Moreover, they recognize the very practice of farming as an “unnatural” blight. Cynthia Moses of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project announced, “I would rather see no elephants than elephants being culled.”

Why? Because removing mankind’s intervention from the ecosystem is more important to environmentalists than actually finding practical methods of saving endangered species.

This explains the Friends of the Earth’s animosity toward biotechnology, even though cloning could be used to save many endangered species from extinction, and genetic engineering could restructure these creatures’ genomes so that, when these endangered animals breed, they could pass along differentiated genetic sequences that help the species survive in the long term.

But that’s unacceptable to the group Friends of the Earth, as it still involves humans manipulating nature. (With “Friends” like these, endangered animals don’t need enemies.)

Finally, let’s look at environmentalism’s influence on the executive orders former President Bill Clinton passed before leaving office.

Individuals support environmentalism because they think it means preserving the wilderness for future use by their descendants -- so that, a thousand years from now, people can still go into national parks to camp and hunt. But that too is anathema to “Greens.”

Whenever we walk in the forest, our presence “interferes” with the ecosystem. That’s why, before relinquishing power to G.W. Bush, Clinton satisfied environmentalists when he mandated that 60 million acres of forest land in the Pacific Northwest be classified as a preserve where all human visitation was forbidden.

Those who previously went into the forest to relax no longer could -- the law prevented them from walking inside it and “manipulating” it. That’s “environmental protection.”

What’re the defining characteristics of all these cases? Hydroelectric power, wind power, tree harvesting, elephant farming, animal cloning and taking admiring walks in the forest are the means by which human beings respectfully interact with nature, while adding their own element to the mix.

To radical environmentalism, nature is pristine until any interaction with human beings, as if humans aren’t a part of nature themselves.

Such a mentality explains the ludicrous actions of the officials at Yellowstone National Park, when lightning struck it in 1988, causing a massive fire. The park’s own officials prevented firefighters from extinguishing the blaze, because they considered lightning-induced destruction of our trees to be “natural.”

This wasn’t about letting flames clear some forest underbrush, thus preventing it from igniting larger conflagrations in the future. It was about letting an “all-natural” fire devastate the environment.

One million acres of trees needlessly burned down, at a cost of $150 million to taxpayers. Yellowstone’s chief naturalist explained to the New York Times, “Fire is a benign rather than a malignant force.”

But if campers had caused that forest fire, he would’ve considered that an irresponsible act on the part of humans. Yet, if lightning starts a forest fire and environmentalists forcibly stop other humans from saving trees, the environmentalists consider themselves to be administering justice for nature.

Thus, when environmental groups tell us that we should donate to their causes, so that they’ll help protect the natural environment for our own use, that’s often a ruse.

A prominent attitude in the environmental movement today is that nature must not be protected for humanity, but merely from humanity.

The idea is that the non-human is intrinsically valuable, while any touch of humanity upon it is devaluing. Radical environmentalism has an unconditional bias against human activity.

It’s less about protecting the ecosystem than it is about obstructing man’s livelihood.

We should reject such a philosophic view. Keeping the air and water clean is good, not because the air and water are deities that deserve our worship, but because so doing serves our own needs.

Individuals have a right to voluntarily spending their own money or raising endangered animals, which they privately own, not because Homo sapiens have some duty to preserve every piddling species, but because people have a right to choose for themselves if they want to invest in helping other animals live, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of anyone else’s life, liberty and property (which environmental regulations often do).

In contrast to environmentalists’ claims, we have no obligation to sacrifice ourselves for nature or to keep out of its affairs. Let us, instead, keep our natural surroundings safe and clean for our own selfish purposes.

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com (If you would like to continue seeing Stuart Hayashi's editorials on this site, please let Hawaii Reporter know at info@hawaiireporter.com)

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