We received this op-ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute, for reasons I don't fully understand. Perhaps they didn't read the site too closely?
I dabbled with Rand when I was a bitter adolescent ... which is the appropriate time to dabble with Rand. When you don't grow out of that phase, well, you go to work for the Institute.
Anyway, I present, for your amusement and edification:
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To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life.
By Michael S. Berliner
Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.
The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power--and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.
Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.
The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheer--at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.
The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.
They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. "The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet .... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.
The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the nonhuman.
To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible.
Dr. Michael S.Berliner is a member of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
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Comments
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crazypat Posted 4:29 am
17 Apr 2006
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kmp Posted 5:42 am
17 Apr 2006
I laughed. Certainly reading this post was more fun than reading Ayn Rand.
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CowsEatGrass Posted 9:34 am
17 Apr 2006
Thanks for clarifying that for me.
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Felipe Posted 12:11 pm
17 Apr 2006
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Chris Schults Posted 2:49 pm
17 Apr 2006
Read this thread for possible definitions from Gristmill members.
Vote for Grist in the 2006 Webby Awards magazine category.
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Felipe Posted 2:54 pm
17 Apr 2006
The article posted above seems to have a definite idea of what environmentalism consists of, and it is critiquing it. Those who have commented seem to disagree with the critique. So, I ask, if environmentalism is not what the article above makes out to be, what is it?
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bookerly Posted 3:53 pm
17 Apr 2006
A good place to start is that Environmentalism is the exact opposite of what the article claims it is...
I only read a little, laughing too hard. I was crazy about Ayn Rand when I was 12, then I turned 13 and grew up a bit.
This would have been great on April 1st, but the laugh is good today too. Thanks Dave!
Patrick
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Felipe Posted 4:17 pm
17 Apr 2006
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amazingdrx Posted 12:01 am
18 Apr 2006
You can find these very same talking points on "libertarian" sites and spewing into the media from think tanks.
Then these talking points are condensed into bumper stickers. Thus the infamous GOP political boast, "They have an essay, we have a bumper sticker".
Why is nuclear power considered acceptable by most people in the southland? This is the process that acomplishes that. Big lies distilled down through the whole process into bumper sticker sloganeering.
Did you know that our opposition to "progress" is murdering millions? That enviros are the disease? Well just visit a few of the think tank and libertarian sites then. And shape up you mass murderers! Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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caniscandida Posted 1:32 am
18 Apr 2006
By the same token, we environmentalists should acknowledge that some of our writers have indeed used language, such as that quoted in the Randist tract, to the effect that "the world would be better off if human beings were to disappear." Now, of course no real environmentalist has ever suggested or ever desired that it would be a good thing to start killing all people. The writers who have resorted to such rhetoric only wish to make very clear that the growth of human population, the development of technology, and the consequent requirement for vast energy sources, have meant danger and doom for countless non-human living beings.
We should disavow any suggestion that we are seeking to kill off the human race. And we should make very clear that one of our principal beliefs is this: that all human beings will truly thrive, when we learn to live in harmony with the world and all other living beings.
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Chris Schults Posted 3:21 am
18 Apr 2006
In short, there are many flavors of environmentalism, which is why I linked you here. But if you must have one definition, I direct you to this one from Merriam-Webster online: "advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment."
Where environmentalists might differ is on how we preserve/improve, and even the why. The Ayn Rand author has hand picked some extreme views, but has even twisted them for his own purposes.
Vote for Grist in the 2006 Webby Awards magazine category.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:37 am
18 Apr 2006
But it's painful, it burns! How about if we only advocate getting rid of Bush voters?
Hehehey. (Sorry, couldn't resist)
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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atreyger Posted 11:45 am
18 Apr 2006
That was great.
Filipe,
"Advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment" is the most appropriate way to define it.
"Advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment for the benefit of the mankind without detriment to the majority of other species" is anthropocentric environmentalism, which is closely aligned with the conservationist approach.
"Advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment for the benefit of all other species" is the Deep Ecology (I have a problem with this name as an ecologist myself as it implies science, which it is not: it is a belief) or biocentric environmentalism, which is closely aligned with the preservationist approach.
I think that Ayn Rand is trying to marginalize all environmentalism by focusing on a few cases of extreme biocentric believers. I can sympathize with some of the biocentrists on a rare rainy day, but most environmentalists and I are quite reasonable and do not want to kill off any people or destroy any property.
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caniscandida Posted 12:54 am
19 Apr 2006
On "conservation": I would have hoped that that were a morally neutral term, with no connotation of anthropocentrism. After all, the word itself suggests a relationship which is left unexplained: conservation for whom?, for what? It is not at all necessary to answer that people are the sole, or primary, party to benefit from conservation.
But if the word does indeed have that connotation, I would be glad to be told so. Is the Sierra Club, for example, better described as a conservationist organization, than an environmentalist one? They are a leading environmental-activist group, of course. But then again, true to their founders' anthropocentric vision, "wilderness is for us human beings to enjoy," their magazine always has a large section advertising all sorts of out-doorsy recreational vacations in many parts of the world. (I am a member, but have no desire whatsoever to go on one of those trips.)
On "Deep Ecology": I think you mischaracterize it by identifying its beneficiaries as "all other species." To the exclusion of human beings? No, that is not what Deep Ecology is. Human beings definitely have a place in the biosphere, though not always first place.
From the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, s.v. Deep Ecology: "an environmental movement with a philosophical core founded and given its name in 1973 by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. It combines practical prescriptions with normative principles. The philosophical core of Deep Ecology is called ecosophy, from the Greek words for 'household' and 'wisdom'. Ecosophy is the wisdom of living in harmony with what is one's household in the broadest sense, that is, nature. Fundamentally, a holistic view of nature is implied: even the boundary between a person and everything else is of no ultimate significance -- all is a seamless whole. Natural things other than human beings have a value in themselves, and are sometimes worth more than human beings or the things valued by human beings. / A precursor of Deep Ecology was Aldo Leopold, author of The Conservation Ethic 1933 [!] and Sand County Almanac 1949."
I am not sure I understand what "Natural things" means in the second-to-last sentence: deserts?; glaciers?; forests? It is not easy to compare their value to that of human beings. Same for the denial of an ultimately meaningful "boundary" between human beings and "everything else," though I suspect that is just a matter of semantics. Otherwise, this strikes me as a decent humanistic approach to the environment which I find very attractive.
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atreyger Posted 2:22 am
19 Apr 2006
The reason that I think that Deep Ecologists are mostly for other species is due to their rhetoric, which is frequently anti-human in nature. I often sympathize with this idea: 'how nice it would be if there were a lot less people in the world'. But I do not sympathize with some of the examples of anti-social behavior, where the radical organizations conduct damage to property. These people are extreme examples of this philosophy.
I think there are better ways of affecting change than alienating a cause from the mainstream.
I also think that the mainstream is not ready for the Deep Ecologist perspective, we would have to live much, much closer to nature as a whole in order to get there. That is not going to happen when we still live in cities and are passengers to the market economy.
I think conservation is a very important concept, and I do think that the majority of people understand it to be for humans. Whether or not that is true is more of a rhetorical question, since humans have detrimental effect on species, which they perceive to be harmful but in actuality may be beneficial.
I think that in general what is 'good' for humans is going to be good for the environment. We just need to figure out what is 'good' for humans and how we convince others what it is, even though we ourselves aren't always convinced. Therein, in my opinion, lies the movement's major problem.
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Minkler Posted 10:41 am
19 Apr 2006
I'll briefly explain how I can be both pro-Rand (with some reservations), and pro-environment (also with some reservations). What the Rand Institute's posting completely misses is that human beings absolutely rely on the earth and it's eco-systems. All of the unlimited human genius in the world cannot remove our dependence on the environment. I personally believe in the intrinsic value of the natural environment to a certain extent. But even if you don't, you can't ignore the fact that humans are not closed systems. We are reliant on, and connected to, the natural environment. In order for human beings to be free to achieve their almost unlimited potential, then we had better be interested in protecting the environment that we rely on. If the Rand Institute wants to be pro-human, then they should be pro-environment as well in order to provide the current, and future, generations of humans the opportunity to realize their genius.
This is not to say that the only value I place on the environment is those services that it provides to humans. But to show that even if you hold that view, there is still plenty of incentive to be environmentally responsible. Maybe this is obvious to environmentalists, but some one needs to explain it the Rand Institute rather than laugh them off the blogosphere.
If Dagny Taggart had been aware of the long-term limitations that reckless pollution could impose on the ability of humans to act on their independent rational thought and free will, she would have said... "That metal of yours is brilliant and may save my railroad. But Hank, we cannot subject the communities downstream to those nasty by-products, which would unjustly limit their ability to succeed as you have. Nor can we, in good conscience, allow this factory to foul the air that we all rely on to thrive and create. No Hank, that would make us no different from those that would place restrictions on our abilities to create and succeed. My trains have switched to organic biofuels Hank, now you must green your processes before I'll buy your rail. I refuse to succeed by destroying the ability of others to succeed as well Hank. I prefer outright competition. Now I'm off to the community farmer's market with John, clean it up Hank, then we'll talk."
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caniscandida Posted 1:53 am
20 Apr 2006
For my part, I never read Ayn Rand. From what I have heard and read about her, she seems a blend of Nietzsche, libertarianism, and the materialist compulsion, posing as virtue, to dominate and exploit Nature free of government restriction, typical (stereotypical perhaps?) of many settlers in the Western states. (Settlers in the East did if anything an even better job of exploiting Nature; but at least they tended to retain some respect for government.)
Here is the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, s.v. Rand, Ayn (1905-1982): "American writer of Russian origin. Her so-called philosophy of objectivism condemns altruism and extols selfishness; it strongly condemns injustice, especially in the way the weak exploit the strong (e.g. free-loading, benefiting from social welfare), and extols individual achievement."
Yipes! This is not a woman after my own heart. One wonders what kinds of "individual achievement" are meant: Would, say, those of Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mother Teresa of Calcutta, count? And I am not sure how Dagny Taggart's concern for the folks downstream is consistent with this article.
I cannot help noticing that if the Rand Institute people do indeed accept this harsh denial of the classic social virtues, including altruism and the concern for society's weakest members, then they are at least as destructive of humanity as any of the extreme biocentric environmentalists.
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atreyger Posted 1:58 am
20 Apr 2006
It's hard to get through to either of the extremist camps. But those are the loudest ones, and influence the flock in between the two camps on the issues that strike close to home.
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