Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Take That Rachel Carson

I feel a breeze blowing, ever so slightly, signaling a change in the weather. Only a whisper so far, a zephyr fraught with possibilities.

Lately, I've noticed that the people who run things in this country have become a bit soured on the nation's 50 year environmental kick. And it's not only limited to the United States. For all the lip service given to the philosophy, only hardened left wingers misguided do gooders journalists and the school children who are still the victims of the push to indoctrinate them into the Carsonian religion really believe that environmentalism is the greatest good and capitalism is the greatest evil.

Take for instance the court's decision to strike down Obama's offshore drilling moratorium. Such a decision would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, when all the leaders of our institutions were still under the spell of this evil dogma and those who weren't were too intimidated to put in a good word for economic development and modern comforts.

Admittedly, environmentalism did some good. It eliminated some very serious health and safety hazards and some very dangerous and destructive pollution of our rivers lakes and forests. Like every other all encompassing program, it gained a life of its own and when the problems were fixed, new problems were invented to keep those charged with protecting us, in business.

Some responsible business leaders and even the miniscule number of responsible politicians have turned their backs on mindless greenness. They are beginning to make objections to the world's governments' blanket bans of this or that process or substance, whose risks are so much less than the benefits.

China's torpedoing of the Copenhagen treaty, India's refusal to ban the safe use of white asbestos are just two of the cases in point. Daily, I have come across little stories poking their heads up through the soil of indiscriminate green boosterism. The public today is more worried about jobs and the economy than in climate change.

I think we've turned the corner.

2 comments:

FBB said...

There are very few environmentalists at 90+ degrees!

Seriously though, we may not have turned a corner per se, just the economic and job situation is such that environmentalism is a luxury we can ill afford.

I'll be curious to see if the tide remains turned once the economy recovers and people return to work, or if there is a regression to this dogma.

Alternative fuels would still not be a bad thing (says the driver of a mega gas guzzling SUV), especially if we could rid ourselves, not so much on "dependence on foreign oil," but dependence on ARAB oil, and Hugo Chavez oil.

Dr. G. W. Greunkern said...

Hear! Hear! Finally, ration heads are beginning to prevail.