To be more accurate, while many believe that environmentalism is about man finding harmony with nature, environmentalism cares more about wiping humanity out of the equation than such a “natural balance.”

Two Aprils ago, writer Robert W. Tracinski noted at a press conference, “Watch the crowds of environmentalists who will gather on the Mall tomorrow [Earth Day], and notice that they have never met a form of technology they liked.”

A man from the anti-business magazine “Mother Jones” smugly retorted that environmentalists don’t dislike technology, but that they want better technology that’s environmentally friendly.

This argument against Tracinski was later published in “Mother Jones,” conveniently omitting his reply.

Tracinski pointed out that environmentalists often champion some form of technology when it’s not economically feasible to use it, but that, once its development becomes commercially practical, those same environmentalists turn against it. He used the example of hydroelectric power.

After all, environmentalists argued for years that, since fossil fuels were malevolent, alternative energies should be used instead, like hydroelectric and wind power.

Hydroelectric power pollutes neither the air nor the water. Yet environmentalists now crusade against it, because it interferes with the breeding of salmon.

Tracinski notes how environmentalists “boast about how they have prevented the construction of hundred of [hydroelectric] dams across the world in the past few years. They have even been successful at having a few existing dams torn down. ... It is the river and the fish that they regard as important, not any benefits to human life.”

Hydroelectric isn’t the only environmentally friendly, alternative energy that the “Greens” fight.

They also have problems with wind power, because it means building windmills that are an “eyesore.” In fact, a wind power plant requires the development of more land than any other sort of power plant -- even oil. Further, some birds die when unfortunately flying into the windmills’ blades.

Environmental activists now reject these technologies because they’ve shown themselves to have an effect on their natural surroundings -- but that’ll never change, because everything in the physical world affects its environment.

It’s only logical that alternative energy sources would alter the environment in some way. Hydroelectric and wind energy don’t exist in a vacuum.

Thus, the environmentalists can either accept the fact that once-environmentally-friendly technology will change the environment, or they can go on rejecting just about every eco-friendly device just because nature’s non-human aspects are so sacred to them that we can’t leave any marks upon it.

That’s why Tracinski said that “Greens” “have never met a form of technology they [genuinely] liked.”

That’s also why environmentalists scoff at the practice of setting up tree farms in which timber companies can grow their own trees, thus reducing their need to cut down forests.

When a Japanese company tried to set up a tree plantation in Hawaii, reported the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, it was environmentalists who vociferously disapproved.

They resented how tree harvesting means changing the land, which the trees are to be planted on, from what it was “naturally” like before. Besides, trees that are planted by humans don’t have the “genuine naturalness” of wild trees and are therefore inferior to the “Greens.”

A similar attitude has been taken toward African elephant farming. Elephants have been disappearing in nations like Kenya, where it’s illegal to kill elephants and take their ivory tusks. But, in countries that have ignored the ivory ban, such as Zimbabwe, the elephant population has grown. How is that?

When ivory is banned, that reduces its supply and thereby raises the free-market price of ivory so high that poaching becomes profitable. In nations where the elephants are “public property,” as in Kenya, no one has a personal stake in saving the elephants, so there’s little incentive to catch poachers.

But in Zimbabwe, since ivory selling is legal, the residents have used the ivory trade to their advantage. Thus, they have successfully farmed their own privately owned elephants in order to later kill them and sell off the ivory. Poaching is less frequent here.

If a poacher succeeds in killing elephants and stealing their ivory from their human owners, then that means less profit fort the human owners.

Thus, the elephant farmers have not only profited, but they are also saving African elephants from extinction, while the ivory ban itself contributes to their long-term demise. Zimbabwe has so many elephants that it has to cull them.

Since the 1970s, April 22 of every year has been celebrated as Earth Day. Nowadays, environmental activists meet on this date to give speeches about how they disapprove of capitalism and industrialization.

To link to Part 2, click here: http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?4f125de5-817d-4198-b4fd-8db70438cf54

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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