If you’re reading about it in midtown Manhattan it doesn’t sound real. It sounds like a paranoid delusion that arose from an overheated mental swamp.
People in my neighborhood—which is, midtown Manhattan—wax poetic about old growth forests. They send money to groups that promise to save the spotted owl. They oppose to the mining industry because they know, to a certainty, that mining is dirty.
Visions of the pristine wilderness dance in their heads so they refuse to believe that environmental regulation is destroying the livelihood of our fellow citizens.
Some are pro-life and some are pro-choice. All should be pro-livelihood.
As the liberal denizens of the great metropolis sign checks to environmental groups they indulge their favorite reveries, of polar bears frolicking on ice floes and of mosquitoes feasting on caribou blood.
They know full well that we are the world’s greatest energy importer. And they are strongly opposed to it.
They favor new energy sources, but only as long as they do not damage the perfect harmony of nature.
They so love God’s wilderness that they cannot allow anyone to alter it.
They fought long and hard to save the habitat of the spotted owl, but they thrill to the possibility of putting up more of those bird-killing machines called windmill farms.
Yes, the gentle folk in midtown Manhattan dream of a bygone era before nature had been fouled by human ingenuity and industry. They yearn for days of yore when humans lived in perfect harmony with nature and when their life expectancy was 32.
Therefore, they cannot relate to the conflict that is currently going on between environmental regulators and the citizens of Northern California. And they probably do not understand what Steven Greenhut means when he sagely notes that: the: “modern environmentalist ethos … puts wildlands above humanity.”
The people of Northern California have a problem. Environmental regulators have shut down the mining and forestry industries, so they have only two remaining businesses: farming and ranching.
Those businesses depend on water from four hydroelectric dams are on the Klamath River.
Naturally, this offends the regulators and they now want to destroy the dams. It’s almost as though they woke up one day and decided to take offense at the fact that these people could still make a living.
Greenhut explains the ravages that environmentalists are causing throughout California: “The people in Siskiyou were echoing points I've heard throughout rural California. As they see it, government regulators are pursuing controversial policies – i.e., diverting water from farms to save a bait fish, the Delta smelt, clamping down on carbon dioxide emissions to address global warming even if it means driving food processors out of the Central Valley, demolishing dams to increase a population of fish that isn't endangered – without caring about the costs to rural residents.
“When resource-related jobs leave rural areas, there aren't many other ways for residents to earn a decent living. Society collapses, and poverty expands. There aren't enough tourist-oriented gift shops to keep everyone gainfully employed.”
If it is anything, the environmentalist “ethos” is reactionary and misanthropic. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and their livelihood, and America, even the mass of it that lives on the other side of the Hudson, does not seem to give a damn.
Or else, Americans have been cowed into silence because they are afraid to look like they are pro-pollution.
The environmentalist mind is filled with visions of gurgling brooks and green fields. All of which serve to hide the ugly truth is that its efforts often hurt citizens who are trying to protect their livelihood.
It’s a modern form of human sacrifice. Livelihoods are sacrificed to the gods of Nature because someone got the idea that the only way to assuage their guilt was to scapegoat innocent citizens.
Meanwhile, urban environmentalists confidently expect that someone, somewhere, somehow will provide them with the food and electricity that they demand.
ReplyDeleteIt's especially disturbing that this attitude can often be found among people, some of them quite prominent, in the "technology" industry...typically computer software people who know remarkably little about energy (even electricity) and even less about agriculture, and are convinced that their own industry need not be concerned about the grubby problems affecting what the pejoratively call "industrial-age companies."
See frankly my dear, I do need a dam, and Dancing on the Ruins.
Thanks for linking two of your excellent posts.
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking two of your excellent posts.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder just how much pollution is added thanks to the demolition of damns.
ReplyDeleteI used to belong to a number of environmental groups and the ACLU. The wages of a mis-spent youth and failure to see these people for what they are in most cases. They may seem green on the outside, but for most they are red on the inside.
ReplyDeleteMost of them don't give a whit about the environment. Much as the ACLU does not care a whit about civil rights or they would be defending, like FIRE, those who are challenging much of the Left's dogma.
The Arbor Foundation and Nature's Conservancy are good groups or were the last time I checked.
The vast majority who live in places like Manhattan have never seen nature up close an personal. Life survives on death. These Manhattanites look down on man's role in the circle of life because most of them think they are above it. Just where do they think most of that food they consume comes from?
A question a Manhattanite will never ask themselves is where does all that garbage go they produce? If they know they believe that they have a perfect right to "dump" on the rest of the country.
It is the large metropolitan center that is the true environmental disaster. The vast majority of these attacks on farmers, et al is to cover the insatiable desires of the people who live in these centers at the expense of everyone else. What beside the supposed "cultural" events, that most inhabitants of these center never visit, do these centers really owe their existence?
After growing up in rural Minnesota, and living in Colorado, I was quite amused while in New York, to hear people talking about Central Park as a, "Marvelous bit of Wilderness right here in The City." I do love visiting "The City," but often find folks there are far more parochial than us rubes out here in Flyover Country.
ReplyDeleteCorsair,
ReplyDeleteI had the same feeling the times I had to be in NYC. That and the filth. You do have to laugh until a bit of sadness sets in because for many this is their frame of reference. What about Central Park makes it like the wilderness, the trees?
It does seem that even the NYPD unions believe they should be above the law. What better indicator of a place than those who represent its legal system?
Dennis: Yes, the best times to visit NYC is early spring, or mid fall. The cool air keeps the garbage and urine smell to a minimum. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, the recent gun running and ticket fixing scandals, and the Police Union's response does seem to indicate that they do see themselves as quite above the law. Sad.
AS I said, I do like to visit NY, but I am always glad to leave as well.
A very good lecture
ReplyDelete"Scientific heresy"
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html