that some environmental controls are necessary to keep our world safer and cleaner. A little green living is good. Throwing $30 million in the stimulus package to save some friggin mouse species is bad.

Kat

[BaalChatzaf]

The world is our house. In fact the world is our only house. It makes good sense to treat the house we live in well for without it we die.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Ba'al:

Don't shit where you eat is a good rule of thumb as well as dig your latrines downstream, makes the coffee taste better in the morning or just damn common sense leads to a healthier planet.

Real hunters and fishermen are the best environmentalists that I have ever known.

Kat: The strange, aspect of the Pelosi mouse graft extortion is that this little rodent was the cause of major litigation some time ago [i need to check it out] and a significant sum of money was set aside in the litigation for it's "protection". I am going to find out what happened to the money.

Follow the money always.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

Ba'al:

Don't shit where you eat is a good rule of thumb as well as dig your latrines downstream, makes the coffee taste better in the morning or just damn common sense leads to a healthier planet.

Real hunters and fishermen are the best environmentalists that I have ever known.

Kat: The strange, aspect of the Pelosi mouse graft extortion is that this little rodent was the cause of major litigation some time ago [i need to check it out] and a significant sum of money was set aside in the litigation for it's "protection". I am going to find out what happened to the money.

Follow the money always.

Adam

My version of that is: don't pee in the water you are standing in. You may have to drink it some day. And you are right. The earliest Conservationists were outdoor people who liked to explore and see our broad land in its natural splendor. Teddy Roosevelt, for example, was one of these bully conservationists. The idea was to keep the land healthy so that humans could benefit from it. The newer environmentalists (the Gaia Worshippers) seem to regard the human race as a kind of scum or pestilence upon the Earth. Well Boo Hiss!!! on them them!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[SherryTX]

My thoughts are inline with what everyone has posted here. It doesn't make sense to me to not take care of the Earth so that we can get the most from it.

I do agree that PETA and Greenpeace go waaayyy too far. My friends and I often joke that we belong to a different PETA - that is People for Eating Tasty Animals. I have come very VERY close to making a t-shirt on Cafepress that says it, haha.

All my kids mostly get the over the top lectures in school regarding how man is damning the planet. It can take a lot of time to get them to understand that their teachers are not always presenting a balanced view. My 9 year old in particular (the Aspie kid) sometimes has a hard time with this - but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that she feels she can relate more to cats and other animals than humans.

[Selene]

Here is more ammo:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aIe9swvOqwIY <<<<incredible!

And:

"Global Warming advocates have made a habit of arguing that Global Warming not only will lead to more natural disasters, but actually has already done so. Climate realists, including this newsletter at times, have just as frequently pointed out that there is no evidence to support this claim. Well it seems our side has a new ally: Al Gore."

"That's right. The Goracle himself has removed a slide from his oft-rebutted PowerPoint presentation "An Inconvenient Truth" that contained a graph which purported to show an incredible spike in disasters in recent years. He culled the data from Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times explains:

"The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. "This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented," he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)

"Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here's why.

"Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters."

"In fact, this isn't the only bogus claim of Gore's recently debunked. Al Gore and United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon published an Op-Ed in The Financial Times last month that claimed that there are significantly more jobs to be found in the wind-energy industry than in the coal industry. A related article claimed that there were 85,000 jobs in wind and just 81,000 in coal. But according to The Christian Science Monitor:

"...it's a bogus comparison. According to the wind energy report, those 85,000 jobs in wind power are as "varied as turbine component manufacturing, construction and installation of wind turbines, wind turbine operations and maintenance, legal and marketing services, and more." The 81,000 coal jobs counted by the Department of Energy are only miners. Their figure excludes those who haul the coal around the country, as well as those who work in coal power plants."

Using faulty statistics to support their position is not the behavior of a movement confident in their position. And how could they be confident, with global temperatures declining, arctic ice levels matching those from 30 years ago (more on that below) and the American public growing more and more resistant to their claims?"

Adam

[SherryTX]

The link is to an article entitled "Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor "

Is that the one you meant to link to?

Thanks!

Edited February 26, 2009 by SherryTX

[Selene]

Sherry

Yes indeed. The awareness that ice sheets the size of California plus Arnold's pectoral muscles were just "missed" by these clowns and that the religion of global warming wupped up this holy warm war reminiscent of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" is astounding.

Today I saw this one regarding the Japanese "condemning" the UN as asserting that the "recent warming" is not man-made, but a natural cyclical event - enjoy.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/japan_w...FTOKEN=16978485

Adam

[Alfonso Jones]

Ba'al:

Don't shit where you eat is a good rule of thumb as well as dig your latrines downstream, makes the coffee taste better in the morning or just damn common sense leads to a healthier planet.

Real hunters and fishermen are the best environmentalists that I have ever known.

Kat: The strange, aspect of the Pelosi mouse graft extortion is that this little rodent was the cause of major litigation some time ago [i need to check it out] and a significant sum of money was set aside in the litigation for it's "protection". I am going to find out what happened to the money.

Follow the money always.

Adam

Adam -

Well put.

Bill P

[Selene]

Bill:

Thank you.

The Pelosi Mouse Story is apparently not true - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../EDIS15TRBG.DTL

Adam