[118566] in Cypherpunks
Ergo...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sat Oct 2 15:41:42 1999
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Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 15:19:51 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
"Environmentalism is Socialism" -- Rush Limbaugh
"Socialism is Feudalism" -- Bertrand Russell
Cheers,
RAH
--- begin forwarded text
From: "Kim Weissman" <BEVDAV@worldnet.att.net>
To: ignition-point@precision-d.com
Subject: IP: CONGRESS ACTION: October 3, 1999
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 08:52:11 -0400
Sender: owner-ignition-point@precision-d.com
Reply-To: "Kim Weissman" <BEVDAV@worldnet.att.net>
CONGRESS ACTION: October 3, 1999
=================
ENVIRONMENTAL DEATH: How many hurt people does it take to make
environmentalists happy? What kind of question is that, you may ask. Don't
environmentalists want to save human life and make it better? Actually, no.
At least based on environmental policies, which today are driven by the
extremist fringe, one would have to conclude that the ultimate goal of
eco-radicals is to cause as much human misery, injury, and yes, even death,
as possible.
Consider that scourge of environmental extremists, the chemical DDT.
Environmental hysteria has already convinced most of the world to abandon
the use of DDT, and the United Nations is currently considering a formal
worldwide ban, all because the eco-radicals claimed that DDT was killing off
some birds. In point of fact, what DDT killed most of was mosquitoes. And it
did that job very well indeed. So what? Well, mosquitoes are notorious
disease carriers, their bite spreading malaria and encephalitis. With the
reduction of DDT use worldwide, there has been a corresponding upsurge in
the worldwide cases of malaria. Malaria was once on the verge of being
eradicated, until the environmentalists forced the abandonment of DDT. Now,
malaria kills some 2.7 million people worldwide every year, and leaves
another half billion chronically ill. A mosquito-borne virus causing
encephalitis is now gripping the New York City area, where it is considered
very unusual, and is spreading throughout the north- and southeast.
Mosquitoes are thriving, thanks to environmentalists, but people are sick
and dying. And to help the mosquitoes do their dirty work, eco-radicals have
gone one step further. Mosquitoes lay eggs in stagnant pools of water such
as swamps. Before our nation became infected with environmental insanity, we
used to drain swamps to minimize breeding grounds, in order to protect
public health. But now with the simple subterfuge of a name change, we no
longer call them "swamps". They are now "wetlands", and we are told that we
must save them. And in the process, we give disease carrying mosquitoes
perfect homes in which to breed. Such obvious foolishness should be enough
to show that a much more serious danger to human life comes, not from DDT,
but from radical environmentalists. But there is more.
Extremist environmentalists' chemical phobia isn't limited to DDT. Consider
pesticides. American farmers have for decades been able to increasingly grow
more food on less acreage, producing food surpluses which help feed the
hungry of the world. They have been able to do so, at least in part, through
the miracle of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. But the eco-radicals are
working to limit the use of such pesticides and fertilizers. "Organic
farming", that's their battle cry. Except that with organic farming, the
loss rate of crops destroyed by insects and disease approaches fully
one-third of the crops planted. That is certainly no way to feed a hungry
world. But science has another answer: genetically engineered crops which
are naturally resistant to infestation and which therefore reduce, if not
eliminate entirely, the need for pesticides. Environmentalists should be
pleased with that. Are they? Of course not. Rather than celebrate the human
ingenuity which reduces the need for chemical pesticides, they concoct a new
danger. Painting hysterical scenarios of "killer genes" contaminating our
planetary gene pool, they wage an unending assault against genetic
engineering. In the ideal world of the eco-radical, there would be no
genetic engineering, no chemical pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, just a
massively reduced food supply. Resulting in massive starvation. But probably
not affecting this country, of course, and elitist environmentalists would
run no risk of going hungry themselves. Such starvation would occur
primarily in the poorer regions of the Third World. As long as the
environmental elitists have their soy-burgers and organic tomatoes, what do
they care how many people in the Third World starve to death? Then consider
the environmental campaign to "save the rainforest". Here again, through
subtle manipulation of the language, another politically correct cause was
born. What we now call "rainforests" had always been known by another name:
"jungles". And what a negative connotation that word bore! "It's a jungle
out there", commented many a person overwhelmed by the stress of modern
life. "Jungle" conjures up the image of intrepid explorers with rifles at
the ready, prepared to do battle with savage beasts and savage natives.
Picture a "rainforest", on the other hand, and one can almost see Bambi
frolicking in a woodland glade. How could the environmentalists generate any
sympathy for a campaign to "save the jungle"? They couldn't, obviously, so
they had to change the wording. Just as a campaign to "save the swamp" would
have made them sound ridiculous, but "save the wetlands" works just fine; so
now we aren't told to "save the jungle", we have to "save the rainforests".
But what do we "save the rainforests" from? From those people who are
cutting them down, of course, who are mostly local indigenous people
clearing the land so they can grow food to feed their families. The soil in
which "rainforests" grow is rather thin and poorly endowed with nutrients,
so farming that type of soil requires a constant supply of new land for
crops (or the use of chemical fertilizers.sorry, forget that), which means
more trees cleared. So in their campaign to "save the rainforests", the
eco-radicals are essentially telling those poor farmers to just let their
families starve. And that still isn't all there is.
We constantly hear from the ever-so-compassionate left that many people are
denied adequate health care. How much health care could be provided, how
many human lives could be saved, with $4 million? Quite a few. A hospital in
California, however, has been forced by eco-radicals to spend $4 million,
but not saving human lives. Saving flies. Construction of a new hospital was
delayed, and changes were forced to be made which cost $4 million, because
someone found a few Delhi Sand Flies on the construction site. And because
our Environmental Protection Agency decided that the flies were an
endangered species (not endangered enough, if you ask most normal people
routinely bothered by the pesky critters during a hot summer), the hospital
had to redesign their plans to allow for a fly fly-way for the flies to get
to their preferred fly habitat. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Environmentalists have stopped or delayed construction of highway
improvements designed to make the roads safer for human travel, stopped or
delayed the building of schools and flood control projects, among other
construction projects designed to make human life safer or more convenient.
Even the repair of existing dams and flood control levees has been blocked
by eco-radicals invoking the Endangered Species Act. All in the cause of
protecting some creature which most people would probably swat or step on if
given the chance. And the irony of it all is that most scientists agree, a
million years after the human race is dead and gone, the one species of life
which will still be around are the insects, because of their amazing ability
to adapt to hostile and ever-changing environments. Insects, which
environmentalists consider to be so fragile that they are willing to
sacrifice human lives in order to save them. And if this sort of insanity
still isn't enough, there's more.
For centuries, humans living on the edges of civilization have battled
against predatory animals such as wolves and mountain lions. Through heroic
efforts, ranchers in our own west pushed back the wilderness and brought
wild lands under control for the growing of crops and the raising of cattle
to satisfy the world's growing demand for food. Eco-radicals are not happy.
Their solution? Where native wolf populations have been reduced, they
demand - and our politically correct government provides - the introduction
of new wolf populations, which have become the bane of ranchers and farmers
trying to protect their livestock from attack. And livestock isn't the only
thing at risk from environmental extremists who regard human life as
worthless when compared to animals. In New York State, a mining company
erected a fence to protect its workers from a nest of rattlesnakes. They
didn't kill the snakes, you understand, just put up a fence to keep them
away from people. Take down that fence, ordered a court at the urging of
eco-radicals. The fence might induce "psychological stress" in the snake
population. No mention of the "psychological stress" induced in the human
population from getting bitten by a rattlesnake, and one has to wonder what
method of psychoanalysis was used to determine the mental state of those
snakes. The local eco-radicals were reported to be "pleased as punch" with
the ruling. No doubt. Dead humans is a small price to pay. In Montana one
winter night, a rancher heard sounds of animals ravaging his sheep. He fired
a shot into the air to scare away what turned out to be three grizzly bears.
Didn't shoot the bears, just tried to scare them away. Then one massive
grizzly bear turned and attacked the rancher, at which point he shot the
bear to save his own life. He was charged by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service with violating the Endangered Species Act. And convicted. It took
nine years of appeals to get his conviction and fines overturned. If faced
with the same situation, those government bureaucrats and eastern city
dwellers who laud the ESA might be surprised to learn that an enraged
grizzly bear in the wild at night is not quite the cute and cuddly
teddy-bear type of animal often pictured when the Endangered Species Act is
invoked in government propaganda literature. Mountain lions have reappeared,
even in urban areas, because trapping and killing is no longer permitted in
many areas. In California, a woman jogger, mother of two small children, was
attacked and killed by a mountain lion. Authorities have had to remove
mountain lions from downtown Missoula, Montana. A wild coyote was killed by
a car in downtown Boston, and packs of coyotes ruin crops in Georgia. Wild
boars have become a menace in southern Texas. Wandering herds of wild deer
are spreading ticks carrying lyme disease in Connecticut. Alligators are
spreading in Florida, and not long ago a four year old child was eaten by
one. In California, homes are destroyed and human lives endangered by
wildfires, because the homeowners are prohibited from clearing away the dry
brush nearby in which a species of rat makes its home. Trapping of beavers
has been severely restricted in Massachusetts, now beaver dams and beaver
feces are flooding and contaminating many drinking water wells. In Alaska,
eleven people have died in plane crashes during medical evacuations from an
isolated town, and a proposed road, which would give the town its only safe
access to medical care during the long, cold winter, was opposed by
eco-radicals because 10 miles of the road, occupying a mere 85 acres, would
cross a 300,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge.
So how many people in misery does it take to make eco-radicals happy?
Environmentalists are always whining about overpopulation, so if their
policies can help to depopulate the planet, how upset would they really be?
Anyone who thinks that the preceding characterization is too harsh might
consider the following. A Yale University professor: "To feed a starving
child is to exacerbate the world overpopulation problem." Physicians for
Social Responsibility: "Without population control environmental degradation
can only increase. The Malthusian prediction that population growth will
finally be limited by war, pestilence, and famine seems likely to be
realized." The United Nations: "population growth had a strong negative
impact on the environment"; "human numbers with their consumption of
resources and the technologies deployed to supply that consumption, were
often already exceeding carrying-capacity"; "the rate of population growth
in many developing countries were still too high and incompatible with the
goal of achieving sound social and economic development"; "the ultimate,
internationally accepted goal was the stabilization of global population
within the shortest period possible." Eco-radicals simply want a whole lot
fewer humans around.
Our elite media constantly whines about the danger and the alleged power of
the "gun lobby" in our politics. But the people they complain about are just
private individuals exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably
assemble, with the goal of protecting their Second Amendment rights against
government assault. The radical environmental lobby, however, has the power
of national and international governments, the education establishment
brainwashing innocent children, and the media propaganda machine supporting
them. And their goal is to destroy the fruits of civilization and drive
humanity back into a stone-age lifestyle which, in contrast to how it is
often portrayed, was in reality usually nasty, brutish, and short. And that
makes the eco-radicals far more dangerous to humanity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
BEVDAV@worldnet.att.net
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--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
