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Environmentalists: What do they really want?

Ross Kaminsky - 5/15/2005

At a recent meeting of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, we heard from a very interesting speaker who is an expert in government environmental policy. He had a line which I'll remember for a long time: "If you think of any modern scientific development or use of material or creation of energy, there is a group out there trying to stop it."

Although they don't say it explicitly, radical environmentalists are fundamentally anti-development, anti-capitalist, and anti-modernity. They find a problem in any piece of information yet never offer a solution other than "Stop".

Even when there's good news, radical environmentalists always seem to find the dark cloud inside the silver lining. The latest example comes from an article in Nature magazine in which the clearly (pun intended) good news of diminishing worldwide air pollution causes the reporter to worry about whether more sunlight hitting the earth could exacerbate global warming.

Not only is there no proof of planetarily consistent warming (some areas get warmer and some get cooler), and not only is it probable that global warming would bring substantial benefits in addition to its potential risks, but even someone who is not a trained scientist could make a scientific argument against the worry about more sunlight: Sunnier days will cause more photosynthesis, allowing plants to convert more carbon dioxide into oxygen and water and decreasing the greenhouse gas concentration which environmentalists argue is responsible for global warming.

The strength of the extreme environmentalist position is that no matter what the news they can always say that progress is bad, capitalists are evil, and that current policies are wrong. In this case, we're either breathing unclean air (their solution: slow down the economy) or facilitating global warming (their solution: slow down the economy).

While this may seem illogical, I've learned that few things are truly illogical. It's just that the listener does not understand the goal of the speaker. There are many people (in fact most people including myself) who care about protecting the environment. But many who identify themselves first and foremost as environmentalists are not primarily motivated by environmental issues but by economic and political ideology.

Radical environmentalists are deeply anti-capitalist. The key to understanding them requires realizing what is cause and what is effect. Namely, their policial and economic views cause their environmental agenda and not vice-versa. Environmentalism is one of the easist-to-sell menus of anti-free-market and anti-prosperity propaganda because so few people can make a coherent argument against "save the trees" or "save the field mouse from extinction." And little dead furry animals often win votes at the expense of jobs and increased standards of living for society, i.e. at the expense of capitalism.

I don't want to get deeply into the arguments here, but the basic flaw people make when responding to environmentalists is that they look for a way to say "we don't need to save the trees or the field mouse" instead of demonstrating how environmentalists' policy choices don't actually accomplish those goals.

Again, keep in mind that they often don't care about their stated goal. It's a straw men intended to create regulation which stops economic progress. But in dealing with public opinion, an emotional argument is often best responded to in a way that is not based in pure economics. We must say "I also care about saving the trees and the field mouse. Given the impressive lack of success you've had in accomplishing those goals, I must assume that you don't actually care about it as much as you claim. And by the way, how much has been spent so far pursuing these goals your way?"

Finally, so that I can leave the doom and gloom to the radicals, I should point out that a few environmentalists who are sincerely interested in the environment (what a novel concept!) are coming around to market-oriented solutions to solve real problems, such as guarded optimism about emissions trading. As I mentioned in a prior posting, some true environmentalists are reconsidering their prior positions realizing that they had negative unintended consequences (like most do-gooder policy suggestions which ignore economics in their analysis.) There may be hope yet....