Kids believe these exaggerated claims accurately represent reality, thanks to educators, reporters, and scientists who share Stephen Schneider’s views on distorting science for a “better” world.

If environmentalism were about objective science, that why aren’t environmentalists dissociating themselves from Schneider?

Since he publicly admitted that he thought unscientific overstatement was warranted to attract attention to his ideological cause, why aren’t environmentalists embarrassed by him?

Why haven’t Schneider’s remarks made him an outcast in the environmental movement?

Perhaps it’s because Schneider’s rationale has firmly planted itself throughout the movement. As long as this continues, environmentalism will be more of a religion than a science.

The Ayn Rand Institute’s Peter Schwartz observed that, in this respect, the environmentalists’ movement is much like the Creation Scientists’, in that they try to corrupt the purpose of science.

The purpose of science is to discover facts, assess them, and utilize these concretes to form abstract conclusion about the natural world we live in, as objectively as we can. (And journalism is supposed to record this as objectively as possible.)

But radical environmentalists, like Creation Scientists, turn this around. They already have conclusions in mind, before looking at the data, and they try to manipulate the data so that they reach the desired result.

Creation Scientists have already prejudged Genesis to be true, so they work backwards, trying to find scientific data to make their worldview look indisputable.

Similarly, environmental groups have prejudged technology and capitalism to be harmful, so they work backwards, trying to outright contort scientific data to make their worldview look indisputable.

That’s not genuine science.

And that’s why radical environmentalists so often ignore context when they make claims about the dangers of modern technology.

When the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), run by actor Robert Redford, said that its own lab tests on mice proved that humans would develop cancer from eating apples with the residue from the chemical Alar on them, the NRDC neglected to mention how it treated the mice to “honestly” making this finding.

The NRDC injected a dosage of Alar so high into these mice that, for humans to receive the same proportional dosage, they’d have to eat 14 tons of apples a day, every day, for the next 70 years. As Schwartz noted, “[T]he dosage level makes all the difference between safety and danger.”

When ecological activists talk of how human beings spray 1.1 million tons of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the air, containing chlorine that breaks up the ozone layer, they leave out the fact that seawater evaporation alone emits 300 million tons of chlorine into atmosphere annually (with no apocalyptic effect, either).

Why must environmental activists mislead us so? Stephen Schneider said it was for a making “the world a better place,” but what does that mean to environmental activists, exactly?

Certainly not all environmental activists have the exact same political opinions, but some philosophical trends to show up among the movements’ leaders.

Our former Vice President, Al Gore, wrote in his book “Earth in the Balance” of how it’s difficult to choose between human lives and trees when it comes to the manufacture of life-saving drugs: “It seems an easy choice -- sacrifice the tree for a human life -- until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated. ... Suddenly we must confront some tough questions.”

Gore elaborates that, without all these trees, we’d have no oxygen and humans would die anyway. Honestly, though, it’s the young, fast-growing trees we plant that provide oxygen; not the old-growth ones in the forests.

And, seriously, what’s more replaceable -- three beautiful trees, or a single human being with his or her own unique soul and personality? (If Gore thinks it’s hard to choose between plants and people, one wonders what sort of president he would’ve made.)

And here’s a remark from a prestigious environmentalist: “We [environmentalists] are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or ecosystem, to mankind. They have more intrinsic value, more value -- to me -- than another human body, or a billion of them. ... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

To link to Part 3, click here http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?34ffdba4-b0a3-4651-814e-130105acb87e

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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