From Easter to Earth Day: The Seamless Transition
by Andrew Bissell
April 22 marked the 35th occasion of a holiday where we are traditionally scolded for our material pursuits and comforts. It is appropriate that Earth Day falls in April, soon after Easter, since it allows us a seamless transition from one religious period of self-abnegation to another.
Environmentalism resembles religion in such irrational philosophical ideas as “the intrinsic value of nature” and the benevolent “Mother Nature.” Far from being the exclusive domain of “extremist” environmentalist groups, these concepts are part and parcel of mainstream environmentalist thought. In fact, it is mainstream environmentalist groups that have achieved the greatest success in implementing these ideas, with disastrous effects on human populations.
One of their most significant — and tragic — successes is the campaign against DDT. Environmentalists have been so successful in shaping public opinion that DDT is now almost universally reviled in America. Very few have heard of its potential to save countless lives by killing and repelling the mosquitoes that serve as a vector for malaria. The National Academy of Sciences would estimate that, in the two decades after its invention in the late 1930s, “DDT prevented 500 million human deaths.” The notorious pesticide earned its creator the 1948 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Then Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, in which she argued that DDT was accumulating in the food chain and thinning the eggshells of songbirds. While Carson’s allegations that DDT poses a carcinogenic hazard to humans have been discredited, mainstream groups like the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund have nevertheless pursued outright global bans of the chemical, seeking to bar even such regulated uses as spraying dwelling spaces, which is less harmful to the environment. Predictably, malaria and its casualties have gradually resurged: since the EPA banned DDT in 1972, an estimated 80 million people have died from largely avoidable infections.
Make no mistake, this is not a happy tale of some noble idealists chaining themselves to trees or slapping bumper stickers on their Volvos to protest the loss of their favorite flying creatures. It is the sad story of a decades-long practice of sacrificing human lives — millions of them — to save birds. Only the most virulent anti-man philosophy could praise such an outcome.
Concern for human welfare generally ranks low on the environmentalist totem pole. Take, for example, the concept of nature’s “intrinsic value.” As David M. Graber, a research biologist with the National Park Service, put it in a Los Angeles Times book review, “We are not interested in the utility of a particular species or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value — to me — than another human body, or a billion of them.” This morality is explicitly hostile to man’s survival and prosperity; after all, every action that advances human life necessarily entails altering the natural status quo. Exactly why ecosystems have value independent of man — or any other valuing agent — is never explained. When challenged on the issue, environmentalists usually repair to vague, mystical, or intuitive explanations of their greatness.
Another silly green notion is “Mother Nature,” the idea that the Earth is some kind of verdant garden that has provided man, even in pre-agricultural times, with an abundance of everything he needs to survive. Of course, we need air to breathe and clean water to drink, but our “mother” has a pretty sorry record of providing just about everything else we need to live with some comfort as rational human beings, as opposed to jungle brutes. Under her generous care, an individual was lucky to live to thirty and not succumb to starvation, disease, or the elements. With a mother like that, no wonder we moved out of the house.
So forget the guilt and self-sacrifice demanded of you by environmentalist philosophy. Instead, celebrate the fact that since the first Earth Day in 1970, our air and water have become cleaner and our forests more abundant, even as we added to our prosperity. Here’s to another 34 years of environmentalist doomsaying and material progress.
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