Objectivism and Environmentalism

The broad scientific consensus is like the broad religious consensus. Sure, if you look at the population of the earth, lots of people believe in a god, so you can claim there is a religious consensus. But they aren't actually in agreement on any of the details. To call that a consensus is misleading. The intent is to suggest actual widespread agreement so that those who don't believe are viewed as a minority. It's an argument by authority, which is not a valid argument. But even ignoring that, the authority is a misrepresentation. The disagreements among religious people, even those who claim to share a religion, shatter the illusion of certainty and broad agreement.

Similarly, those who preach man-made global warming have massive disagreements. The climate models all disagree with each other (and disagree with reality). The scientific details, like forcing factors, feedback effects, sensitivities, etc., are anything but settled. The "consensus" is not in agreement on these details, nor in their predictions of the effects. Not only is their disagreement, but conclusions are constantly changing. The lack of warming in the last decade and a half has created a new set of beliefs that attempt to explain it, for instance. The only constant throughout is the belief that the government must immediately take control and suppress economic activity/production. Even here the method and degree of that suppression lacks consensus. Should we go back to 1990 production levels? 1900 production levels? 900 AD production levels? And of course this "solution" was the same solution offered 4 decades ago when the consensus thought global cooling was the problem. If you're looking to wield a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Post 101

Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 11:36am

Very well said, Joe.

Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 1:44pm

Why does environmentalism have such a bad name in objectivism?

Sure we have those 'less than intelligent humans' (I promised myself not to swear even if I get angry ;) who have no clue how to protect the environment, but throw it to the wolves because of some fanatics?

Our environment is what sustains us, makes life possible (and as a misanthrope I find myself surprised to defend human life here), makes business possible (where else would we get our raw materials), so I'd think that objectivists would pride themselves on protecting that what makes them prosper. Nada: environmentalism per se is equated with treehuggers is equated with those 'less than...' at these waste-of-my-money-summits is equated with bad.

Nobody equates capitalism with destruction because someone is building a huge bubble in Peking and lets them pay for fresh air, or creates a whole industry of treehuggers who waste money on buying burned down forests to replant them instead of buying the 10.000-year-old forests before they are destroyed. Nobody equates the virtue of selfishness with the Lee Hunsackers of this world. Yet environmentalism is almost automatically equated with carbon-tax, and selling carbon certificates (which would be capitalism - right), or destruction of industry cause nobody seems to care that I don't want to glow in the dark after a swim in the river. We still cannot eat certain wild mushrooms or wild boars (no loss there for a vegetarian) here in Germany because of Tschernobyl - three countries over!

When some 'less than prudent person' cuts down my 200-year-old tree I get a paltry few Euros as compensation, that some paper-factory would have paid for the wood it would have yielded and nobody seems to care that it takes another 200 years until I can again sit in the shade of such a tree and watch the sunlight sparkle in it's leaves.

So yes, we have those 'less than...' - no surprise there when morals and government go hand in hand - but that's certainly not all environmentalism is. Therefor I'm still a treehugger, and selfish and a capitalist and don't you dare kick my tree or I'll kick you right back :P

Our environment is worth fighting for as much as selfishness, capitalism or objectivism - not just because it sustains us, but also because it is beautiful.

VSD

who understands that there are many tricky issues to environmentalism: ownership, regulation, value, segregation, what-not - but all of it needs to be considered, not only those spouting rhetoric on both sides ...

(Edited by Vera S. Doerr on 5/15, 1:55pm)

Post 103

Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 4:25pm

Vera,

Why does environmentalism have such a bad name in objectivism?

That's a good question and deserving of a serious answer. I'll give it a go and perhaps others can chime in where I miss something.

Here, I'll just deal with the use of environmentalism as a tool to move towards a centralized control of society by an elite - a powerful mechanism, that if unstopped, will lead to establishing tyranny all by itself.

There is another very different group who use environmentalism to express hatred for technology and change and even man himself. I'll leave the dynamics of that portion of the movement for another post.

The great struggle between the types of societies that will decide how people will associate with one another is between those who want to be in control and those who believe we should all be equal as political peers. The latter is newly arrived at evolution in how we might structure society, and requires a more complex approach and is really a product of discovering economic principles while starting to define rights of individuals. The older model, "I will control, and you will obey," has a much longer history and its basic principle is nothing more than the use of political control to take from those with less ability to protect themselves.

The first major evolution in the rule of force type of society was in using morality. Convince the serfs that it is in their moral duty to submit and it will result in much more efficient and effective redistribution from their pockets to the rulers coffers. The span of control of people with whips is very small - maybe 1 overseer per 5 slaves? Until much of the machinery to support slavery can be institutionalized and given some sort of moral justification which motivationally disarms the slaves, it remains expensive to squeeze value out of slave labor.

Skip forward past ancient Sultans, Pharohs, Tribal Chiefs and so on till you get to Marx and Socialism. Here was the first truely effective use of psuedo-science to explain mankind, society, history, and economics in ways that made altruism seem fully compatible with an elite holding control over the masses.

I apologize for this simplistic and hopefully not too condescending an approach to getting to my point. And that point being that fraud was being implimented at a new level. When the Pharohs claimed to be Sun Gods and have divine rights, they were engaging in a fraud for achieving gains from a false moral basis. But they hadn't fully exploited man's rational nature by twisting reason around to reexplain everything as an element of their pseudo-science that left everyone but that tiny elite as either useful idiots who believing the nonsense helped them spread it - unwitting allies. Or just those who seeing everyone else going along, went along.

This mechanism, because it counts on, and is made out of lies, has a much shorter shelf-life than the truth. And it requires frequent repackaging to keep it in acceptance. The Progressives have become geniuses at this. They pick those areas that, for the most part, can't be argued with when cast as goals. Who doesn't want clean air? Who doesn't want clean water? They have refined the areas from which they construct their campaigns - things with strong emotional appeal, things with near univeral acceptance as core values (like clean air, like health, like children's well being, like an end to oppression, etc.) Then they generate three things that act like a catalyst: Looming dangers, enemies, and those to saved/rewarded. The practice followed is to talk about the universal values (clean air, for example), then to posit great dangers to the values (like pollution that will kill of the forests and leave us without air to breath), then to do the Identity-politics work which is to dichotomize society into victims and enemies (the common man versus corporate greed and the 1%'s for example).

All of that would be meaningless without having a specific means of transforming societies rules and structures because that is the real goal. To increase control over others you need to pass regulations, impose taxes, create agencies, etc. And that is the legislation and I refer to most of this legislation as Trojan Horse legislation. It gets dressed up on the outside as something like, "The Clean Air Act" and promises to avert all the dangers (even though they were made up or massively exaggerated or better handled with free market mechanisms), and it will reward croneys or one or more identity group (because Progressives move towards their transformation by building support groups and dependency groups and marginalizing political opponents). And it will promise to restrain or get even with the made-up enemies. Without the political melodrama of victims and enemies the various deviations from the facts would be noticed more easily and reduce their effectiveness and the velocity of change. A highly fractured, emotional, partisan political environment is one of the subgoals.

To ride on this emotionally driven, moral high-horse is best done by making a religion (or multiple religions) out of the broader causes. Save the planet is one such religious crusade. Again, it is made possible by choosing a value-claim that is universal - protect the resources that our survival requires, clean air and water, etc. But it is false because it isn't about achieving those values. It is about the moral justification of tranforming society into one that shifts more and more control to elites - more slave owner and slave, less free men living as peers.

What would make this whole thing impossible to sort out would be a failure to recognize that they pulled one of the first switches in their implied meaning of "value" - they conflated individual based meaning of value with a value that has no such basis. The best way to explain this is to point out that we will never solve a conflict between what the snail darter who is now living in some Arkansas lake needs (what we might imply is of value to it) and what the people of that region need and value for their lives. We must be the standard of value - our lives as humans. We have to place the snail darter's existence into our frame of reference for valuing. But we are capable of intellectual errors, and we can have different individual goals that will give even logical values differing priorities from one person to another. So, even if we take the fish out of being a whole different source of valuation, how do we resolve the conflicts between people? The environmental elites don't want us to think about that, because it gives to much of a hint that what an individual values might be of importance. Instead they claim it can't be resolved; class warfare, social injustice, income equality, and other pressing social dynamics make it necessary to have it decided by PC elites and they promise there is a utopia at the end of that path.

What they are trying to get rid of is any awareness of the remarkable discovery of the earliest free market economists - that an invisible hand will indeed resolve conflicts over resources, and will end up preserving those resources that are most valued. (Notice that you need to pay attention to that word "valued" - because it implies "valued by whom?"). The elites want to trick everyone into thinking that there is a PC valuation, that they the elites understand best, and it is one that we should all value, and that their scheme will protect. All we have to do is give up a bit of liberty, but don't worry, it is just in this one area where we are in such great danger, have evil enemies, and share a common value.

You can't focus on a tree and that it is a thing of beauty and of value and go from there to saying people must forgo individual rights, liberty, property rights, free association and the logic of the value of all those things because otherwise the tree will be lost.

At the very root of this (no pun intended) is that the tree should be protected by people valuing its beauty and forming the free associations that their liberty provides in ways that promote that which is beautiful. The alternative, the path the Progressives promote, is that an elite will decide what is of value and force those associations. And they will succeed in eliminating every tiny vestage of freedom, given enough time, by people being willing to pull their Trojan Horses inside the gates.
------------------

In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carson was published. The book cataloged the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effects on ecology or human health. The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.[29] The resulting public concern led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 which subsequently banned the agricultural use of DDT in the US in 1972. [from Wikipedia]

Here is an example where false information on the dangers of DDT led to it being banned and as a result of using the elite projections of doom used to generate collectivist methods of control which caused massive harm - the deaths of hundreds of thousands over the years to insect vectored diseases and starvation from the reduced crops due to less effective agricultural insect control (massive harm should be expected when the free market is pre-empted, particularly in areas directly related to health and food production.) What the Progressives really achieve had nothing to do with DDT, but with establishing the 'right' to use the EPA to control industry according to the dictates of an elite in Washington.

Post 104

Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 5:30pm

It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of pollution is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.

[Ayn Rand, The Objectivist/The Left: Old and New, February, 1970]

----

The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today’s mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred—many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end.

[Ayn Rand, The Anti-Industrial Revolution, a lecture given at Ford Hall, November, 1970 and then printed in The Objectivist]

Both quotes from Ayn Rand first saw print as articles in The Objectivist in 1970, and then in The New Left (a 1995 publication of some of her essays written in the 60's and 70's), and then again as an expanded set of essays, entitled Return of the Primitive (1999).

I can't recommend either article too highly. Unlike these two quotes sitting here all alone, read in the context of their articles they follow as the logical conclusions of powerful arguments.

It isn't that anyone is arguing for dirty air or dirty water or the destruction of natural beauty. It isn't just that free enterprise is the best means to attain those ends. It isn't just that advancing techology holds the best promise of a clean enviroment at the least cost. It isn't that the means the Progressives push won't work to achieve those ends. It isn't just that most of the environmentalists claims are built of lies and bad statistics. It is that they never meant environmentalism to be anything but a more effective leash they could get people to fasten about their own necks.

Post 105

Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 8:12pm

I am a wildlife photographer as a hobby, I have also been a hunter, camper and survivalist camper. In my own way I AM an environmentalist AND a capitalist. I VOLUNTARILY give money to ducks unlimited. Why? Because they take that money and BUY crappy marshlands that not many people want but also happens to be very important as a wetlands area to ducks, geese and all manner of shorebirds and countless other flora and fauna. It is purely voluntary association AS ALL ways of people dealing with one another should be. Green peace on the other hand can go f#%k themselves as they are an ecoterrorist organization.

Post 106

Friday, May 16, 2014 - 2:33am

wow - lots to think about ... thanx to all for the serious answer :)

I'll try to answer piece by piece ...

Here, I'll just deal with the use of environmentalism as a tool to move towards a centralized control of society by an elite - a powerful mechanism, that if unstopped, will lead to establishing tyranny all by itself...

reclaim that tool for capitalism and oppose centralized control and tyranny, not environmentalism

There is another very different group who use environmentalism to express hatred for technology and change and even man himself. I'll leave the dynamics of that portion of the movement for another post...

reclamation project two: use environmentalism to promote technology, promote the evolution of man herself - puny pun intended ;)

The first major evolution in the rule of force type of society was in using morality. Convince the serfs that it is in their moral duty to submit and it will result in much more efficient and effective redistribution from their pockets to the rulers coffers...

that's what I meant with morals and government going hand in hand - which is also why our society will not change in the foreseeable future: they (the sheeple) actually like it that way

Skip forward past ancient Sultans, Pharohs, Tribal Chiefs and so on till you get to Marx and Socialism. Here was the first truely effective use of psuedo-science to explain mankind, society, history, and economics in ways that made altruism seem fully compatible with an elite holding control over the masses...

gladly skipped - we're on the same page there ... and I understand the point that environmentalism's bad name started there ...

I apologize for this simplistic and hopefully not too condescending an approach to getting to my point. And that point being that fraud was being implimented at a new level. When the Pharohs claimed to be Sun Gods and have divine rights, they were engaging in a fraud for achieving gains from a false moral basis...

no apologies necessary - I always found that simple equals true and simplistic was just a weasle-word to hide one's truth behind complicated arguing ... just an ironic aside: they were still claiming environment (i.e. the sun) as their source of power ;)

And it requires frequent repackaging to keep it in acceptance... They pick those areas that, for the most part, can't be argued with when cast as goals. Who doesn't want clean air? Who doesn't want clean water? ... Then they generate three things that act like a catalyst: Looming dangers, enemies, and those to saved/rewarded ... (the common man versus corporate greed and the 1%'s for example).

so let's repackage it ourselves: who can create clean air, who can create clean water, who can create life itself to shorten the list ... and put the looming dangers with the crazies where they belong, as it will be that 1% who will save this sorry mess of todays society (maybe we should all stop doing that ;) ... hope I'm not misrepresenting your arguments by shortening the quotes, even though I was indoctrinated with 'never quote out of context' - guess that indoctrination didn't take hold either ;)

And that is the legislation and I refer to most of this legislation as Trojan Horse legislation.

Trojan horses come in many disguises - NSA being one recent example that comes to mind, yet nobody throws out the right to privacy just because the NSA is building up false fears to snoop on us - environment however is left to the horses mouth to come out the horses a... - on the other hand you could call that 'fertilizing' :D

Again, it is made possible by choosing a value-claim that is universal - protect the resources that our survival requires, clean air and water, etc. But it is false because it isn't about achieving those values. It is about the moral justification of tranforming society into one that shifts more and more control to elites - more slave owner and slave, less free men living as peers.

two points here: reclaim the role of protector of resources to make rational use of it - don't claim they don't need protection from the moochers ... if the 1% rational humans are vilified because of their minority let's use the same slander on that 1% 'control-elite'

We must be the standard of value - our lives as humans. We have to place the snail darter's existence into our frame of reference for valuing.

Njet, nada, nein ... well maybe: if you amend it to 'rational humans' I might go along with you - allowing the current 99% of sheeple to make up the 'standard of value' and subjugating environment to that reference, it goes down the drain in 0-flat

But we are capable of intellectual errors, and we can have different individual goals that will give even logical values differing priorities from one person to another ... The environmental elites don't want us to think about that, because it gives to much of a hint that what an individual values might be of importance. Instead they claim it can't be resolved;

fully agreed on the differing logical values for each individual - which btw. is my argument against overpopulation: not just that it is getting crowded and scarce and what-not, but that it makes it that much harder to allow individual valuing on a larger scale - I can value as I wish within my own four walls (actually I can't here in Germany, but let's not get lost in details), but getting out into my garden already subjects me to my neighbors frame of valuing (like that 'less-than-capable-person' last weekend who valued his BBQ grill, but had absolutely no clue how to make a fire without poisoning the whole street) ... Asimov's spacer worlds would be my favorite way to go, of course Solaria being my preferred world, however I'd still feel comfortable enough on Aurora ;) not just space-wise, but also because they used technology to improve their environment

and since when has any rational being ever stopped thinking because those 'elites' wanted us to :D let's resolve those differences instead of ignoring them on 'higher orders' - would show them up as frauds without even trying to ...

What they are trying to get rid of is any awareness of the remarkable discovery of the earliest free market economists - that an invisible hand will indeed resolve conflicts over resources, and will end up preserving those resources that are most valued. (Notice that you need to pay attention to that word "valued" - because it implies "valued by whom?").

exactly: first step allow individual valuing at all, next step allow frame for individual valuing ... if that comes by the invisible hand of free market, so be it - though I am a bit leery of that 'invisible' part as there are too many PC elites and politicians who dabble with that hand (which of course would make free market a contradiction) ... nevertheless I'd make it visible, understood and honored - honor where honor's due :)

You can't focus on a tree and that it is a thing of beauty and of value and go from there to saying people must forgo individual rights, liberty, property rights, free association and the logic of the value of all those things because otherwise the tree will be lost.

I don't ... I am however saying that it is my tree (property) and it is my value (individual right) and I'll protect it any way I want (free (dis)association) - so saying it is just a tree and can be sacrificed at the price of wood at a paper-mill or protected by environmental laws as endangered species are just two sides of the same coin: the valuing of someone else instead of me-myself-and-I ... of course that brings us back to the point above of currently having no frame for individual valuing in a society based on common values

At the very root of this (no pun intended) is that the tree should be protected by people valuing its beauty and forming the free associations that their liberty provides in ways that promote that which is beautiful. The alternative, the path the Progressives promote, is that an elite will decide what is of value and force those associations.

Agreed ... now let's start distributing the trees and other beauties so I can start my own valuing :D

Here is an example where false information on the dangers of DDT led to it being banned and as a result of using the elite projections of doom used to generate collectivist methods of control which caused massive harm -

again: expose the control-freaks and the conflict of valuing in a limited environment - false choices all around and environment is the scapegoat for both ... allow freedom of environment for individual valuing, protect that freedom and the false choices will dissolve ... of course I again agree, that in our very limited planetary environment there's a scarcity of environment for individual valuing and an abundance of false information and hidden agendas ...

It is that they never meant environmentalism to be anything but a more effective leash they could get people to fasten about their own necks.

Agreed again ... however environmentalism is not only what they meant it to be - just as selfishness, capitalism, freedom, is not what they meant it to be ...

I VOLUNTARILY give money to ducks unlimited. Why? Because they take that money and BUY crappy marshlands that not many people want but also happens to be very important as a wetlands area to ducks, geese and all manner of shorebirds and countless other flora and fauna. It is purely voluntary association AS ALL ways of people dealing with one another should be. Green peace on the other hand can go f#%k themselves as they are an ecoterrorist organization.

that's one argument I always have with those 'street-hawkers' trying to sell me dead forests - they start by trying to make me feel guilty for destroying those forests ('your carbon footprint made this picture of a wasteland possible') and then they try to sell me 'shares' in a forest they intend to replant at a 1.000 times the cost of a living growing natural forest ... don't get too close to those stands when I explode ;)

Greenpeace however should be valued on it's individual missions, not some overall 'organisation for eco-terrorism' - there's a lot of individuals in that organisation who only sign up to benefit from their infrastructure and contacts on site to enable worthwhile projects, like buying intact forests and turning them into private eco-preserves - voluntary of course and often with local voluntary support ... not my cup of tea, but it works - as an individualist valuer I prefer to buy my own pieces of land and protect them, so I know the pitfalls such an organisation could help me with (contacts, interpreters, legal counsel, permits, etc.) ... ah well - I'll make do on my own ...

Post 107

Friday, May 16, 2014 - 2:59am

Speaking of DDT when it was first made illegal the people that were using it soon had to be replaced. Why? Because they were used to handling DDT. The other less effective pesticides were so toxic to humans that the pilots and farmers ended up dying or becoming totally disabled. DDT was a stable and relatively safe product to handle with little PPE (personal protective equipment) required.

As a result some of the most fertile land in Africa that had been successfully cultivated was reclaimed and made uninhabitable by the Tsetse fly. Millions dead are the result.

Post 108

Friday, May 16, 2014 - 9:01am

Steve:

Rand saw that one coming back in the 70s, just like she nailed the convergence of the GOP and Democrats in 1960 as competing socialist parties.

It's not even subtle; the environmental/green thing all but exploded in the wake of the visible public collapse of the USSR in 1989. Like rats scurrying from the wreckage floating behind a sinking ship, they glommed onto the environmental issue as a platfrom to attack capiltalism.

1992 Rio Earth Summit: cover of Time magazine = "Rich vs. Poor." Subtle as a gulag. Could all but smell the rats wringing out their soaked life vests. So badly over-run with rats, even a co-founder of GreenPeace left the organization he helped start.

regards,

Fred

Post 109

Friday, May 16, 2014 - 10:23am

Fred,

Rand saw that one coming back in the 70s, just like she nailed the convergence of the GOP and Democrats in 1960 as competing socialist parties.

That was the same thing that struck me. Sometimes it is in re-reading things she wrote many decades ago that I get the strongest appreciation for her genius.

Post 110

Friday, May 16, 2014 - 10:36am