OPINION/COMMENTARY

Pacific Legal Foundation Releases Earth Day List of Top 5 “Human Costs” of Environmental Extremism

Pacific Legal Foundation today released its Earth Day List of Top 5 “Human Costs” of Environmental Extremism, providing factual and legal evidence that inflexible environmental laws and overregulation are dramatically impacting people’s lives and livelihoods every day, often for species protections that are illegal or unnecessary.

The top five human costs of environmental extremism are:

---Separating people from nature.
---Cutting people off from water to give to fish.
---Extinguishing hundreds of thousands of jobs.
---Diminishing the American dream of home ownership, and
---Blocking forest fire prevention that saves lives and homes.

“Organizations with an extreme view of environmental protection have violated the trust of the American people who care about our environment, but are not willing to stand by while human values are disregarded,” said M. David Stirling, Vice President of Pacific Legal Foundation. “This Earth Day, PLF is exposing how inflexible environmental laws and overregulation put species first and people last.”....


Mother Earth movement showing her age

Thursday (April 22) was the 34th annual "Earth Day" observance, and, like other progeny of a decade characterized by Robert Ringer's best-selling "Looking Out for No. 1," it is beginning to show its age.

Gallup's annual Earth Day Poll (was it printed on recycled paper?) found that the environment, which once ranked high on the list of concerns for millions of Americans, now resembles a baseball team that has fallen on hard times.

According to Gallup, environmental issues are next to last on a list of people's concerns, finishing just above race relations. Worse news for tree-huggers, 44 percent of those polled said economic concerns should take precedence over protection of the environment. That figure is up from 23 percent in 2000 and 19 percent in 1990....


Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism

Earth Day (April 22) is traditionally a day for the Left -- a celebration of government's ability to deliver the environmental goods and for threats about the parade of horribles that will descend upon us lest we rededicate ourselves to federal regulators and public land managers. This is unfortunate because it's businessmen -- not bureaucrats or environmental activists -- who deserve most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century and who represent the best hope for a Greener tomorrow.

Indeed, we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for capitalism. Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -- like much of the Third World today -- had no environmental movement to speak of until living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our attention from simply providing for food, shelter, and a reasonable education to higher "quality of life" issues. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be an environmentalist. And people wouldn't be rich without capitalism....


Don't Worry, Be Happy

Scientists tell us the Earth is 4-and-a-half billion years old, give or take a few hours. Earth Day, on the other hand, is 34 years old -- a newcomer in the cosmic scale of things. Yet every April 22, for the past 33 years, impassioned environmentalists come together to warn that our springtime days of spinning blithely through the galaxy are about to end.

Between hacky-sack games, enviro-moralists kick around the imminent apocalypse of global warming, brought on -- they're sure -- by the pollution of human industry and the mindless plunder of our shared heritage. This 34th Earth Day is likely to be no different.

But it ought to be.

Because the underlying scientific debate over climate change has shifted dramatically since last Earth Day. The most recent studies now cast major doubt on global warming itself -- the basis for all the gloom-and-doom predictions.

Specifically, two new arguments have emerged....


Elitist "Environmental Justice" Bad News for Minorities

Environmentalists like playing the race card, but they make a dreadful mistake.

They don't play with a full deck.

"Environmental justice" is a term green activists use to demonize businesses and complain that the government isn't doing enough to help minorities. Their premise is simple: They believe businesses are using political power to unfairly put polluting factories predominately in minority neighborhoods.

The problem: These green groups aren't helping minorities. In fact, the regulations that come as a result of their agenda cause harm.

A clean environment is important, but so are a job and a home. The environmentalist agenda is often pitted against the bread-and-butter issues facing most Americans. Even when green activists invoke compassion for downtrodden minorities, their policies perpetuate poverty....



Earth Day's Anti-Human Agenda

Earth Day dawns on us today, 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....


Our land or theirs?

The warm season approaches, Earth Day comes and goes, and major dailies in the West are advising readers on how to avoid deadly encounters with man-eating lions that might be lurking along suburban trails or near backyard swing sets.

"Jogging or cycling after dusk in the mountains is not advised, as that is near feeding time for the cougars," warns the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Clear low, scrubby vegetation on your property to remove hiding places for cougars, especially around children's play areas," advises the Orange County Register.

The Modesto Bee published the protocol for communicating with a predator that is pondering its lunch. "Running may stimulate a mountain lion's instinct to chase," says the Bee. "Instead, stand and face the animal. Make eye contact."....


Down to Earth Day

Some holidays, such as Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, are a time for reflection. Others, like July 4th and Thanksgiving, are a time for celebration. This year, we ought to add Earth Day to the list of days to celebrate -- but only if we rename it Growth Day.

As in “economic growth.” Believe it or not, nothing’s better at cleaning up the environment and keeping it clean.

Many on the radical left dispute this, of course. Indeed, they fault the industrialized nations for allegedly endangering our planet. Yet the opposite is true. That’s why the major environmentalist movements are all based in Western countries, where people are wealthy enough to be concerned about the world around them -- and have the wherewithal to protect it. Our own country provides a perfect example....


Sustaining People and Planet: The Moral Challenge of the Twenty-first Century

The book of Genesis says human beings were given do- minion over the natural world. Scripture also teaches that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Ps 24:1). Thus, human society’s dominion over the earth is one of stewardship. We have a responsibility to ensure that the earth is managed properly on behalf of its only rightful owner, God. Wasting the earth’s resources is an unquestionable dereliction of our stewardship responsibilities. But this is only one of our obligations to God. Our overarching responsibility is to seek first God’s kingdom (Mt 6:33). In addition to maintaining the earth as good stewards, seeking the kingdom of God includes loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:39), meaning that we must be striving to search for the lost, heal the sick, shelter the homeless, protect the abused, and feed the hungry (Matt. 25:34-46). In the populous and affluent twenty-first century, sometimes being a proper steward of the planet seems to conflict with the command to love our neighbor. Many environmental activists appear to take this conflict as an axiomatic reality. But that is an error. The kingdom of God is never divided against itself. A quick look at environmental topics regarding overpopulation, high-yield farming, and industrial development is enough to demonstrate that it is not God’s call to stewardship and loving our neighbor that create undo strain on the environment, but rather certain activists’ vision of an environmental utopia that amounts to nothing less than erasing most humans from God’s earth....


Celebrate Earth Day!

Once again Earth Day has come around, traditionally a day of baleful prophecies. A better Earth Day activity would be review of the actual environmental record, which will lead to more upbeat activities.

Consider first the state of the air. As reported by the Environmental Protection Agency, aggregate emissions of air pollutants have declined 25 percent since 1970, notwithstanding increases of 40 percent in population, 43 percent in energy use, and 165 percent in real GDP.

Average vehicle emissions are declining ten percent per year. Since 1988 the annual number of days in the U.S. with adverse air-quality indices has declined by about 70 percent. Since 1976 concentrations of the six central air pollutants have declined between 28 and 98 percent....


On the Clean Water Act: Three That Got Away

The Supreme Court flunked a tough test on April 5. Instead of accepting three cases arising under the Clean Water Act, the court walked away from them. It was not the court's finest hour.

What happened? The three cases came from Maryland, Virginia and Michigan. In each of them the fundamental question was the same: Does Congress have dominion over roadside ditches and insignificant wetlands? The high court refused to say yes or no. It clammed up.

The cases were important. By refusing to hear them, the high court encourages the Corps of Engineers to pursue its unrelenting grab for power. The court's laconic orders of April 5 leave unresolved a tangential conflict among the federal circuits. Denial in the Maryland and Virginia cases will leave regrettable 4th Circuit opinions untouched. Denial in the Michigan case will have one highly personal consequence. It means that John Rapanos will go to prison....


Bring In The Clowns

More and more, radical activists are using Americans' dinner plates as launching pads for their agendas. So it should surprise no one that this Thursday's annual Earth Day affair is shaping up to be quite a culinary circus. Food scare artisans, animal liberation radicals, and organic food pushers are gathering under the Earth Day big top to peddle their pet causes. Consumers beware: their antics and dire warnings should be viewed for entertainment purposes only.

The Consumers Union of the United States is affixing the Earth Day brand name to its ongoing campaign to promote organic-only eating. The group's "Eco-labels" website, designed to encourage food label-clutter, was funded in part by a grant from Ted Turner. His Turner Foundation has given generously to food fear-mongers including the Organic Consumers Association, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Consumers Union also received $300,000 for its Eco-labels project from the Ford Foundation, another notorious green grant-making machine. Ford has given over $2 million (each) to Friends of the Earth and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is staking out its own ring in the Earth Day circus, with plans to distribute veggie burgers outside of Burger King restaurants. PETA's press releases claim vegetarianism can "save the Earth and all its inhabitants." Well, maybe not all inhabitants....