The Post's Push Poll

The Denver Post's online polls often are silly, but one from April 28 is especially ridiculous:

Did you observe Earth Day?
Absolutely - Every day is Earth Day
Yes - Took part, vowed to live greener
Sort of - Accidentally got involved this year
No - Meant to, but didn't
Never - Don't believe in climate change

Of the five responses, the first four imply support for the motives and political goals of Earth Day, while the last response describes a position that no actual person holds.

The Post would be hard pressed to find a single person who does not "believe in climate change." Anyone with at least an elementary education understands that, in the past, the earth's average temperature has alternated between ice ages and warming periods.

The three main issues in contention are these: does global warming pose a significant problem within the coming decades, is modern global warming significantly impacted by human behavior, and what, if anything, should be done about it?

For what it's worth, here's my reply to the Post's poll: "No, because I disagree with the environmentalist movement's bias against human industry and its advocacy of socialistic reforms."

Apocalyptic Environmentalism

Ronald Bailey recently made some interesting comparisons between environmentalism and evangelical Christianity:

Environmentalism arose as a movement just a few years before the Moral Majority, with an end-of-the-world undercurrent that harked back to the millenarian sects of the Second Great Awakening. Green millenarians do not expect a wrathful God to end the corrupt world in a rain of fire; instead, humanity will die by its own gluttonous, polluting hand.

Such apocalyptic visions were limned in Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, which predicted massive cancer epidemics as a result of chemical contamination of the environment. Paul Ehrlich asserted in his 1968 book The Population Bomb that in the 1970s "hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." And the Club of Rome's 1972 report The Limits to Growth announced the imminent, catastrophic depletion of nonrenewable resources. ... The Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." Even the staid New York Times editorial page warned of the human species' "possible extinction." It wasn’t so far from the evangelists' fears of a literal Armageddon, embodied in books like Hal Lindsey's best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth (1970).

Although all those predictions failed, environmentalism still exhibits millenarian tendencies. Former Vice President Al Gore has warned that man-made global warming is producing a climate crisis that might "make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization."

Is it any wonder that evangelicals are turning increasingly green?

Despite environmentalist scare mongering, the Industrial Revolution has been the greatest boon to human beings.

It turns out that humans almost did go extinct once, about 70,000 years ago. Fox reports:

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age. ...

The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. ...

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction?"

What? You mean the whether used to change even when people had a miniscule "carbon footprint?" The difference was that, back then, people had no ability to deal with climate changes.

Anyone who doubts the amazing pro-human consequences of the Industrial Revolution need merely glance at a historical population chart.

It is ironic, but no coincidence, that the same environmentalist movement that warns of human apocalypse laments the causes of the population explosion.

Gore Not Green Enough

As the environmentalist frenzy heightens, even Al Gore finds himself targeted for his un-green ways. A story from Fox reports:

Look out, Al Gore... People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says you are refusing to face one very "inconvenient truth."

On Monday, the animal rights organization launched the campaign offsetalgore.com (conveniently timed for Earth Day) in an attempt to counter the effects that they say the former vice president's meat-laden diet has on Mother Nature.

While reps for Gore had no comment, Pop Tarts confirmed with people who have worked with the ex-veep that he loves his steak and sausage, plus he was notorious for chowing down on the almost all-meat Atkins diet during his run for president.

A recent report published by the United Nations determined that raising animals for food generates about 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined.

Of course, PETA is using green paint to coat its animal-rights agenda. PETA wouldn't approve of eating meat even if it reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But vegetarianism is also very much an environmentalist issue. It is telling that Gore, who has done more than perhaps anyone else to publicize global warming, is now the target of environmentalists.

Ultimately, environmentalism holds that it is a moral crime to be alive as a human being, for living as a human being requires the use of natural resources. If environmentalists succeeded at banning meat, then they would go after modern farming, which has vastly expanded the world's population while lifting much of the world out of poverty, for farming too has an environmental impact. It is no coincidence that some environmentalists yearn for the era when the earth's population of humans was a tiny fraction of what it is today, and humans lived barely above the level of the animals around them.

Let Them Drink Gas

Environmentalism continues to harm and kill people, especially the world's poor. The corn-gas laws have become a significant contributor to higher food prices and a widespread food shortage. Steven Milloy writes:

"When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal. Turkey’s finance minister labeled the use of biofuels as "appalling," according to the paper.

Biofuels have turned out to be a lose-lose-lose proposition. Once touted by the greens and the biofuel industry as being able to reduce the demand for oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels have accomplished neither goal and have no prospect for accomplishing either in the foreseeable future.

The latest research shows that biofuels actually increase greenhouse gas emissions on a total lifecycle basis. Add in that taxpayer-subsidized diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to fuel production has contributed to higher food prices and reduced food supply, and biofuels turn out to be nothing less than a public policy disaster.

Did you get that? The environmentalist corn-gas laws not only hurt the world's poor, but they worsen the environment, at least according to the environmentalists' own standards.

This is not merely an accident; this is the way that socialistic policies work. There are two broad problems inherent in the environmentalists' socialist agenda. First, political controls, by forcibly transferring resources and either banning or mandating certain actions, negate people's ability to apply their personal knowledge to the problems that interest them. Second, political wealth transfers and controls necessarily become mired in special-interest warfare, as various groups vie for the transferred resources and for protectionist legislation. Thus, socialistic measures to "protect" the environment are unlikely to do much regarding the environment, but they are very likely to waste resources and reward the corrupt.

Milloy notes that many environmentalists are doing everything within their power to halt energy production:

As the Sierra Club campaigns to shut down our coal-fired electricity capabilities, the Natural Resources Defense Council campaigns to prevent nuclear power from taking its place. ...

Millions in the developing world have died and continue to do so from the greens' campaign against pesticides such as DDT. Nothing less should be expected from their new campaign that threatens global food and energy production.

So long as environmentalism holds that untouched nature is the moral ideal, the necessary consequence is the sacrifice of people to nature. (Preserving tracts of nature for human enjoyment is a different story.) To the extend that environmentalism puts people first, it becomes something other than environmentalism. I don't much mind "environmentalists for nukes," as Mother Jones calls them, except that such environmentalists tend to fall into old-school, left-wing politics. Those with a sincere interest in environmental issues and free-market capitalism are an unfortunately rare breed.

People Day

As some prepare to celebrate Earth Day on April 22, I look forward to celebrating People Day. Yes, the earth is valuable -- for people. I love the earth -- because I get to live here.

Two great writers recently have taken on environmentalist hysteria.

The first is Vincent Carroll, a major reason why the Rocky Mountain News is the best newspaper in the region. Carroll writes:

In the global trajectory of greenhouse emissions, my conservation is meaningless. Yours is, too. What's more, even yours and mine together -- even combined with the conservation of every American who takes similar action - is not significant, either. ...

[M]ost of the world's inhabitants are still poor. They want electricity; they want mobility. And fulfilling their aspirations is going to boost greenhouse gases to a degree that utterly dwarfs any possible tempering of our own energy appetites.

Environmentalism is largely a religion because it encourages pointless acts to lighten one's guilt for the moral crime of living on earth. Much recycling is a waste of resources (particularly if we take time, the most important human resource, into account). Corn gas has done nothing to fix global warming, though it has contributed to a global food crisis. People spend thousands of extra dollars to drive hybrid cars -- some of which get worse gas mileage than my standard car, and which require more resources to produce. There might as well be an environmentalist Rosary.

Carroll concludes:

If there are environmental heroes among us, they are the scientists and technicians who someday figure out how the world can produce much, much more affordable energy -- which it is going to need -- without adding to greenhouse emissions. In that drama, most of us are fated to be spectators.

Craig Biddle has gone to the next step:

Because Earth Day is intended to further the cause of environmentalism—and because environmentalism is an anti-human ideology -- on April 22, those who care about human life should not celebrate Earth Day; they should celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day. ...

Exploiting the Earth -- using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes -- is a basic requirement of human life. According to environmentalism, however, man should not use nature for his needs; he should keep his hands off “the goods”; he should leave nature alone, come what may.

[I]f the good is nature untouched by man, how is man to live? What is he to eat? What is he to wear? Where is he to reside? How can man do anything his life requires without altering, harming, or destroying some aspect of nature? In order to nourish himself, man must consume meats, vegetables, fruits, and the like. In order to make clothing, he must skin animals, pick cotton, manufacture polyester, and the like. In order to build a house—or even a hut—he must cut down trees, dig up clay, make fires, bake bricks, and so forth. Each and every action man takes to support or sustain his life entails the exploitation of nature. Thus, on the premise of environmentalism, man has no right to exist.

Biddle is criticizing the essence of environmentalism: the view that the earth is intrinsically valuable, apart from the interests of people. Of course, there are self-proclaimed environmentalists who say they want to improve the human condition through better technology. For some environmentalists, this is just a cover, a way to package their statist, anti-human agenda in populist terms. But others seriously think humans should exploit the earth for their own well-being. But the fact that such environmentalists cannot admit to this shows that they are still operating from an essentially religious viewpoint.

Idiot Hour

I enjoyed my Productivity Hour very much. I thought about how much electricity benefits our lives and how the goal should be to produce dramatically more energy, not less.

I was pleased to read the following headline: "Denver hardly plugged into 'Earth Hour'." Downtown "most businesses remained brightly lit during a global effort to dim lights and raise awareness of climate change."

I especially appreciated the way that Denver Post reporter Kieran Nicholson interviewed critics of "Earth Hour." No, wait -- she didn't do that. Instead, she wrote a one-sided story that was basically a propaganda piece for the environmentalist religion. Nicholson presumed that those who refused to cow to this environmentalist nonsense were "operating in the metaphorical dark when it came to Earth Hour." It couldn't possibly be that some Coloradans realize that "Earth Hour" is insanity and intentionally turned on their lights in protest.

"Earth Hour" should have been called Idiot Hour, as the following passages from Nicholson's story illustrate:

Steve Hulsberg, 29, of Aurora... an information technology worker, attended the Denver International Auto Show at the Colorado Convention Center before walking over to the mall to see the lights dim. He's looking to buy a hybrid Ford Escape or Toyota Highlander, he said, in the interest of being "green." ...

Floridians Steven Darby and his son Rutland were spending spring break in Colorado to ski.

At the Hard Rock on Saturday, they were surprised -- but enthusiastic -- when the lights went low.

"I think it's a great concept," Steven Darby said.

It turns out that the Escape gets 22 to 28 miles per gallon, while the Highlander gets 18 to 24 miles per gallon. That's "green?" My non-hybrid car gets better gas mileage than that. But, hey, it's a "hybrid," so who cares about how much gas it actually burns! This is, after all, a cult, not anything that actually has anything to do with the real environment.

And how much energy did the Floridians consume traveling to Colorado? Or eating at a restaurant? Yes, anti-industrial environmentalism is a "great concept," so long as it's limited to an hour of a pleasant spring evening, and we can still sit in a plush, warm restaurant or contemplate gas-guzzling automobiles.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy that the participants of "Earth Hour" are, for the most part, a bunch of hypocrites. If they actually took seriously this nonsense about turning out the lights and not using energy, they would be thoroughly morally corrupt, rather than merely hypocritical.

Update: Someone suggested that critics of "Earth Hour" ought not be so harsh in their condemnations. So I'll grant here that, also for the most part, those who participated in "Earth Hour" (by turning off lights and other "non-essential" appliances) are well-intentioned, in that they want to maintain an industrial society, only one that reduces "greenhouse" emissions. Furthermore, these people can point to evidence (or at least widely purported evidence) that human activity significantly contributes to global warming (despite the fact that global warming is, historically, cyclical).

Nevertheless, I do maintain that pro-industrial participants of "Earth Hour" aren't noticing the implications of turning out the lights. "Earth Hour" suggests that the proper way to deal with global warming is to reduce human consumption of energy. Even if global warming is likely to continue over coming decades, even if it is significantly caused by human activity, and even if it would significantly harm people by century's end -- and in my view each of those propositions is shakier than the last -- the proper solution is not to reduce the production of energy. Reducing the production of energy implies less productivity overall, and fewer life-enhancing goods and services in the U.S. and more poverty globally. Forcibly reducing energy production would impose high human costs and yet fail to seriously address global warming. Such a move would hamper economic advancement, including potential advancements in energy production.

Instead, the proper solution is to allow people to act in an unfettered free market -- rather than in a political arena dominated by special interests and political favoritism -- to discover better ways to use and produce energy. Notably, nuclear power is clean and safe, yet many environmentalists continue to oppose it. I don't know whether nuclear power would win in a market over the coming decades, or whether some other source of energy would prove more effective and economical. But I do know that the political process has brought us such things as corn gas, which is essentially worthless in terms of addressing global warming (but great for enriching special interests and raising food prices). Thus I conclude where I began: the goal should be to produce dramatically more energy, not less.

Productivity Hour

Tonight I'll be celebrating Productivity Hour by enjoying as many electric-powered items as possible. Unfortunately, as The Denver Post reported,

Saturday at 8 p.m., residents of Denver will join environmentally-conscious people around the world in switching off lights and non-essential appliances, to give the Earth's energy resources a break. "Earth Hour," will be observed across six continents, with as many as 370 cities officially pledged to take part.

The event, created by the World Wildlife Fund, asks for volunteers to unplug for for one hour as a symbolic gesture in support of action on climate change.

Nicholas Provenzo points out, "As shown by [a] composite satellite image of the Earth at night, North Korean support for 'Earth Hour'... is near universal and extends throughout the year."

Angry Little ELF

The Rocky Mountain News just reported:

WOODINVILLE, Wash. -- The radical environmental group responsible for the 1998 fires at Vail's Two Elks Lodge apparently has struck again -- in the form of fires at four multimillion-dollar show homes north of Seattle.

The sign -- a white sheet that had the initials of the Earth Liberation Front in scraggly red letters -- mocked claims the luxury homes on the "Street of Dreams" were environmentally friendly, according to video images of the sign aired by KING-TV.

"Built Green? Nope black!" the sign said.

The blazes are suspicious because they were set in multiple places in separate houses, said Chief Rick Eastman of Snohomish County District Seven. ...

No one was hurt in the arson at UW, but its Center for Urban Horticulture was destroyed and rebuilt at a cost of $7 million.

I just can't believe that ELF was responsible for these fires; think of all the air pollution!

Assuming a real connection, though, this shows that, ultimately, environmentalists are not interested in "green" production; they are interested in no production, for any production necessarily involves the use of natural resources.

Sunshine Payola

Now that Peter Blake has taken his retirement package from the Rocky Mountain News, he seems to writing for the paper for free. But, whether or not he's not being paid for his work, his articles remain invaluable. His February 28 article describes the case of a Rick Gilliam, who pushed for mandates for solar power before cashing in on... solar power. Here is the story as Blake tells it:

Amendment 37, an initiative approved by voters in 2004, was designed by renewable-energy advocates. It specified that 10 percent of the power generated by the state's largest utilities had to come from renewable sources by 2015. Most will come from wind, which, though unreliable as a baseload source, is relatively cheap. But solar, although far more expensive, has its advocates, and they must be appeased. The initiative specified that 4 percent of the 10 percent [meaning 4 percent of total energy] be generated by the sun.

The voters chose in 2004, but three years later the legislature was so confident that renewables were popular it decided to kick up their share to 20 percent, by 2020, without a referendum.

Rick Gilliam of Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit environmental group, was the principal author of Amendment 37 and its registered representative. In 2005 and 2006, after Amendment 37 passed, he won major environmental awards.

But in January 2007 he... join[ed] SunEdison of Baltimore as director of Western states policy. SunEdison had just landed a contract from Xcel to build the largest "solar electric farm" in Colorado, near Alamosa. Designed to produce 8.22 megawatts capable of powering 2,600 homes along the Front Range, it cost $60 million. It went online late last year.

In other words, Gilliam is responsible for the forced transfer of wealth to solar-electric producers -- including himself. Neat trick! But this is hardly new: who do you think pushed for the corn-gas laws? Or the mercury-bulb laws? Rent seeking is the second-oldest profession in human history, if not nearly as honorable.

The Negawatt

The "negawatt" is a symptom of the insanity of the environmentalist movement. Indisputable is the fact that energy production has enhanced and prolonged our lives in countless ways. Modern transportation allows us to move ourselves and goods around our towns, nation, and world. Electricity powers our household appliances, factories, offices, lights, computers, medical equipment, and on and on. But the environmentalist movement wishes to subvert human well-being to "unblemished" nature. While many environmentalists reluctantly acquiesce to the use of "alternative" forms of energy, which today almost always costs more, environmentalists most forcefully push for energy reduction. As two environmentalists recently explained for The Denver Post:

Investing in energy efficiency is a better deal for consumers and the environment. As Gov. Bill Ritter has stated, "The cheapest watt of electricity is the watt that isn't consumed at all. It's called the negawatt."

In other words, we are supposed to spend our time and resources, not expanding our production of energy, but contracting it. Rather than produce, we are supposed to reduce. Rather than seek out ways to provide more watts of energy, we are to actively use less. We are to measure our success not by the megawatt by by the "negawatt."

Obviously, people in a free market continually strive to produce more and better products for lower costs, which means finding more efficient means of production. If a factory's owners can produce the same amount of goods in the same amount of time by spending less on energy, then, other things being equal, those owners will freely and happily make the change. If consumers can purchase a lightbulb that works at least as well but costs less to operate without causing other problems, producers will be able to persuade consumers to act in their own interests. Politicians need not hold a gun to people's heads or otherwise threaten force to get people to do things that are efficient in the full sense of the term, which accounts for preferences and time as well as energy use. Economic efficiency often entails energy efficiency, which properly means that an expanding pool of energy becomes available for other uses.

Yet the environmentalists exuberantly call for the threat and use of physical force to change people's behaviors. They call for "renewable" energy mandates (but for bans on nuclear power), mandates for bulbs that some people don't like and fear are toxic, forced wealth transfers for corn gas, and so on. Environmentalists measure "efficiency" in terms of restricting human use of natural resources, and they generally ignore the most important natural resources: human life and time.

As a release from the Ayn Rand Institute points out, environmentalists are becoming more brazen in their demands to impose economic controls:

Many people are calling for drastic political action to cope with climate change. But the authors of a new book, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, go much further, claiming that global warming can be effectively dealt with only by "an authoritarian form of government."

Environmentalists argue that humans are the primary cause of global warming and, absent a wide-scale political take-over of the economy, global warming will advance until it causes catastrophic problems. Yet the degree of human involvement in warming and the magnitude of future problems are matters of politically-motivated guess work. To reach their alarmist conclusions, environmentalists pretend to predict not only the weather but the stock market -- for a century into the future.

Even assuming the environmentalist case about carbon dioxide and the future consequences of global warming, the further assumption -- that this problem requires expansive political force in the economy -- is hardly warranted. Indeed, it is only an unfettered free market that could ably handle the potential problems of warming while ensuring the maximum advancement of human life.

Consider just two recent news reports. Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that "the technology needed for collecting and storing [sunlight] is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially" over the coming decades. If this is true, then the best thing the government could to is to return to its proper function of protecting property rights and freedom of production. Maybe solar energy won't turn out to be the best way to go. Maybe it will be some sort of nuclear power, or even something not yet invented. But threatening to send in the storm troopers to non-authorized production plants and throw people in jail for declining to subsidize the projects favored by special-interest groups is hardly the way to go, though it is the way favored by the typical environmentalist.

Other scientists think that they can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If global warming actually worsened over the coming decades and actually started to cause the sorts of wide-scale catastrophes that environmentalists scream about, then many people would be quite willing to spend a bit extra on fuel or even voluntarily contribute to carbon-dioxide removal factories.

But the simple fact is that today's politicians do not know what the future climate holds or what the best response to any change would be. Nor are their political aspirations typically in consonance with such lofty concerns. What is certain is that subjecting people to political force wastes resources (in the full, economic sense of the term) and prevents people from applying the full force of their minds to the problem of improving methods of production and adapting to changing circumstances of all varieties.

Straw Men in Warm Phone Booths

Colorado State Representative Kevin Lundberg said that Governor Bill Ritter's Climate Action Plan is "predicated on junk science," according to The Denver Post.

It would be somewhat easier to take Lundberg's pronouncements about science seriously had he not also claimed that "most of our laws" have a "religious foundation."

Nevertheless, the environmentalist response is no more persuasive. The Post continues:

Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and one of the plan's authors, said the carbon dioxide/global warming connection is widely accepted as scientific fact.

"You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth," he said.

Martin has created a straw man. Nobody disputes "climate change." Everybody grants that the earth's climate has long cycled between warm and cool periods. Nor does anybody doubt a "connection" between carbon dioxide and warming. However, one point in serious dispute is whether increased carbon dioxide causes or follows warming. Another point in serious dispute it to what degree industrialization has contributed to modern warming.

However, even if Martin were correct that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming and that the trend will eventually generate serious problems, his "solution" -- to further socialize the economy -- is hardly defensible (though it's terrific if you're a special-interest group looking to line your pockets with tax dollars and political favoritism). The best way to enable people to cope with nature, and to promote the sorts of technological innovations that will eventually create serious alternatives in energy production, is to achieve a free market.

Fees for Bags

I expressly ask for plastic bags at stores because my wife and I reuse them to clean the kitty box and to line our trash cans. I even have particular uses for particular bags from different stores. I do, however, joyfully throw these bags in the trash whenever they become punctured. Thank goodness I don't live in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News recently reported:

Paper or plastic?

It really doesn't matter because either one might cost you a dime more under a proposal making the rounds at Denver City Hall.

An organization called BetterBagsColorado is lobbying the City Council for legislation to charge grocery store shoppers 10 cents for every plastic or paper bag they use to carry their goodies home.

The proposal, which would affect supermarkets with annual revenues of $2 million or more, is intended to help protect the environment by reducing the plastic and paper bags that end up in landfills.

First, there's a group called BetterBagsColorado? Deborah Hart of BetterBagsColorado told the News, "The only way you're going to change your behavior, really, is to have a little ouch at the checkout because you get enough ouches and you'll make a new habit out of it."

The article sensibly continues:

But Keith Christman, senior director of packaging for Progressive Bag Affiliates, a trade organization that represents manufacturers and recyclers of plastic bags, said such fees only make people buy more plastic trash bags or sandwich bags.

"We know from studies that we've done that 92 percent of consumers report that they reuse their plastic bags for things like disposing of waste around their house, litter bags in their cars, picking up after their pets and taking their lunch to work," he said.

The paper also lists other regions that have banned or restricted plastic grocery bags: 80 British cities, San Francisco, Melbourne, Ireland, China, and Bangladesh.

God forbid that grocers and their customers be able to decide on bag policy without political intervention.

This example proves once again that environmentalists consistently ignore the most important resource: human time. Often I swing by the grocery store unexpectedly or purchase many items I hadn't planned to buy. If the policy spreads, will I really have to keep bags on hand, just in case? Will I really have to make en extra effort to purchase other plastic bags for my needs, or figure out how to do without? Even though the local grocery store promises to recycle plastic bags (though I'm not sure how effective that is), I don't collect punctured bags for recycling simply because I have better things to do with my time. But, for environmentalists, no amount of wasted human time matters in the context of a miniscule contributor to landfills and global warming. Call it death by a thousand-thousand "ouches."