The Earth-Day Deception

The environmentalist ideology has gained widespread acceptance only by disguising its goal.

Earth Day is an appropriate occasion to examine what environmentalism actually stands for.

It is a movement that has become entrenched in our culture through an insidious misrepresentation. It depicts itself as a salutary force, as a kind of global sanitation department, with the non-controversial goal of cleaning up the dirt in our air and the pollutants in our water. It is regarded as a force intended to promote human welfare. When environmentalists talk about protecting the planet, it is widely assumed that what “benefits” the planet benefits man.

This is fatally false assumption.

The environmentalist ideology is not motivated by a desire to improve man’s life. To quote from my article “The Philosophy of Privation” (in Ayn Rand’s book Return of the Primitive):

“If one examines the conflicts between the interests of man and the ‘interests’ of nature, it becomes clear that the former are invariably sacrificed to the latter by environmentalists. Whenever there is a hydroelectric dam to be built, it is the welfare of the snail darter or the Chinook salmon that is inviolate, and the welfare of man that is dispensable. Whenever there is a choice between cutting down trees for human use and leaving them in place for the spotted owl, it is the bird’s home that environmentalists save and human habitation that goes unbuilt. . . . The most beneficial projects, from housing developments to science observatories, are halted if there is any danger to some piddling species.”

When environmentalists discuss the alleged dangers of industrialization—from draining swamps (or “wetlands”) and clearing jungles to mining for coal and drilling for oil—the demonstrable benefits are not mentioned. The millions of people whose lives are enhanced, or even just made possible, by the transformation of wilderness areas into livable space or by the production of abundant, reliable sources of energy, are deemed not worthy of consideration.

The fundamental premise underlying the environmentalist ideology is that nature must remain unchanged as an end in itself—i.e., that nature must be protected not for man, but from man.

And environmentalists are at times open about this, but the public does not take them seriously. For example, when the cancer-fighting drug taxol was discovered years ago, environmentalists opposed its use. It had to be extracted from the Pacific yew tree, which meant a choice had to be made between the life of a tree and the life of a human being. As Al Gore described it in his book Earth in the Balance:

“It seems an easy choice—sacrifice the tree for the human life—until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated. . . . Suddenly we must confront some tough questions.”

David Foreman, founder of the organization Earth First, presents the issue more fundamentally: “Wilderness has the right to exist for its own sake and for the sake of the diversity of the life forms it shelters; we shouldn’t have to justify the existence of the wilderness area by saying, ‘Well, that protects the watershed and it’s a nice place to backpack and hunt, and it’s pretty.’ “

If the wilderness has a “right” to exist for its own sake, however, then man does not. Man survives only by altering nature to satisfy his own needs. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by automatically adapting to the natural surroundings in which he happens to find himself. Man must transform the naturally given into a truly human environment. He must produce the values his life requires—he must grow food and build supermarkets, chop down trees and erect houses, mine ore and design jet planes, isolate organisms and manufacture vaccines. None of these values exist ready-made in nature. Man brings all of them into being only by transmuting his “natural environment.”

But if man lives only by a process of remaking the earth—what is the obvious implication of the environmentalist demand that he renounce this process?