Rand and Green

An excerpt from an article emailed to me will have the environmentalists upset and the Ayn Rand believers rejoicing.  A few paragraphs from the article are below.  The link to the whole article is at the end of the post.  Worth reading.  We have been warned of overpopulation, DDT, Alar, and other scares.  The author asks, would you give your money to Bernie Madoff after looking at his track record?  Then why believe the environmentalists after looking at theirs…

Every investment prospectus warns that "past performance is no guarantee of future results." But suppose that an investment professional's record contains nothing but losses, of failed prediction after failed prediction. Who would still entrust that investor with his money?

Yet, in public policy there is one group with a dismal track record that Americans never seem to tire of supporting. We invest heavily in its spurious predictions, suffer devastating losses, and react by investing even more, never seeming to learn from the experience. The group I’m talking about is the environmentalist movement.

Through these distortions of science we are again being harangued to support coercive policies. We are told that our energy consumption is destroying the planet and that we must drastically reduce our carbon emissions immediately. Never mind that energy use is an indispensable component of everything we do, that 85 percent of the world's energy is carbon-based, or that there are no realistic, abundant alternatives available any time soon, and that billions of people are suffering today from lack of energy.

Environmentalism preys on our moral unease and fishes around for doomsday scenarios. If our ever-increasing population or life-enhancing chemicals have not brought about the apocalypse, then it must be our use of fossil fuels that will. Despite the colossal failures of past Green predictions, we buy into the latest doomsday scare because, on some level, we have accepted an undeserved guilt. We lack the moral self-assertiveness to regard our own success as virtuous; we think we deserve punishment.

It is time to stop apologizing for prosperity. We must reject the unwarranted fears spread by Green ideology by rejecting unearned guilt. Instead of meekly accepting condemnation for our capacity to live, we should proudly embrace our unparalleled ability to alter nature for our own benefit as the highest of virtues.

Let’s stop wallowing in Green guilt. It’s time to recapture our Founding Fathers' admiration for the pursuit of each individual's own happiness.

Keith Lockitch,  PhD in physics, is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on science and environmentalism.

Read the whole article at Fusion Magazine.  Beware, it’s a Glenn Beck Site.