Know your lib friends IV

            Ever daydream about paradise?  I know, if you work hard this is not common, because your nose is so close to the grindstone. Maybe you dream more about meeting your goals and what to get the grandkids for Christmas.  But liberals are very much into dreaming about the world.  An idyllic pristine mother nature, untrodden by man, is one of those daydreams. Never mind that reality is dog-eat-dog.  Just watch the nature shows.  Who kills most of the cute little baby seals?  It is not fur-hunting humans.  It’s polar bears.  For someone who grew up on a farm and ranch, the idyllic environmental model of environmentalists confused me for a long time.  Were all these environmentalists talking about the dust and droughts, the chinch bugs and grasshoppers devastating crops, the dead animals you find unexpectedly just about every week?  I guess I grew up too close to nature to think about it being so benevolent and benign. 

            But libs are found (tellingly) in urban areas.  They miss the wilds from their concrete jungle.  And so they developed the theory that human greed ruined nature, and absent government restraint, we will kill our environment and die.  Of course, when we are all dead, it goes back to nature, doesn’t it? Ah, but they weep for the animals and have to rescue nature from those evil people who are still work the land, like farmers who vote 90% Republican. (convenient enemy, hunh.)  It’s very simple to a lib.  If you want to protect the elephants, ban elephant hunting.  Oh, wait.  They tried that in Africa.  All the big game preserves saw terrible decimation of animals because of poachers.  Then Zimbabwe decided to give the tribes ownership of the elephants.  Since the tribes could farm the animals for tusks, charge tourists and safaris, they took darned good care of the elephants and the population thrived.  It’s the old lesson, “the tragedy of the commons”, that when something’s public, nobody respects it and everyone abuses it.  And so what happened to Zimbabwe’s poaching problem?   The tribes caught ‘em, beat the bejabbers out of them, and they went home to their villages never to return. (Quick justice.  Same reason that ‘bloody Kansas’ logged about 1/10 the murders per capita in the 1870s as modern Chicago does today.) This private ownership solution has been played out many times in many parts of the world in wildlife conservation.

            So why don’t libs believe it?  It violates two issues they hold close to their heart—evils of capitalism and dreamy theorizing about remaking the world via big government.  Environmental issues seem like a choice between cute animals living the way God intended and greedy capitalists destroying them.  Government only gets judged by libs on motive, not performance.  If the motive is ‘nice’ then the liberal identifies with it and feels good about himself.  And so governments around the world banned DDT based on Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”.  Many scientists were quite disturbed by Carson’s radicalism, but evidently couldn’t write as well.  DDT was banned. As a result, tens of millions of people died in tropical climates. Did this mass murder bother rich environmentalists in their penthouses?  Not in the least.  They reflexively condemned the use of chemicals, amid diatribes against development of the rainforests. 

            And the guys in the rainforest probably said, “Rats! What happened to my job?  My family’s health?” Green cloaks itself in lots of compassionate moral and frugal sanctimoniousness.  In reality it kills. 

            The fact that libs are such theorizers about an imaginary world is why environmentalism is so faddish and superficial yet is held by seemingly brainy people.  That is because theorizing is their hobby.  The demand to remake the world is why they say stuff like, “America needs a national energy policy!” Gosh, I thought we already had one called the free market.  When gasoline gets too high in price, the incentive to drill gets better and we find more oil.  But unlike conservatives who see the world as a sinful mess where one must do one’s best, libs live in their dream world where they are all-powerful to change things.  (Alas, physics and human nature always ruin their policies!)  It also explains why they hang onto things like global warming when scientific evidence suggests climate change may be due to a variety of causes.  Libs hold onto the CO2-alone model because all the other causes are natural and can’t be changed by big government schemes. 

            That clinging to a failed theory leads to an almost cult-religious fervor by some liberals.  If you believe in something you can’t see and can’t even demonstrate as effective in your life, your leader makes boo-koos of bucks, while followers fervently try to proselytize converts and attack all else—is that not a cult?

            So here’s my suggestions when talking to an environmentalist.  Be prepared for anger. Use terms like ‘the real world’ where appropriate.   If global warming comes up, say, “What about the sun? Isn’t that what caused past eras of climate change?”  If politically correct energy comes up (they want solar, wind, ethanol, not wood, oil, and coal) say, “Yeah the laws of thermodynamics often mug our ideas.  Oil and coal contain so darned many btu’s per pound that hardly anything else can compete in the real world.” They use expressions like ‘there is a scientific consensus’ or ‘all scientists agree’ as a mantra.  Ask them, “if all scientists agreed, then wouldn’t all scientists be out of work?”