Ed. Note: This is Part 3 of a six-part series. “America’s Enlightenment Heritage” (Part 1) is here; “Conservation vs. Preservation” (Part 2) is here; “Philosophic Conflict” (Part 4) is here; “The Value of Nature” (Part 5) is here; and “The ‘Ideal’ of Primitivism” (Part 6) is here.
“America’s Enlightenment Heritage” (Part 1) is here; “Inhuman Rights” (Part 3) is here; “Philosophic Conflict” (Part 4) is here; “The Value of Nature” (Part 5) is here; and “The ‘Ideal’ of Primitivism” (Part 6) is here.
“Why is it that any touch of Man upon nature is to be regarded as a violation and desecration? What is the distinctive aspect of human nature that so offends the environmentalists?”
Today, the most consistent expression of environmentalism’s misanthropic view can be found in the so-called “animal rights movement,” which emerged with the publication in 1975 of philosopher Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation. “This book,” Singer wrote, “is about the tyranny of human over non-human animals.” That tyranny amounts to “speciesism,” akin to “racism.” A speciesist, Singer said, “allows the interest of his species to override the greater interest of members of other species.”1 Note the word “greater.”
As fellow philosopher Tom Regan, author of The Case for Animal Rights, put it, “the fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us.”2 Instead, both Singer and Regan hold that all beings with a capacity to feel pleasure and pain have an “inherent value of their own.”
This means, say three animal-rights philosophers at Oxford, that “There can be no rational excuse left for killing animals, be they killed for food, science or sheer personal indulgence.”3 It means: no animal testing of medicines or surgical techniques; no hunting, circuses, or rodeos; no birdcages or dog pens; no leather, no meat, no milk, no eggs—no use of animals, period.
Strict observance of animal rights forbids even direct protection of people and their values from nature’s many predators. For example, in his book Returning to Eden, Michael W. Fox—then a vice-president of the Humane Society—denounced the use of bug sprays and electric “bug roasters” to zap mosquitoes; after all, he said reassuringly, “only a few of the millions you kill would have bitten you.”4
Likewise, in a 1990 fundraising letter to Humane Society members, opposing the federal Animal Damage Control program, Society president John Hoyt denounced “the killing of millions of animals—to protect American agriculture and other resources from damage caused by wildlife. This goal must be changed to one that seeks to limit losses to acceptable levels without killing or injuring wildlife.” [Emphasis in original.]
Losses to people, you see, are “acceptable”; losses to animals are not.
Radical preservationism is now enshrined in major environmental laws—such as the Endangered Species Act, which places minnows and owls above our needs for hydroelectric power and lumber; and wetlands regulations, which set aside mosquito-breeding swamps as inviolate sanctuaries for salamanders.
The federal government’s 1964 Wilderness Act defines a wilderness “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”5 No roads, cabins, camping facilities, campfires, mechanized vehicles of any kind are permitted to sully these virginal expanses. This federal law, environmentalist historian Shabecoff states proudly, “threw the authority of the United States government behind the radical idea that the land and its riches have value even when left undisturbed.”6
But why?
Why is it that any touch of Man upon nature is to be regarded as a violation and desecration? What is the distinctive aspect of human nature that so offends the environmentalists?
As they make clear in virtually every utterance, it is Man’s power to reason, and everything that flows from it: abstract knowledge, science, technology, material wealth, industrial society, the capitalist system.
Why? Because reason is the tool by which Man transforms his environment for his own benefit. Therefore, to environmentalists, rationality is the mark of Cain. In the “natural order” they espouse, we humans are the second-class citizens of the universe—condemned, by our very nature as rational, creative developers, to sit at the back of the bus.
The Great Apple Scare
To define environmentalism is to damn it, which is why many movement spokesmen go to considerable public lengths to cover the naked implications of their core premises with fig leaves of respectability and moderation. One way they do it is to clothe their endless scare campaigns in the ill-fitting garb of science.
Their tactics always follow a familiar pattern. First come declarations of some new ecological “crisis,” based upon the flimsiest of evidence and perversions of the scientific method. Next are mathematical projections of catastrophic consequences stemming from the new danger, extrapolated from ludicrous worst-case scenarios. Finally, the claim is made that “we must do something immediately,” because the predicted consequences—though not provable—are just too horrible to contemplate.
Let me give you just one notorious example that I investigated personally for Reader’s Digest.7
In 1989, one of the nation’s most influential environmentalist groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), panicked America about Alar, a chemical growth agent then used on apples. On CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes program and later on Donahue, the NRDC—with the help of its eminent toxicological consultant, actress Meryl Streep—reported that apples treated with Alar eventually could cause thousands of lifetime cancer cases among today’s preschoolers. This carefully engineered publicity stunt terrified mothers, cost Alar’s manufacturer, Uniroyal, millions, caused over $100 million in losses to apple growers, some of whom were bankrupted—while making a fortune for the NRDC.
The Alar scare was in keeping with the NRDC’s uncompromising position that the presence of pesticide residues on food in any amount—no matter how trivial—constitutes an “intolerable risk” to human health. For example, NRDC’s Lawrie Mott wrote in 1984 that “it may be impossible to define a safe level of pesticide residues in food.”8 Mott told me that the NRDC would ban all such chemicals “no matter how great their benefits are.”9
During the 1970s, initial tests on rodents using Alar and its chemical by-product, UDMH, suggested a cancer risk. But the dose levels in those tests were so absurdly high that the animals were dying of simple poisoning. Nonetheless, the EPA used these poorly designed and monitored tests to try to ban Alar.
But in 1985, the EPA’s own independent Scientific Advisory Panel dismissed the Agency’s findings, throwing out the rodent experiments as scientifically worthless. Stung by the panel’s rejection of its evidence, the EPA retaliated by ordering Uniroyal to start another round of tests. Yet for two years, every test on Alar came back clean. And even at dose levels 35,000 times higher than the highest amount that children might ingest daily, UDMH caused no tumors in rats.
Finally, in desperation, the EPA decided to stack the deck: for a final mouse test, it ordered the laboratory to increase the UDMH dose levels four to eight times higher than independent consultants had already computed was the maximum amount the animals could tolerate. Sure enough, these grossly excessive doses at last generated the tumors that the agency had been looking for—even though 80 percent of the mice were poisoned to death. The EPA then used these deliberately manipulated results to estimate that 45 people in a million “might” get cancer from Alar. It therefore ordered all use of the product to cease.
But while Uniroyal and apple growers suffered, the NRDC prospered.
After its 60 Minutes appearance, the group dashed off a new paperback book on pesticides, titled For Our Kids’ Sake, priced at $6.95 per copy. Then they set up a 900 phone number, priced at $3.00 per call, through which to order the book. At the outset of the scare, the phone number was dutifully published on the front page of USA Today and aired on national TV commercials featuring Streep. When promoted on the Donahue show, over 90,000 copies were sold. The NRDC’s Janet Hathaway proudly told me that during the scare, NRDC phones were ringing off the hook with new members and contributors.10
This is only one of countless phony environmental scares that could be cited. Similar pseudo-scientific nonsense is also peddled over radon in homes, global warming, ozone depletion, electromagnetic fields, and much more.
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About the Author
Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning journalist, editor, lecturer, and novelist who reports on cultural and political issues from the perspective of principled individualism. Over three decades he has established a reputation as a leading critic of environmentalism.
As a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest, Bidinotto authored high-profile investigative reports on environmental issues, crime, and other public controversies—including articles on global warming and the 1989 Alar scare. His Alar article was singled out for editorial praise by Barron’s and by Priorities, the journal of the American Council on Science and Health. He authored a monograph, The Green Machine,and for several years ran a website (“ecoNOT”), both critically examining the environmentalist philosophy and movement.
Bidinotto’s many articles, columns, and reviews also appeared in Success, Writer’s Digest, The Boston Herald, The American Spectator, City Journal, The Freeman, and Reason. He served as the award-winning editor of The New Individualist, a political and cultural magazine, and as editor of publications for the Capital Research Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.
In 2011, Bidinotto began writing political thrillers. HUNTER—the debut novel in his Dylan Hunter series—soared to the top of the Amazon and Wall St. Journal bestseller lists. BAD DEEDS, the first sequel, dramatizes the evils and dangers of environmentalism. A number-one best-selling Audible political thriller, BAD DEEDS was named “Book of the Year” by the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance. Bidinotto’s thrillers are available on Amazon.
Learn more about Robert Bidinotto at his fiction website, “The Vigilante Author” and at his nonfiction blog.